Hotel, Motel Management Operations Hotel

Hotel, Motel Management Operations

Hotel or motel management is a personnel intensive operation and provides a lot of assistance to individuals residing in areas where there are attractions for people to come, or pass through, but normally the areas do not have any reason for visitors to reside for long periods. The requirements of these visitors are served by hotels.

There is a great potential for hotel and motel operations in many parts of the country. This is also one of the fastest growing industries in the country with many hotels, motels and restaurants remaining open 24 hours a day, all through the week with the purpose of meeting the demands of the visitors there. This is also one of the largest employers in the country with the figures given by National Restaurant Industry saying that this service industry now employs more than 11.3 million workers. This figure makes it one of the largest employers among industries in the country. In terms of ranking, hotel management ranks seventh among all service industries and that is when it is viewed separately from restaurant management. There are 51,000 hotels in the country with a total of 3.9 million rooms. The lodging industry provides direct employment to 1.16 million people and also provides jobs for another 7.6 million jobs through direct employment. (Hospitality and Tourism Management Fact Sheet) major in hotel, motel, and restaurant management degree can prepare an individual to a position for these jobs and they offer excellent pay and offer great opportunity for advancement. The starting salary for a person joining the industry after graduation in this field is between $25,000 and $36,000 and there are also very good chances for later increases in salary after gaining of experience. The opportunities are also available in a large number of other industries as many other industries also give them great value. The similar industries are restaurants, hotels and motels, recreational facilities, school and college food services, hotel training division services, health care facilities, resort hotels, catering and food and beverage administration. Many industries directly visit the colleges for recruitment and among them are Radisson Hotels, Marriott Hotel Division, Choice Hotels, Holiday Inn, Marriott Services, TGI Friday, and many other hospitality companies. (Hospitality and Tourism Management Fact Sheet)

Important learning methods

It is well-known that operational excellence is very important for many service industries today and the importance is growing even further due to deregulation of industry like transportation, banking communications, energy, health care, etc. complications are also coming up due to global competition and rapid developments in information technology. Yet, it is not very easy to understand service operations as the nature of the industry is in itself intangible, very highly variable, not storable or transportable and often has to be provided at many locations and with a significant amount of customer contact at each point. What this means is that service operations are in the end very different from manufacturing operations even in large groups. One of the methods of learning this is through a specific application of methodology in different areas to solve particular service problems. (Service Operations Management) different type of learning comes to individuals who try to set up a new operation and then has it evaluated as each operation has to be different in operation from another. There has to be a distinction from competing operations to give it a chance of success. Another type of study is through attempts at learning methodologies for operation of the business. This is however a very dry type of learning and may end up making a person a good theoretician without any practical knowledge. A similar type of learning is through studies of company profiles, and these often give descriptions of the industry, the key operational problems that may arise in the industry and how some industries have solved the problems when they have met them. (Service Operations Management) It is however important to remember that problems may look very similar in service industries but all solutions have to be understood and applied depending on the personnel available. Different individuals act in different ways and react in different manners when even asked to do something directly. It is this ability of the manager to tackle individuals that makes him a success or a failure.

The Front Office

This is the part of a hotel or motel that any customer has to meet first when the person wants to avail of the services of the hotel. Let us look into the management of this section. This is again a theoretical exercise and individual hotels will have differences depending on the individuals who are running different departments, etc. The operations in any hotel will generally be run by a front office manager, and he will have four different services to deal with. The first of this is revenue management, the second is reservations, the third is guest services, and the fourth is night audit. Of these depending on the size of the hotel or motel, there may be different individuals attending to them, or some parts may be attended to by the manager himself. (The Front Office)

The revenue management is ensuring the collection of room and other charges from the guests, reservations is taking care of the bookings that have been made and ensuring that they get a room of the type they have booked when they reach the hotel and night audit is in checking that all dues to the hotel have been collected and deposited. The guest services are again of three categories - desk staff, concierge and bell staff. The desk staff is those in charge of allocating the rooms to the guests when they come in or go out, collect or give them the keys to the room, and tackle their complaints regarding any matter in the hotel. The concierge is those who take the bags and baggage of the guests and take them from the reception counter to their rooms. The bell staff is those who go to attend the customers when they ask for them by ringing the bell.

