Hotel Strategic Planning a Must
On a recent consulting project, my company was appointed to assist a hotel that has been open just over one year, to redefine the F&B offering and to also deliver a more substantial bottom line. During this period, I noticed the minimal strategic approach in the development of the concept in the preliminary stages and found the need to write the below to assist any other hoteliers or restaurateurs in strategic planning.
For the property that we are consulting for, the F&B layout, design and functionality has come purely from the interior designers that were appointed for the project; which have put together concepts and designs with an approach as to what will possibly look nice in a hotel and not what the market would need or what would be functional for the space. The concept idea has come form the investor of the property, from inspiration of a venue that he frequents in London often. However, there has not been any level of involvement from someone with operational hospitality experience or advice from someone in the industry; which in my experience is typical in many hotel F&B concept development phases. This then leads to the evident lack of planning and strategy.
I have posted many articles on concept development and how a restaurant idea can come to fruition; In my experience, and one point I make over and over, is that a concept must begin from a menu. The menu defines the décor, ambience, pricing, service style and so on. If for example you decide on creating and Italian concept. The question I ask is: what type of Italian? Is it a Gelataria, Pizzeria, Osteria, Enoteca, Ristorante or a café? The differences with the type of offering will change the décor. You wont see a Gelataria with table cloths and candles set, and you wont see a Ristorante with counter service alone. I know these maybe slightly exaggerated, however the point that I am trying to make is that an operational hospitality professional should dictate the menu and concept direction, before a designer is even involved. Taking into consideration some of my previous posts on concept development, the next important piece of information I would like to share is the need of strategic planning, which leads me to writing this post.
Strategic planning provides the roadmap for your hotel to move forward toward the achievement of the goals and objectives set, and ultimately, the mission and vision that you should have of developed (see the post 'A Restaurants Business Plan' December 29, 2015, Pavlos Sarlas). To be effective, strategic planning must encompass all levels of your hotel with involvement from as many as possible and practicable. In addition, coordination of plans between departments, divisions and the hotel as a whole is a best practice in achieving success.
How its defined
Strategic planning is the process of developing a plan, guideline or roadmap for your hotel, which is based on its mission, vision, values and stated goals and objectives, which indicates the specific strategies and tactics or actions that will be taken to achieve these goals.
Strategic planning should guide the efforts of the entire hotel; however, it is not unusual for more than one strategic plan to be in place; an overall hotel plan, for instance, that drives the development and implementation of other related plans that might include marketing plans, HR plans, finance plans or department-specific plan.
The importance of planning
The importance of strategic planning at all levels is twofold: first it puts a stake in the ground in terms of what the hotel is hoping to achieve and second, it serves as a guide for employees to direct their activities and resources (time and money) toward goals and objectives that have been considered and adopted by the organization as a whole.
The challenges to strategic planning
Perhaps the greatest challenge of strategic planning is the actual execution of the plan. So often, ideas are put down on paper, yet the deliverables are not achieved. In the instance of the hotel that I previously mentioned, there challenge comes form having many people with great ideas, but limited people to execute, delegate, document and follow up.
Much time is spent creating the plan, often with numerous meetings and sometimes with the help of external resources, such as consultants or facilitators. But, once the plan is completed, hotels often face difficulties in moving forward with the elements of the plan. This can occur for a number of reasons: employees at all levels were not sufficiently involved or engaged in the plan's development, clear accountability is not established or there is no regular follow up on plan progress.
Implementing best practices
Hotels can increase their ability to execute their strategic plan by following a number of best practices. These include: identifying an individual who will be responsible for ensuring the plan's implementation, conducting regular updates on plan progress and clearly identifying accountability for each element of the plan's action plans. In addition, many hotels are part of a bigger group which can utilize best practices from other sister hotels. For the more boutique hotels, such as the one mentioned in my post, best practices can be seen from the competitor hotels or other successful global properties that you can learn from.
The measure of success
Measures of plan success ultimately reflect accomplishment of the goals and objectives identified in the plan. Importantly, these goals and objectives must be meaningful and measurable. A goal of "increase sales," for instance, is not specific enough to determine whether it has been effectively met. A goal of "increase sales by 10 percent in the next six months" is a goal that two individuals can review and evaluate. This should be relevant to the whole strategy, both the overall hotel strategy and then the more micro strategies in each department.
From an F&B side the strategy should even be broken down to an outlet level and and then an individual front of house and back of house plan, where the measures would include payroll costs, food costs, beverage costs, and average check increases through upselling or cover count per hour increases through marketing as an example.
The importance of strategic planning at early stage is critical to the success of any hotel.
