As with any business, as a hotel manager, your aim is to increase the productivity of your workforce and care for the wellbeing of your hotel guests, in order to keep your profit margins as high as possible. As such, hotel management teams are always looking for creative ways to keep guests content, bring in new business, and keep the hotel running as smoothly as possible. Sometimes the best thing to do to boost the efficiency and profitability of a hotel, is to revisit the simplest factors of the business, such as employee treatment and advertisement techniques, and implement any necessary and worthwhile changes and updates; With this in mind, here are a few tips which you might find useful to help you boost your business.
Appropriate delegation
There are so many factors to oversee and take care of within the day to day management of a hotel, that it would be near impossible for a single person to do it alone. If you want to improve the efficiency of how your hotel is run, then you need to make sure there is a clear chain of command in place within the staff, and that tasks are appropriately delegated and distributed throughout the employee hierarchy. To make sure that all members of staff are aware of the goals for each day, and know what is expected of them, it is wise to hold a brief daily meeting for all the staff, as well as regularly scheduled quarterly meetings to go over any issues in more detail. At these daily meetings, you should aim to try and boost morale by recognizing good work by members of staff, and where necessary try to give constructive, rather than negative, criticisms of staff work.
Make sure that your staff know that their opinions are valued and that they are aware of which supervisors they should go to if they are in need of support or assistance; the more valued and cared for your employees feel, the more efficiently they are likely to work. Try to come up with some rewards for exceptional work that you can offer to staff members, such as a free stay at the hotel for the employee of the month, or getting a paid vacation day for reaching an important milestone. The happier you can keep your staff, the better they will serve your clientele, and the more profit you will make.
Widespread and targeted advertisement
In order to gain more guests to your hotel, you need to start thinking like one of your clients. Try to understand what it is people are looking for from their hotel stay, and do your best to replicate their ideal stay. Of course, this will vary depending on the demographics of the client, so consider whether your hotel has a fixed target market or an open one. If your business is better catered towards one specific client group (such as solely professional and business clientele) then you should focus the means of your advertisement on channels which are most accessed by your demographic; for example, send promotional materials to businesses in your local area, and offer some form of discount or other incentive to draw in new clients.
Social media advertisement is the best way to connect with a widespread clientele. As people often share photos of their trips away, including the hotels they stay in, when used correctly a social media profile for your business can also create a platform for organic interest growth. By simply introducing some social media gimmicks, such as a hashtag or a dedicated Instagram page for clients to submit holiday photos too, you will encourage past, current and potential clients to interact with your business, whilst also benefiting from some free advertisement.
Use of software support
When information has to be manually sent from person to person, there is always margin for error; and when you are trying to run a successful and profitable business, the more room for error there is, the more profit you could find your business losing out on. Therefore, in order to reduce the risks of information being lost or miscommunicated, it is important to properly utilize the latest software available to you. Computerized Maintenance Management Software (CMMS) allows operation managers to easily identify, and quickly address, any possible problems within the hotels under their command, all within a single system.
As well as allowing you to access an up-to-date report of any maintenance problems at any location from a handheld device, CMMS software can also help you to monitor the standardization of maintenance practices throughout the business, as well as aiding the business in becoming more environmentally friendly (as increased equipment efficiency will lead to reduced energy and resource consumption). This will save you money, and also create a more favorable outlook on your company.
Understand all aspects of your business
Ask yourself this: how well do you really know what it takes to run your business from the ground up? While you might understand what it takes to run a large company of staff, on the whole, have you ever had first-hand experience of the work which you require your staff to undertake. For example, how can you set the expectation that your cleaning staff should aim to turn over a room in under twenty-five minutes unless you have been through the experience of cleaning a used hotel room and know exactly what it takes to achieve the expected standards in such a limited amount of time? Spend time in each area of your hotel, from shadowing your head chef in the kitchen, to speaking to your valet manager about the ins and outs of their role responsibilities; This will also give you the opportunity to see which members of staff show true dedication to upholding the high standards and procedures of the hotel. Your company is only as strong as it’s foundations, and your employees will hold a lot more respect for your rules and standards if they know they come from first-hand experience on your part.
Kidal Delonix is a contributor to Mr. Hoffman's blog. The views and opinions are entirely his/her own and may not reflect Mr Hoffman's views.
