Industry expert Guy Wilkinson says it’s a good time to reunite with the hotel’s forgotten friends
Thanks to the global economic downturn, lower occupancies mean hotel managers now have more time on their hands for talking and listening to important people. And they need to. Here are 10 types of people to get to know better during these challenging times.
1 Get to know your regulars. In last year’s buoyant conditions your guests may have seemed a sea of faceless customers; now that there are a few empty tables in the restaurant, you can easily pick out the regulars. Sit and chat with them, ask them for a candid opinion on service levels, what they’d like to see improved. Find out their preferences, record them in a database and give them what they want next time. Read the guest feedback forms. It’s all there in black and white. Now, at last, you have time to respond.
2 Get to know the first-timers and walk-ins. First impressions are often the most accurate and objective. Take the time to talk to new faces, as well as familiar ones. Ask them personally, don’t rely on those multiple-choice forms that say: “Was the service great, wonderful, or fabulous?” They tend to bias the answers and already introduce one level of impersonality. Hotels should be about direct contact,
not bureaucracy.
3 Get to know your people greeters. From the bellboys to the concierge, the receptionists to the reservations clerks, the telephonists to the waiters and room attendants, these are the humble employees who make or break a guest’s hotel experience. They also know far better than you what’s going on in the hotel. Listen carefully to them and empower them as much as you can, because their liberty to go beyond the call of duty — and ideally even to be rewarded for doing so — is what distinguishes true hospitality.
4 Get to know your business influencers. It has to be said that in the Gulf’s most successful markets — pre-downturn — relations between hotels and their distribution partners had become characterised by a certain arrogance, most succinctly summed up as a ‘take it or leave it’ attitude. Now’s the time to repair any ill feeling that may have developed as a result, with tour operators and wholesalers, travel agents, airlines and similar. In these trying times, you need every friend you can get.
5 Get to know your engineer. Important people, engineers! They are the ones who always want you to spend more than you have in the budget on maintenance and refurbishment. Well, now may be the time to pay attention, for two reasons: firstly, because you may be able to benefit from important deflationary advantages in the cost of FF&E; and secondly, because any shortcomings in your hotel’s amenities have come into more glaring focus in today’s market, where potential guests can pick and choose where they stay.
6 Get to know your competitors. Now’s the time to be as nosy as you like as to what other hotels are doing. Go and have a good look around your immediate competitors’ properties, stay there, dine there, ask a lot of outrageous questions. See what they are doing to weather the storm and know your own hotel’s strengths and weaknesses as honestly as you can.
7 Get to know your counterparts. Better still, call up your fellow managers and have an honest talk. There is little to be gained from holding your cards too close to your chest under the current market conditions, which in truth demand solidarity among our region’s hoteliers, not small-mindedness. And call up your head office counterparts too. There are useful people there who may have a broader perspective than you on key topics such as sales and marketing, accounting, HR, training and regional trends.
8 Get to know your financial controller. All sorts of things have changed financially in the last few months and you’ll no doubt have been in intimate discussions with your FC about this year’s budget. Let him or her drill down as much as possible and try and follow them down all the way. There is a lot more to key performance indicators than occupancy, ARR and RevPar. How about those segment yields, par stocks, accounts payable?
9 Get to know your consultants. You never know, but a conversation with your external auditors, training consultants, mystery shopping providers and even your friendly neighbourhood hospitality consultancy could give you a fresh and objective professional insight on matters troubling you. Ask them in for a free consultation. They’ll jump at the chance.
10 Get to know your owner. I’m sure you know your owner very well already, but have you asked his or her advice about the new market conditions? They are probably looking to you to perform miracles this year, against all expectations — big pressure! So why not bat the question back to them? Because they are deeply concerned about the performance of their hotel, and yet at the same time are outside the profession, they may just bring you that clarity you need.
Guy Wilkinson is a director of Viability, a hospitality and property consulting firm in Dubai. For more information, e-mail: guy@viability.ae
