With COVID19’s second wave (rather tsunami) gradually tapering off, the hospitality industry is gradually, yet cautiously, restarting. One of the main challenges that the sector faces is finance. Each organisation is going about its own methods to manage the financial crunch, but that is not the focus of this article.
Each hospitality company has come up with its own disaster management methodology to mitigate various issues created by the pandemic. At this juncture, hoteliers need to work on several fronts, not just the financial aspects or tightening expenses. They need to pull up their socks in the following areas, while planning their reopening strategy.
EMPLOYEES
“Corporate culture matters. How the management chooses to treat its people impacts everything for better or worse” – Simon Sinek
Employee motivation and satisfaction could be at an all-time low currently considering how many organisations laid off staff. Manpower is the first overhead that was targeted, sadly.
Many sacked employees moved to their hometowns. With the looming fear of the third wave, they would be cautious about returning to work, coupled with the worry of job insecurity in an uncertain industry. This has forced organisations to revisit existing recruitment process, and consider ‘unconventional’ methods, like gig employment (part-timers) for various departments and not just banquets as was the norm.
Regaining confidence of a dispirited staff, especially customer facing workers, is a challenge. Steps like taking employees into confidence, offering even minimal support, and taking into account their family circumstances, will help companies make empathetic decisions.
This might be a good opportunity for brands to develop a ‘Benevolent Fund’, initiated by proactive companies like IHCL. This corpus, created by contributions from senior employees, helps the company pay partial salary to furloughed employees until they are recalled to work full-time.
Hotels can boost employee morale by vaccinating employees to give them more confidence on the job. Most prominent hotel chains have already undertaken this initiative. Companies can also accommodate team members in hotel rooms, following COVID-19 guidelines, with a regular health check. Having a Doctor on-call, and referring them to healthcare facility to take care of their medical concerns will also make them feel more secure.
CUSTOMERS
Many people are still apprehensive about traveling, which means reopening at city hotels will be relatively slower. With renewed focus on contactless and tech-aided experiences, hotels will have to adapt to changing customer expectations to regain their confidence.
Despite the ‘humane’ service aspect of the industry, hotels will need to focus on contactless services to focus while retaining the ‘human’ service element. IHCL took the lead with the implementation of iZEST Zero-Touch Service Transformation, a suite for contactless solutions including digital check-in and check-out, online payment options and QR codes to digital F&B menus. It also introduced Taj Hospitality@Home curated hampers, RESET 2020 and the Qmin app for food deliveries.
Mariott’s Bonvoy mobile app is enabled for mobile check-in and checkout, digital payment, scanning of digitised food menus with QR codes and hone delivery of food. These are just a few of the many similar initiatives by hotel chains.
Additionally, most hotels have placed social distancing stickers and other safety information prominently in all public areas. F&B outlets hotels, too, have updated their seating layouts to ensure ensuring social distancing and provided food handlers with PPE kit in addition to using digital menus and online payments to ensure a contact free dining experience.
Appointing a dedicated hygiene manager has become crucial. This individual can keep track of the hotel’s sanitisation schedule and daily Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) swab test being done for all the departments to ensure desired hygiene results are achieved.
PLANNING
A key challenge for hotels during the pandemic has been coping with the constantly changing guidelines from the Government and WHO. Not only did they have to stay abreast about these instructions, they also had to ensure that each unit and team member adhered to it. These dynamic changes were issued from the time hotels converted into quarantine centres, to the present moment when are opening in a phased manner.
The corporate office, legal and communication teams at a hotel’s corporate office constantly kept track of administrative updates and immediately passed on this communication to their regional offices and unit properties. They leveraged virtual platforms and WhatsApp groups extensively to share information.
While this ensured speedy dissemination of information, cautious planning is essential during this time. Often a communiqué could be misconstrued unless explained properly. Moreover, with the access to technology, internal memos can be easily shared with external sources, which can be disastrous for the organisation.
Given the prevalent uncertainty, companies should also be prepared to circulate information in a manner that allows them to switch gears, whenever the situation changes. This has become more essential become many hospitality organisations are looking at asset-light operations as part of their restrategizing process.
By giving equal attention to non-financial strategies as they reopen, hoteliers can get back on its feet earlier than expected. These will also help them get indirect financial gains.
