Savvy Hotelier

When you think about hotel management you are likely thinking about the General Manager, Hotel Manager, Director of Sales, and other leaders within a hotel that run it daily. You are right, they are running the hotel, but who do they work for? Today, I will tell you about hotel management companies. I will answer two main questions: What is a hotel management company? What do the hotel management companies do? Hotel management companies The concept of hotel management started in the 1950s when big-name brands like Hilton and InterContinental have started to expand internationally. Hilton and InterContinental would buy a building, make a hotel out of it and hire a local company to run the daily operations. The brands would play the role of the hotel owner that collects the profits. This created hotel management companies that today specialise in running branded hotels under brands across all levels. Almost every branded hotel today has this or similar management structure. The practice ...

Hotel guests should never be called customers. Let's look at the definitions of our key words: A guest is ”a recipient of hospitality, specifically someone staying by invitation at the house of another”. A customer is someone that “buys a product or service”. That doesn’t mean hotel guests aren’t customers, they are customers that are buying your product and services, but they are more than that. If you've invited someone to your home, would you do what you can to make them comfortable, i.e. extend your hospitality to them? I hope so. Would you do that to someone who just wants to buy something from you? Unlikely. The Hotel Guest Experience A hotel guest trusts you with their safety during their stay. They rely on the hotel for support during their stay. It may be trivial things like a forgotten toothbrush or important life events like an anniversary. As a hotelier, you have the power and responsibility to help your guest in whatever way you can. You, as a front deal clerk or b...

 The guest experience within a hotel should not be random, it should be tailored and every touchpoint carefully thought through and designed to create the best, most memorable experiences for guests. As a hotelier and Hospitality Management Student, it is crucial for you to understand this journey and the glue that holds it all together. What is a Guest Experience Journey A Guest Experience Journey is a collection of touchpoints. That is within the physical walls of the hotel and not. A touchpoint is an interaction between the guest and the hotel, virtually via the phone, email, or physically in the hotel at the reception or the bar. Every guest will go through an individual journey with the hotel and have a different experience from another guest. If the Guest Journey is designed appropriately, every guest is supposed to have a different, individually catered experience . A leisure traveller is not like a single business traveller nor like a group conference delegate. The 5 Stages...

  Shortly after completing my Hospitality Management degree I scored an internship at the corporate office of one of the world’s biggest hotel brands. I was so excited! A job after graduation, an office job, and in a new exciting city. As I began my internship, I began learning about hospitality industry. My degree studies It would be unfair to say that I didn’t learn anything about the hospitality industry during my 3-year Bachelor in Hospitality Management degree. My degree taught me how to put together a basic P&L for a restaurant, how revenue management at a hotel works in theory, and work experience taught me how to work with different people. I gained crucial skills and knowledge, that is true. But I didn’t know what I didn’t know. What I learned when I started working Within the first few weeks of starting my internship, I felt like I learned more about the way the whole industry works and how different stakeholders work together than I did in my 3-years at university. ...