Hotel Management: How to Make It Truly Efficient

Have you ever tried organizing a small birthday party at your home or in a playroom? It's 30 kids, one or two cakes and some snacks, but it seems like a nightmare. Now imagine being responsible for 20-50 employees, 50-300 rooms and who knows how many guests. You have to maintain a perfect harmony in order for everything to remain well working. Multitasking and authority are must-haves for this kind of job, aside from huge patience of course.

Being in charge of just one sector is stressful and requires skills, so it's quite hard explaining within a couple of words how hard it is to manage entire hotel. That's why we've prepared some notes for you to keep an eye on, in order to help your management be as efficient as possible.

Evaluate both the staff and the work

It's very annoying when your employee takes more than an hour to clean up one guest room, but it's even more annoying when your manager thinks that you can clean 2 large guest rooms within 45 minutes. Let managers try and do the work they are expecting from their employees to be done, since that is the best way to evaluate the time and quality you're expecting. Do you think that every sector has a perfect day, every day, and they never have issues? Go stand next to your kitchen chief and watch him work, or ask your hostess what her day has been like so far.

First of all, once you find out how many unexpected problems occur on a daily basis, you'll be way prouder of your employees for not blowing the whistle every time they encounter a problem. Aside from that, showing your employees that you care about them and the work they are doing, you'll create a good harmony between you, and let's not forget that a happy employee means a happy delivery!

Motivate your employees

It's very important to make sure that everyone understands how important they are for the sake of hotel. Every person working in the hotel represents a small but necessary puzzle piece, so you, as a businessman, have to understand the importance of properly rewarding your staff. As this current undergraduate course in business design explains, the corporate world of today is employing creative skills to develop solutions that meet the needs of a constantly changing society. More and more companies adopt design methodologies to set their corporate direction and strategies, looking for innovative solutions to complex challenges, as having a truly motivated staff that will facilitate the operations of your hospitality venture.

Don't take it all on you

Yes you are the smartest person there and no you can't trust anyone else but yourself, but if you want your hotel to grow and keep up the good work, then you'll have to learn how to trust others and how to delegate chores. The first thing you can try out is being agile. Arrange short meetings every morning which should be attended by sector heads and you. A quick overview of how everything is going so far and what big events are coming up, and then proceed with the delegation. If you know there is a wedding planned, and they want 200 specialties, don't go to the chief yourself, but tell the kitchen department's head to take care of it.

Are there any problems with some rooms? Let everyone know that employees who are in charge of cleaning that room don't need to take care of it until the problem is resolved, and if there are guests currently staying in those rooms, make sure they get the best treatment your hotel can offer.

Planning is the key

First of all, you have to make sure that you have every upcoming event planned thoroughly. You can't let anything unplanned happen because being spontaneous during big events is the worst thing that can happen, and it can potentially lead to losing customers. Aside from that, you have to plan your marketing as well. Either hire a marketing agency or sit down and come up with a campaign that will cover at least a couple of next months filled with various promotions and events.

Just by going through the things you should never forget when running a hotel, you can already tell that this job is stressful and requires many different skills. Everyone seeks for the easiest way to run everything perfectly but there isn't one. Your multitasking skills have to be on point and you have to be able to trust your employees. That's the only way to acquire perfection.