The Reality of Today’s Hotel Management

In my travels over the past decade I have heard one universal message from hotel General Managers. With all the reporting requirements mandated by owners and corporate management, there is no longer time to interact with front line associates, let alone clients. Somehow delivery of the guest experience has been put on the back burner as a hotel management priority.

Back in the old days, a hotel leadership team was just that. Members could name every associate in the Housekeeping department, knew every special event taking place on property in the next seven days, and literally established the personality of the hotel. You could always find a member of the management team in the lobby, shaking hands and kissing babies in a Clintonesque display of goodwill. It was a comforting reminder to guests that everything was under control.

Today, with stakeholder demands consuming a greater share of time and energy, there are members on hotel leadership teams that wouldn’t know where to find the Housekeeping department, let alone name someone in it. Increased pressure to improve share increased reporting requirements, which decreased opportunities to play “lobby lizard.” Every email demanding an explanation of the most recent forecast increases time spent justifying results and decreases time spent achieving them.

I say it’s time to get honest with ourselves and restructure the hotel management team to accurately describe the positions today.

Effective immediately, I propose the General Manager be re-titled as Senior Director of Stakeholder Appeasement. The Director of Operations is now the Director of Guest Appeasement. All other Director titles have evolved as well. Human Resources is now Legal Mitigation, Sales & Marketing is now Third Party Internet Management, Revenue Management is now Report Generation, and Finance is Financial Systems Maintenance. The Directors of Rooms and Food & Beverage get to keep their existing titles with the words “Cost Control” added to the end.

Now there’s a wake up call. Everyone with new titles that reflect their current job responsibilities, but don’t necessarily match their talents. But all hope is not lost.

I can’t imagine sustaining this trend; the quality of the guest experience can’t continue to lose out as other demands dominate the hotel leadership’s time. Nor is it likely that reporting requirements and emphasis on EBITDA is going to ebb into a supporting role. The solution moving to the forefront appears to be outsourcing non-operational functions.

The Human Resources function has been outsourced by hotel companies for years. Many independent properties have gone the route of outsourcing the marketing function, and now revenue management is getting into the act. Not only can it be more economical to retain Marketing and Revenue Management from a third party supplier, but doing so relieves the property of a time-consuming administrative burden. It seems feasible Finance may not be far behind. Is it really necessary for each property to have Finance onsite? With larger hotel companies moving even their sales teams to off-site clusters, it’s possible hotels will gradually evolve to have only the operations team onsite. This would ensure the hotel focus stays where it belongs.

Service delivery.

There’s a future we can all look forward to.