Hoteliers face a unique range of challenges. From labour shortages and high turnover to evolving consumer demand for the newest technologies, improving your hotel management strategy could go a long way.
Innovation and creativity are important aspects of any hotel business. And both of these skills will help you improve the efficiency of your hotel operations and revenue from leisure, MICE, and business travel segments.
In this blog, we’ll look at a wide range of hotel management ideas, tools, and strategies, designed to inspire and improve the way you do business.
What is hotel management?
Hotel management refers to the professionals or teams in charge of a hotel. Whether these professionals or teams are at or above property, they oversee the overall administration and coordination of a hotel’s operations.
They may oversee every department of a hotel, including front desk operations, housekeeping, food and beverage, sales and marketing, finance, and human resources.
Being in hotel management is a bit like spinning plates with a great number of responsibilities and tasks. Though these differ depending on the size, type, and location of a property, here are a few common hotel management responsibilities:
- Staff management: Hiring, developing rotas, training and development, supervising
- Guest services: Addressing guest concerns and complaints and ensuring excellent customer service.
- Technology integration: Finding, evaluating, and implementing the right technology for the business.
- Financial management: Taking charge of budgeting, monitoring expenses, analysing financial reports, and making well-informed decisions.
- Property maintenance: Overseeing repairs, addressing malfunctions quickly, and providing a safe, comfortable environment for guests.
- Crisis management: Creating efficient emergency response plans.
- Market analysis: Monitoring market trends and the competitive set.
- Relationship building: Establishing partnerships with local businesses, convention visitor bureaus, and planners.
- Compliance and regulations: Ensuring the property complies with local and national regulations such as labour laws and safety standards.
- Sustainability initiatives: Creating and promoting sustainable ideas and strategies.
What are common hotel management challenges?
The challenges faced by hotel management professionals or teams vary depending on the size, type, and location of the hotel. Nevertheless, most hotels face similar challenges, including:
- Staff management: Hiring and retaining skilled employees, providing proper training and supervision, maintaining high morale, and fostering teamwork are all crucial for successful staff management.
- Revenue management: Hotel managers need to implement effective revenue management strategies, including setting optimal room rates, managing distribution channels, and optimising revenue streams from various sources.
- Operational efficiency: Running a hotel involves managing numerous operational aspects, such as housekeeping, maintenance, food and beverage, and front desk operations.
- Technology integration: Embracing and implementing new technologies is necessary for a growing hotel business, but it can be challenging, especially for smaller hotels with limited resources.
- Seasonal demand and occupancy fluctuations: Hotels often experience fluctuations in demand based on seasonal trends or local events.
- Regulatory compliance: Hotels must comply with a range of regulations, including health and safety standards, labour laws, data protection regulations, and accessibility requirements.
- Sustainability and environmental responsibility: With growing concerns about sustainability and environmental impact, hotels face the challenge of implementing eco-friendly practices, reducing waste, and adopting sustainable initiatives while also maintaining guest satisfaction and profitability.
15 hotel management ideas to boost efficiency and bookings
Mobile check-in and check-out
Software, tools, platforms… nowadays these are non-negotiable parts of running a hotel. It’s the hotel management’s job to find, evaluate, and implement the right technology.
Contactless technology rose in popularity for several reasons. It’s fast, efficient, and helps businesses cut labour costs. Many large hospitality brands like Marriott, Hilton, and InterContinental Hotel Group have implemented the technology.
Mobile check-in and check-out help streamline hotel operations. Guests can use your hotel app to complete the check-in process before their arrival, skip the queues and go straight up to their room.
Room blocking
MICE reservations are notoriously difficult for hotels. Manual data entry, multiple room list formats, and the risk of attendees booking with another hotel are a few daily challenges.
Instead of dreading the process, room block technology simplifies everything, from offering a custom booking site and data automation to reminding planners when their rooming list is due and upselling.
Accor Passkey case study:
Utilise guest messaging technology
Guest messaging technology helps take the strain off your front desk team. Instead of receiving endless calls, having guests message you instead - either through your hotel app, WhatsApp, or SMS, for example, frees up the phones for reservations.
Provide technology training
Front desk staff work across property management systems (PMS), point of sale (POS) systems, customer relationship management (CRM) software, and channel managers, for example.
Providing in-depth training on all systems ensures that the technology is being used as efficiently as possible. It will also help prevent errors or confusion with guests.