The front office manager has to interact with other managers for different purposes. He reacts with the revenue manager to decide the room rates and any changes if they are to be implemented. Then he has to collect from the reservation manager the list of rooms that have been booked for a day in advance and send him information when the manager should stop taking any further bookings. The desk staff generally report to him, but he has to control them so that the customers receive a good reception. The concierge again is responsible to him, generally through the desk staff. He has to find out through them the baggage etc. carried by the customer so that a clear idea about the customer can be collected by the hotel management about individual customers. The bell staff again report to him, probably through a floor in charge and the control of this staff is mainly with a view to ensure that customers get a good treatment. The interactions with the night auditor are not regular and are only with a purpose to see that room rents have been collected and properly deposited. (The Front Office)

Like the managers in every function, it is expected that the front office manager will also try to increase the earnings of the hotel. How does he do it? The matter that he is connected with is the maximization of the average revenue per room. The increase can be achieved through one of the two factors - increasing the occupancy of rooms, or increasing the rate per room of a particular grade. The total revenue comes from the product of these two factors. For this purpose, the manager has to learn to estimate the demand for rooms and this may depend on various factors. Some of this may be learnt from previous occupancy factors and some will depend on historical happenings in the city. It is also possible for the hotel to make special offers to increase room occupancy during some seasons when the occupancy would be otherwise dull. Remember the off-season discounts that come up due to people not going to certain areas during some parts of the year. Then the other important factor is yield management through control of occupancy. This is what determines the length of a day for the purpose of occupancy by a guest. In certain cases it is well-known when the guests would leave or when they would come in and it may be possible to use the same room twice during a day for two different guests. The more number of times, the rooms can be sold twice; the higher will be the earnings of the hotel. (The Front Office) Well the subject can continue, but we have to go through other areas of the hotel also.

Housekeeping

The first question is where the housekeeping system of the hotel operates. This is in lobbies, public restrooms, near the front desk, management offices, game rooms, exercise areas, pool and spa areas, employees' break rooms and locker rooms, and selected meeting and food service areas. One of the most important decisions that need to be taken is regarding the number of cleaning employees that are required and the frequency at which the cleaning will be conducted. These are all about the public areas where the house keeping has to be active. They also have to look after the guest room areas. The area near the guest rooms consist of the elevators through which the guests will be traveling, the corridors which they will use to reach their rooms, the stairwells through which also the guests may go and finally the guest rooms themselves. (Housekeeping)

Well one can say that the other areas are semi-public while the rooms are absolutely private, and in those the cleaning has to be done in agreement with the guest or in their absence. After cleaning, it has to be realized that the housekeeping staff are the only persons from the hotel going into the rooms once it has been occupied they have to confirm to the front office about the real status of the room meaning whether it is really occupied or not, and to the engineering or maintenance department as to whether they have to take some action about maintenance. Before getting a new guest in the room, they have to properly clean the room, generally get it certified as clean by another member of the housekeeping department, and then report to the front office that the room has been cleaned so that it can be allotted to another guest. (Housekeeping)

Since it is not possible to cover all areas of any function, let us now look at another area of housekeeping that is generally a cause for concern - the employees. To avoid trouble, they should be treated with respect at all times, their supervisors should be very good in their capacities, get an approval from them that the room cleaning procedures used in the hotel are fair, continuously keep training them as equipment and material in the room keep changing, try to provide a method by which the housekeeping staff can move to better positions. At the same time, the housekeeping department policies should be applied consistently and fairly, the safety of the room attendant has to be ensured by the hotel and the policies should be changed for that purpose, the payment to the housekeeping staff should be fair and in line with prevailing wages in that area, and finally the wages that are paid to them should be viewed by them as being fair.

