Hospitality and Technology

The slowing economy is affecting the hospitality industry in a number of negative ways but there are still exciting and profound new opportunities in an industry that is likely the second oldest industry on earth and the internet is a perfect medium for selling travel as it brings a vast network of suppliers and a widely dispersed customer pool into a centralized market place. To tell the truth, more travel is being sold over the internet than any other product and in the US its more than any other county. Basically, I can say, globally in the travel marketplace where millions of buyers looking for good travel services and beside the sellers like hotels, airlines, or other companies providing the buyers whatever they are looking for through the Internet technology. Intetrnet is a medium that is up to date, fast and easy to use. How this technology has been totally changing our culture in a way we do business and the behavior of the consumer and their shopping habits. imagine that! although internet technology has given hotel owners so many ways to sell their room, it has become nearly impossible for a smaller hotel.operator to understand, let alone intelligently manage the available channels for room sales. In fact I can say if you have a little but average hotel, many of these channels have an allotment of your rooms. At the same time, new computer-based yield management tools must be used to ensure the optimum balance between direct and discount reservations in order to derive maximum yield from your product.You got an advantage by integrating all these tools into a well-planned and executed program.

participation levels and economies of scale

I have been busy in several activities,working full time and keeping myself busy with my hobby for web design.. by the way,during this economical bad time, Let's see what Mr. Barack Obama will do for US. The hotel managers tend to focus on participation levels and economies of scale. This may result in a hotel being placed under a particular marketing 'umbrella,' and paying its share of the costs for a program that is not suitable.Unfortunately, hotel demand is currently weakening in most markets, room rates are under pressure and hotel profits are declining.all the hotel owners are just in tense. They don’t know what to do in such a bad economy. If they want to sell the hotel they won’t get the money their hotel deserve. As well as Reduced leverage and higher cost of debt will reduce the prospect of new brand competition for a time, but will also lessen the value of an existing hotel asset. Some hotel industry acquired a pretty bad reputation when it started because some of the practices of developers and salespeople were pretty sleazy.The disparity between the goals of the brand manager and the hotel owner is likely to widen and stress levels are apt to increase. The hotel owner needs to understand those differences, and take aggressive action to restore or maintain balance and assure that the management company fully understands and remains focused on the owner's goals. In that way, he will retain the maximum amount of cash flow and investment return possible and preserve more of the asset value. Other hotels of other brands that are in the same market create opportunities to use local suppliers to get equal or better quality at lower prices. I have personal experienced this in the Cincinnnati, OHIO market.

Hotel deptt Organization

I will discuss how managers can organize important and repetitive functions in hotels to improve efficiency and reduce expenses,depending on situation.We will separate our discussion in different parts for different category of hotel administration.

Its managers job to give structure to hotel operations that will establish an authority and span of control for staff & business as a whole. We will talk here about independent owner/operator/manager .

There are many hotels(may be called as motels) where the hotel owner is the operator/manager and worker himself who will clean and maintain the property either by himself or with his/her spouse or associates/partners.

1.responsible for checking-in guests
2.responsible for checking-out guests
3.responsible for assisting during guest stay
4.responsible for reservations on phone or through GDS(global distribution system) with help from expedia,hotels.com, priceline etc
5.responsible for marketing/sales efforts
6.responsible for inventory purchase,storage & control
7.responsible for security and watching for safety of guests
8.responsible for resolving guest customer complaints
9.responsible for money spent vs money earned(budgeting)
10.responsible for legal matters personally(unless formed LLC or incorporated)

Tips for Managers in touch with owners

1. You have to learn to say “yes” and “No” at the right time and right place or you will be responsible for a whole lot than just that.
2. You have to focus not only on business operations but also keeping the owners happy by keeping good relations and by showing them the money. Some owners are happy if you just do either of these two things but some wants both from you and will keep pushing you to your extreme limits until they have both or you will be replaced sooner or later
3. For you to do your job right, you got to tell them to let their family stay away from property and daily operations part because if they visit too many times and try to run the show, it will not only distract you and your staff from doing your normal duties(and focus on babysitting them) but also will give your customers an impression of ma-and-pa operations (that is nowadays considered to be not-so-quality & less customer service oriented in hotel business)
4. Keep them aware of any employees they favor is not performing well and you would like to go to next step of replacing them even if they are favored or family members

I have to go now but please keep checking as I will have more to come on this topic.
thanks
http://www.howtomakemoneyinhotels.com

Hotel manager and Owner Realation

sorry for not being able to write for few days.its been crazily busy.I have decided to write on one of hot topics for hotel operatos and contribute my thoughts to all.

Hotel Managers can be different types, those who mainly deal with bigger issues affecting the business and are constantly in communication with hotel owners(General Managers or Area managers) and those who mainly with help of staff members focus on their assigned areas of responsibility like front desk, housekeeping, maintenance, revenue, sales & marketing, restaurant operations, banquet, accounting etc (assistant managers, shift managers or supervisors)
There are those managers who play both these parts at the same time (and gets ‘burned by the heat’ a lot too)

Tips for Managers in touch with owners

TO BE CONTINUED.........

location of your hotel.

No matter how beautiful your hotel is,how better your customer service is,but if your hotel is NOT at the right location,then your chances are less than optimistic to get sold out on most occassions.
The main purpose hotels came into existence is to provide"temporary overnight stay" to visitors,atleast most of the time.Hence make sure your hotel is located nearby visitor's "attraction" spot for example ..visitors and convention beauro,sports complex/field,theaters/perfor mance stages,planetorium,zoos,shopp ing destination,tourist destination,beach-fronts, residencial areas,hill -stations,mountains,state borders,highway junctions or just the best place that has good visibility and purpose of passer-bys.
Once you have the location,then you can utilize a lot of strategies to focus on sales and marketing efforts which we will discuss in more detail next time.