Optimise your hotel for search engines
It's no secret that when guests, corporate travel managers, and event planners begin a search, they likely begin with a search engine like Google.
As such, a key priority in hotel management should be optimising your website and Cvent Supplier Network listing for search engines. This might mean updating your website pages, copy, and CSN page with well-researched keywords or beginning a search-engine-optimised (SEO) blog.
Encourage online reviews and testimonials
According to Podium, 93% of internet users have made buying decisions based on an online review. That means the quality of your reviews - whether it be Google, TripAdvisor, or Booking.com - is a big influencing factor when it comes to increasing bookings.
Increasing the quality of your reviews is simple: you need to provide excellent service. But when it comes to quantity, there are a few methods:
- Put QR codes around your hotel, encouraging guests to leave a review.
- Prompt guests to leave a review in your post-stay communications.
- Use your mobile checkout technology to guide guests to leave a review before they leave.
Diagramming technology
When it comes to meetings, incentives, conferences, and events (MICE), diagramming technology saves time, improves the hotel-planner relationship, and results in better events.
Diagramming technology allows you to collaborate with event planners in real time, deliver photo-realistic 3D tours of your hotel, and showcase interactive floorplans.
Wotton House case study CED
Personalise the Guest Experience
Guests want to feel valued. And it can be as simple as being greeted by name upon walking into your hotel. But there are so many ways hotel management can improve the guest experience with personalisation.
Collect the right guest data and use it
The backbone of guest personalisation is your guest data. The better its quality, the more you’ll understand your guest profiles - and individual guests.
Make sure you’re utilising your PMS and other hotel software to capture the needs, preferences, and interests of your guests, corporate travel managers, and event planners.
Offer personalised recommendations and promotions
Once you’ve begun building guest profiles, staff will be able to recommend add-ons, upgrades, and experiences more relevant to that particular guest.
Don’t forget to congratulate your guests on their birthdays, anniversaries, or honeymoons. This might seem like a small thing but it goes a long way in your guests’ eyes. Offering them a complimentary bottle of wine, dessert, or spa experience may just make their stay.
Grow your small meetings business with instant online bookings
Prioritising leads, reading requests for proposals (RFPs), and responding thoughtfully take a lot of time. And when it comes to small meetings and events, it’s not always time you can spare.
Utilise Cvent Instant Book to grow your small meetings business while saving your sales resources for bigger opportunities. This will help you win business faster and save time, all without an RFP process.
Get started with Cvent Instant Book today
Personalised in-room touches
Pay attention to guest preferences and personalise their in-room experience. This could involve offering a pillow menu, providing a selection of books or magazines based on their interests or having a curated music playlist ready in the room upon arrival.
Invest in high-quality networking infrastructure and in-room entertainment
Guests now expect lightning-fast Wi-Fi, smart TVs, and the ability to cast to them. Regularly investing in networking infrastructure and in-room entertainment will help you move with the times and ensure guests book with you again and again.
The meetings and events hosted at your hotel will also benefit from improved network infrastructure. With the right technology, you can allocate private networks for specific events to ensure good connectivity.
Themed events or activities
Organise themed events or activities within the hotel that align with the destination or local culture. This could include live music nights, wine tastings, art exhibitions, or workshops. By offering unique and engaging experiences, hotels can create a sense of excitement and entertainment for their guests.
Foster a positive work environment
The success of your hotel is dependent on the quality of your workforce. But if your workforce is unhappy it's unlikely you’ll get excellence out of them.
It’s the hotel management’s job to foster a positive and supportive work environment. This means stamping out toxic attitudes, creating a culture of open communication and trust, and investing in staff training and development.
Most importantly, hotel management must lead by example. Leadership plays a critical role in fostering a positive work environment. Managers and supervisors should demonstrate professionalism, respect, and positive attitudes. Encourage open-door policies, actively listen to employee concerns, and provide constructive feedback.
Final thoughts
Effective hotel management is essential for driving efficiency, guest satisfaction, and profitability in the hospitality industry. Remember, improving hotel management is an ongoing process that requires dedication, flexibility, and a guest-centric approach.
By incorporating these ideas into your hotel management practices, you can create a seamless and unforgettable experience for your guests, leading to improved efficiency, increased bookings, and ultimately, a thriving hotel business.
Next, we discuss eight need-to-know tips for training your front desk staff.