At all stages, it should be remembered that housekeeping employees are a large group and if they are dissatisfied there could be major problems in running the hotel. The nature of the job is also physical and these employees are the ones generally to meet with accidents during performance of their jobs. To avoid accidents, housekeeping employees should only handle those machinery items and supplies that they have been trained to handle. There are different dangerous processes like chemical handling, different cleaning procedures, and correct techniques for lifting items, correctly entering guestrooms, and being able to handle some situations within guestrooms. There may be many dangerous items in guest rooms like firearms, animals not in cages, different individuals who are seen as threatening, ill or unconscious guests, drugs and other material concerned with drugs, blood and probable infections that may come from blood. They are responsible for service to guests, security of the guestrooms and also have to go through lost and found procedures for the entire hotel. (Housekeeping)

Food Services

There are many issues that have to be resolved in the food services that have to be resolved and the first of these are the planning issues. These require the determination of menu, and that has to be decided by what the guests want or prefer or need. At the same time, the menu has to take care of different operational difficulties in preparation of the item. Adequate labor and equipment have to be collected and that includes labor for production, services and cleaning up. For the purchase there should be a system for purchase of the items. At all times, the emphasis should be on giving consumers what they need and along with that is the marketing concerns and getting repeat business for the products so that the food services can be profitable in themselves. (Food and Beverage)

The financial position of the food services business has to be evaluated and for this purpose, it is important to have operating budgets for them and also prepare income statements, balance sheets and cash flow statements to ensure that the business is making money on its own. There is necessity for establishing standard operating procedures and that means establishing standard procedures for purchasing, receiving, storing, and pre-preparation, preparation, serving and service. These should be studied carefully so that minimum costs can be achieved while maintaining the desired standards.

The entire process is an eight stage process with one step following another. It starts with purchase, then comes receiving and recording that it has been received, then it has to be stored, then issued from the stores to the kitchen or the outside supplier, then comes the stage of pre-preparation generally done by an outside supplier, and after pre-preparation the material goes to the kitchen for preparation. Then are the final stages on the way to the consumer - the material going for serving and then landing up with the buyer. Another very important aspect is the meeting of sudden additional demands on the food services. These provide high profits to the hotel and cannot be left. So it is important that staff have to be trained in some standardized procedures for meeting these demands, and the managers should provide clear cut instructions to the employees for meeting these demands. At the same time, instructions are not enough and the materials have to be made available. For this purpose, it may be worthwhile to look at the possibility of delegating some authority to other staff when the manager is not in the hotel. (Food and Beverage)

Sales and Marketing

Another very important function in the hotels is of sales and marketing. Here a similar role is played by the front office which sells off the extra rooms or transient rooms that are available, sales and marketing tries to sell rooms when the hotel is a part of a group. The general effort of the groups is to sell all rooms of the group. This department prepares the sales strategy and marketing strategy for the hotel. To ensure that the other party which is buying the rooms will have to be given contracts in a timely manner and that is also the responsibility of this department. The maintenance of records of sales, forecasts and histories also become the responsibilities of the department. They also have to coordinate and fill up the requests of special clients, host these special clients during their stay and take them out on special tours if that had been the agreement earlier. All hotels always depend on various events to help them meet their sales targets. The different events are catered events, guest rooms for groups, hosting of conventions, hosting of weddings and special events, hosting of conferences and hosting of meetings. There are hotels which specialize in some of these types of events and that helps them to reach their final sales target. (Sales and marketing)

The types of guests who come into hotels are also of different types. Some are business travelers and they demand the best of service and pay the highest rates. These guests do not stay for a very long time. On the other hand there are many who come to stay in the hotels for long periods. These guests stay in the hotel for long periods; their occupancy is guaranteed; their rooms are easy to clean; they are generally uncomplicated guests - but they always like to take up the rooms at the lowest rates. Then there are the tourists or leisure travelers who come and stay in hotels. They come for various reasons like vacations, weddings, visiting friends of other members of families and many non-work related reasons. The difficulties with this group are that they are totally dependent on the advice given by their travel agents. There are also groups which come into a town and stay in a hotel there. They may belong to social, military, educational, religious or fraternal organizations. Depending on their own specialties, a hotel may decide to target any of these groups also. (Sales and marketing)