You’re probably reading this because you want to improve the operational performance of your hotel, but you don’t know what steps to take or which tasks to prioritize. This is understandable, as creating a successful business in the hotel industry is not a simple process. Success doesn’t happen overnight. It takes careful planning, prioritization, and dedication.

As a Hotel Management Company, we’ve seen similar concerns about prioritizing and making decisions. There’s always room for improvement when it comes to challenges that the hotel industry faces. This includes making the right decision, optimizing processes, providing a higher level of service, and aligning departments.

Impact of COVID-19 Operations

Hotel operations are the key to creating a successful business and providing an exceptional level of customer service. If you lose focus on operations or ignore them, it can lead to major performance problems. How does this work in times when travel has not recovered, and staffing levels have not returned to what they were? We can’t just wait for better days to come. Make your hotel stand out by taking action now. Find out more!

Making the Right Decisions

Anyone who works will know how easy it is to become overwhelmed by all the tasks and opportunities available. Setting priorities is, therefore, very important. You will risk overlooking other more important tasks that could directly affect the service quality in your hospitality operation if you don’t set the right priorities.

I recommend that you always begin with a logical overview based on this question.

You can then start to determine which processes and initiatives will help you create a memorable guest experience. This can be done case-by-case and is flexible to adapt to the many variations in hotel products and services.

Know Your Guests Personalize

A question hoteliers must ask themselves is, “Do you know what they want?” It’s time to start getting to know your guests better if you don’t already! Benefit from a properly maintained and built customer database.

Personalizing services and products can help you increase revenue and improve customer service. It is important to record guest preferences and develop their profiles in the hotel’s CRM software. Don’t forget your staff about the value of collecting hotel guest data, including email addresses. This strategy won’t take off without their help!

Do not wait until your guests arrive to prepare!

In many ways, waiting until guests arrive to take advantage of opportunities will hurt your business. It is much better to adopt a proactive stance and drive customer experience and revenue right away. There are many benefits, including:

Your guests will be more aware of your services and products. It also means more revenue opportunities.

By providing more ideas for the guests to include in their itinerary, there is a higher chance that they will enjoy their stay.

Plan and make decisions. Curate an assortment of activities for guests staying at different lengths of time so that they can follow the itinerary without doing their research or planning.

This allows you to ask questions before arriving, reducing the workload of front desk staff.

Consider sending an email to welcome the guest (giving them basic information and confirming the booking), followed by another email shortly before their arrival (directions, parking info, activities, hotel products and services, etc.). Bookable options). This is also a great way to increase traffic to your site (e.g., Package pages and blog articles are always helpful when it comes to SEO.

Empower your employees

Encourage an environment that is centered on empowerment and training. Employees must be able to become the person that guests go to for all.

They will be better equipped to deal with unexpected situations if they are given the right tools and knowledge. This process will build confidence in both the guests and employees, making them feel more confident and prepared to handle any situation.

This process will be much easier if you can learn from multiple angles. Make sure that cross-training is done between departments and that information sharing is an integral part of your journey towards empowerment.

Create a culture of ownership.

Lack of Ownership is a problem that we see all too often. It is not good to make the guest feel that their situation is being passed from one person to another. It might be best to say that you don’t want to deal with the problem in the first instance… This is related to the previous point of empowering employees to handle any situation on their own. Directly addressing issues shows that you care and also lets guests know that you are involved in making sure they have a great stay.

Communication and cross-communication

We’ll continue to preach the importance of improving communication and breaking down silos between departments. It’s for a good reason. Can only overcome persistent operational bottlenecks by cross-communication.

To solve complex problems and increase performance, you must stop working blindfolded. You will be surprised at how many members of your team still work in different directions! Start by aligning your objectives and increasing communication within departments. Hotels can maximize their efficiency by embracing diverse perspectives and sharing crucial information openly.

Work smarter, Not Harder…

Reduce the time it takes to execute operational processes without compromising on quality. Smarter working will reduce service delivery times and the amount of work carried by employees.

Front Office

Make the process as simple as possible for your guests! Make sure to plan their arrival and have everything ready for check-in. As much as you can, complete their check-in form with readily available information, assign the correct room, and implement processes such as express check-in/out.

Food and Beverage

Hospitality is not always about more. Less is More can include reducing menu size. The size of the menu and the choice of ingredients will have a significant impact on F&B performance. A smaller menu allows for quicker preparation, fresher ingredients, and less waste. This reduces food costs. Don’t forget, while you’re at, to include local elements in your menu to ensure that your customers receive the freshest produce.

Housekeeping

By reducing the cost of linens and refreshments for guests, as well as minimizing energy and waste consumption, you can reap benefits. Record this information in your system for future use so that guests do not have to repeat it.

Standardization is the key to building a strong brand

SOPs are the backbone of hotel operations. SOPs are essential to ensuring that processes run smoothly and guests receive the best possible service.

It may seem easy to write SOPs, but a cookie-cutter approach could be costly. Here, we are primarily talking about two main things;

Each hotel has its own. Make sure that your SOPs reflect this. Some workflows may work for one hotel but need to be tweaked slightly for another.

BRANDING! It is important to ensure that your values are reflected in all of your SOPs. This allows your employees to adopt your hotel’s values and communicate your brand message to your guests much more effectively.