Tips and Secrets On How Luxury Hotels Manage Their Staff
No matter how many stars a hotel might be, in the end, it’ll only be as good as its employees are. If employees aren’t reaching customers' expectations and are demotivated to work, we might have more issues than you may think!
It’s no surprise that the hotel industry has the highest turnover rate, about 74% annually. With such a high turnover rate, the last thing you want is your management team not to stay up to their full potential in customer service.
After all, a healthy environment makes employees engaged and motivated to work every day and in the long term. Well, don’t go anywhere because, in this article, we will show you the top secrets and tips you can use for managing your staff at a luxury hotel.
Tips for managing your staff at a luxury hotel
Put communication as a priority
Miscommunication is a huge mistake you want to avoid at all costs. You want to ensure everyone is on the same page and minimize the margin for errors. You are the hotel manager, so your job is to be a problem solver and a mentor for your staff. The second they see you, they shouldn’t think twice about coming to you and asking about advice or any other issues they may have.
In fact, poor communication has caused more than 100,000 employees worldwide to leave their jobs and companies to lose millions of dollars. If your team doesn’t know what’s going on, we might have many other problems. Especially when the team is unhappy, they might start not to perform well, which means that customers will begin to complain about their poor performance.
To eliminate this issue, you can use the following methods to communicate effectively:
- Meetings: Help you gather better feedback from your team.
- Live one-on-one: Helps establish a better personal connection and not make employees feel inferior.
- Employees apps: Helps ensure everyone is cooperating and engaged.
- Online meetings: Highly effective when you are apart from the team and managing remotely.
Use hotel scheduling software
To keep communication at its top level and ensure everyone is on the same page at the workplace. In addition, it makes communication and scheduling quick and easy for your hotel management, regardless of the size of your hotel.
Hotel scheduling software is up to eight times faster than Excel and is always synced. You can create, share, and edit your schedules easily. Timesheets are automatically filled in, and you can personalize how your employee's clock will be without paying for any expensive hardware.
They are present most of the times
If you want to manage your staff correctly, you shouldn’t be working remotely more than present. A team needs a good manager, and avoiding your duties only to get some paperwork done is not the brightest idea!
Hotel managers need to know almost everything about their hotels and, let’s not forget, know how their teams interact with each other and where there may be issues between them.
They need to have the ability to spot problems even before they happen and know if employees are fulfilling their duties or not. So, to do all of this, you as a hotel manager need to be in the office more often than not, so don’t forget to be present!
Striving to improve
Hotel managers have a vision, always seeking to do a better job and undertake a different approach. They are motivated to make a change, are curious about what is happening in the hotel industry , and continuously monitor the latest news in the hotel industry.
Moreover, if you don’t have a skilled hotel manager, you can always consider finding a hospitality recruitment agency to help you find the right hotel manager. Some of the top hospitality recruitment agencies you can think of using are:
- Alcor
- Talent Place
- Profesio
- Alliance
- Techunting LLC
Learn to delegate
Delegation is a key skill, and as a hotel manager, you must look over all departments and ensure that employees are continuously reporting to the department head and not the hotel manager. Try to schedule daily meetings with each department head and ensure that everyone knows what will happen during the day and their duties.
Moreover, when department heads know what is happening, they can better manage the team—giving your department heads enough space. After all, it won’t be easy to manage everything on your own, especially if you are running a large luxury hotel!
Motivate your team
Motivating your team should be a key responsibility for you as a hotel manager, and it’s vital if you want your business to be successful. It’s no surprise that a well-motivated person will always perform better than one who isn’t. In fact, a motivated team will reduce absenteeism by 41%!
Excellent leadership skills start with the ability to inspire and engage people in the workplace. Next, shift your focus to ways you can make your staff bring in new ideas and ensure they’re excited about them in the upcoming future.
Retain your top talents by giving them opportunities to use their creativity and pave the way for bonuses, rewards, and new promotions for your hotel!
Hire the right people
Hiring the wrong people won’t only cause you to be highly stressed out but make your job even harder than it is. In fact, bad hires may accumulate in the long-term and may exceed more than $200,000 in expenses. So, if you’re always going to have to clean up after your team’s mess, you can say goodbye to doing an excellent job in the hotel industry.
You’ll never be successful in running a hotel if you always have to fix someone else’s mistake and never fall into the trap of rushing the hiring process. That’s why you need to focus on hiring honest and skilled employees. If you have employees who aren’t telling the truth, are rude, don’t do the job right, or are performing poorly, it’s best to let them go.
Moreover, never fall into the trap of rushing the hiring process, so ensure you ask the right questions. Try assessing candidates by asking behavioral questions and seeing how candidates will react.
Pay attention to budgets
Managing budgets might not sound like an exciting part when managing a luxury hotel. However, you can’t avoid it, and hotel managers hold the overall responsibility for managing budgets, and even if hotel managers don’t manage them, they still need to understand the figures.
No matter how good your team may be, managing budgets may be time-consuming from time to time and need an effective eye. However, if you want to make things easier, try using budget software to save time and ensure no human errors are made during the managing process.
Reward top employees
When you see any of your employees doing something more than they should, you should give them appreciation. You can use Employee of the Month awards or send appreciative messages via email, social media, and even face-to-face.
This creates a happier environment and allows your employees to be more productive since they know their managers appreciate them. According to a study, employees will be 23% more productive when appreciated!
If your employees are happy, they’ll be performing better as well, so this is all you have to be concerned about. Additionally, it’ll build trust and appreciation in the long term between employees and managers.
Moreover, if a satisfied customer tells you about how employees helped them, they might share this with other employees to encourage employee engagement, loyalty, and recognition. You shouldn’t be concerned about anything more than establishing a positive work environment and having your employees feel good about working at the hotel. Once they feel that way, performance levels will also go up.
Wrapping it up
That’s all for this article. These are our secrets and tips on how hotel managers manage their staff. Whenever you manage a team, you should never forget how important your team should be to you. If you fail to appreciate them, you’re only making them perform poorly and looking for opportunities elsewhere.
Moreover, what we shouldn’t forget is how important employee performance is within the hotel. You want to appreciate your employees to the maximum and encourage them to perform better so that your luxury hotel isn’t only luxurious with looks and its services.
Last but not least, don’t forget to reward your employees for every extra thing they do. If you do these small things, you’ll find yourself and your team performing at the maximum level. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to say a couple of good words and show appreciation after all!