Virgin Limited Edition is Sir Richard Branson's collection of luxury retreats. Two of its most exclusive properties, Necker Island and Moskito Island in the British Virgin Islands, are private islands where guests take an entire villa or estate with dedicated chefs, butlers and housekeeping.
Almost every member of staff lives off-island and arrives by boat each morning, and the standard of service depends on the right people being in the right villa at the right time.
The Challenge
On a private island there is no front gate and no reception desk. Staff step off a boat and disperse across the island to villas, kitchens, gardens and the estate's facilities. Managers needed to know exactly when each person had arrived on the island, when they had left, and how their day had been split between the properties they had worked in. Paper records and radio check-ins could not give them that, and the distance from the UK meant any system had to be reliable without an engineer on hand.
“Our team arrives on a boat, not through a door. We needed the moment somebody steps onto the dock to be the moment their shift starts, and we needed to see it from wherever we happened to be.”
Tim Worrell, Business Systems Manager, Virgin Limited Edition
The Solution
Synel installed Synergy Time & Attendance terminals at the boat dock on each island and in every villa and estate. Staff clock in by fingerprint or card as they come off the boat in the morning and clock out on the dock in the evening, so the estate always knows who is on the island. Terminals in each villa record when a team member arrives and leaves that property, giving managers a full picture of how housekeeping, culinary and butler time is allocated across the guests in residence.
All data flows to a single Synergy platform managed from the resort office, with absence, holiday and hours reporting handled in the same system. The hardware is built to cope with a tropical environment and the platform is supported remotely by Synel.
Support
With the nearest engineer several hours away, the system was specified for reliability first. Synel supports the islands remotely, with configuration changes, reporting and user administration handled without a site visit.
Success
Management now has an accurate, real-time record of attendance across both islands and a clear view of how staff time is distributed between villas. Payroll is built on clocked hours rather than rotas, and the island teams have a simple, quick way to start and end their day.