Listen! We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Managing a hotel requires the ability to multitask and at the same time to be flexible. You must be able to switch from customer support to staff management to marketing and other meetings.
Are you the manager? Then it’s your job to make sure the customers are happy and safe during their stay at the hotel, which means you’re in charge of how clean the rooms are and how well the facilities are maintained.
Sometimes we hit a point in our life when we do not know how to continue. We are trying to improve something but everything it’s going the same. Here are some tips on how to better manage your hotel. Keep it simple and easy. It’s not rocket science.
Knowing Your Staff
For sure you hired someone because you thought he or she will do best in your company. But now you are at the moment of firing your staff because you think anyone is useless. Let me tell you…
Let me tell you…Before you can manage the various departments, you must know what the people in those departments do. Try to clean a room to see how long it takes and what is essential. Work the front desk to understand how many customer complaints and issues are handled by your staff that you never hear about. Work at the front desk to understand how many customers complain to your staff and you never heard about it.
You may think you handle too many customer complaints, but it’s your front desk staff that handle the majority of the issues without needing your help. Spend some time with your maintenance team or with your cook to learn what goes on in a typical day. Having these experiences makes you a better manager.
If you want to effectively manage a hotel, you must have the support and respect of the staff and you must know how to prioritize issues.
Delegate
Stop doing everything by yourself… Delegate! Are you a real entrepreneur? A definition of being a good entrepreneur is to get done things through others. You may think you are the only one that can get the work done, but you could be missing one important key to your business strategy. Your team is there to help you. Delegation is key to the daily management of a hotel.
Meet daily with the people from your staff to discuss anything of interest that day.
Let the people in charge of each department to manage their staff. The more you interact with the staff, even if they don’t report to you, the more accountable they feel to do a good job every time.
Reward Staff
You think your staff will work for you all life on the minimum wage? Stop being selfish…It’s time to reward!
Let me tell you – there’s no way you can run the hotel alone. Having trained staff is vital when making sure guests have a comfortable and pleasant stay. Many members of the hotel staff are considered blue collar, with no formal of education required to perform the job duties.
This often means they don’t get paid very much. That doesn’t make their jobs less important. Rooms must be cleaned every day properly, the wait staff must know the menu and proper serving procedures and the front desk employees must be friendly and polite even when guests become angry.
Develop a system to keep your staff motivated, and make their job enjoyable. The rewards don’t have to be great; even small rewards are a good way to be motivated to work hard.
Plan
To manage efficiently the hotel, you must be able to plan months in advance for upcoming events and bookings. In the summer, start planning your marketing for the city holiday festivals. In the winter, start calling the event planners for Christmas events.
A good hotel manager is someone who is very well organized. Part of this will require the usage of delegating. Using the delegating skills that you have should make it much easier to actually watch the organization of your hotel begins to fall into place and things should run much smoother.
Listen to your guests
Online reviews are not just a nice reputation booster, they can tell you a lot about your daily works. Identify what guests are talking about. Monitor all relevant reviews.
Reply to negative reviews
Showing that you are listening gives potential customers the confidence that you care about customer feedback and will work to improve. In fact, a negative review can worth more than a positive review as it gives you the opportunity to demonstrate how you deal with difficulties.
Reply to positive reviews occasionally
Start to write replies to positive reviews. Just a few positive reviews get a response. Replying to every review may be too time-consuming, but you should at least occasionally show your appreciation.
Encourage guests to review
Actively encouraging guests to write a review of your hotel helps increase the buzz about your hotel. Encourage constantly your guests to write reviews about the services you offered.
Make your reviews visible
Your customers are your best marketing. Potential guests trust their fellow travelers’ opinion more than they trust your corporate website. If you have a solid base of online reviews, you should make them visible.
As long as you are focused on your hotel and follow these important tips, your hotel will be one of the most successful hotels in your area.
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