The hotel industry can be fast-paced, demanding, and downright exhausting at times. But if you play your cards right, it can also be very rewarding, fulfilling, and profitable.
Navigating the service industry requires a keen knowledge of people’s needs, anxieties, aspirations, and tendencies.
However, it also requires a good team of connected employees in the front office and behind the scenes, and a strong leader to guide them. As a hotelier, the latter is your responsibility.
All in all, it takes a lot to become a great hotelier.
But with the right strategy, you can speed up the process and create an environment that you, your customers, and your employees can confidently call home, all while making a profit.
10 Best Management Tips to Become a Great Hotelier
Here are some tips on how to become a good hotelier:
1. Develop a Great Customer Support System
Hospitality is an industry based on customer service. Everything from accommodation to providing quality meals to making sure they’re having a positive experience becomes your responsibility when they step into the lobby.
Developing a strong customer support system for complaints, queries, concerns, or straight-up grievances is key to being a great hotelier.
The occasional gripe is natural in any service industry, and being 100% available and ready to help in any way you can is essential for curating a good experience for your customers.
2. Hone in your Observational Skills
Having strong observational skills is essential for any great hotelier. Noticing small details is what will elevate the environment and provide guests with a truly memorable experience.
Even though a lot of those tiny, special details tend to escape the average eye, they still all contribute to an overall sense of completion and refinement in any hotel setting.
3. Know your Target Market
The easiest and most effective way to ensure that guests enjoy their time at your hotel is to anticipate what kind of people they might be.
The more you know about your target market, the easier it is to serve them in a way that feels natural, comfortable, and satisfactory.
Details like age group, nationality, income bracket, gender, culture, and religion all play pivotal roles in the expectations guests set for their hotel accommodations.
Perform thorough and ongoing research on your target market to learn more about how you can make them happy.
4. Practice an “Open Door” Approach
The “open door” approach is mostly meant to be interpreted figuratively. Essentially, it’s about maintaining a sense of openness and approachability to new ideas, new technologies, new concepts, and new opinions.
This open attitude can make both your staff and guests feel more welcome in the space, while simultaneously making your hotel more adaptable to a changing world.
5. Hire Employees with Strong People Skills
Even if you have strong people skills yourself, it’s not enough to carry the whole business. You need people on your team that you can rely on to treat your guests with the highest level of respect, intuition, and professionalism.
While hiring people with a lot of practical experience and hotel industry skills is still important, selecting people for their natural people skills should also be a primary motivation during the recruitment process.
People who are good listeners, good conversationalists, able to stay calm in a crisis, and possess natural charisma are always going to be an asset to a hotel staff body.
6. Embrace Innovation and New Technologies
Technology is evolving at a rapid pace, and evolving alongside it is the best way to survive.
Instead of allowing your hotel to become outdated, embrace innovative new technologies to keep up with industry standards and give guests a contemporary, convenient experience. Just some of what you can offer is free in-room Wi-Fi, access to streaming services, and mobile check-in facilities.
7. Engage with Guests
There’s a fine line between being a friendly, available presence during your guests’ stays and getting in their way. As a hotelier, it is your job to find the balance.
Engaging politely with your guests helps them feel prioritized and seen, which can contribute to a positive hotel experience. Asking them how their stay is, where they’re from, or offering compliments are all considered acceptable ways to engage with guests.
However, be wary of going overboard. The last thing a guest wants is to have staff breathe down their neck every five minutes.
Related: 7 Tips to Improve Guest Satisfaction in Hotel Industry
8. Nurture your Employees
Happy employees are more productive and tend to apply better energy to their work.
By nurturing your hotel staff, you can create a more cohesive work culture that has a knock-on effect on anyone who walks through the doors.
You can support employees by:
Host regular team meetings: Meeting as a team builds trust and loyalty.
Provide them with time-tracking software: Using time-tracking tools allows employees to take control of their schedules and provide shift and timekeeping transparency.
Ask for feedback: Giving and receiving feedback around current activities, tasks, and hotel-specific events puts everyone on the same page and promotes efficiency for everyone.
Building up a strong, committed network of employees requires empathy, trust, and a genuine desire to help people grow.
In such a demanding industry, establishments that focus on this human-centered way of leading tend to be happier and more successful.
9. Listen Carefully to Reviews
Reviews will tell you everything you need to know about how your business is functioning and what needs to change in order to make it better.
Both good and bad reviews contain key information about what people like, what they don’t like, and what aspects of your hotel need your attention the most.
Listen to your reviews, take them seriously, and apply guests’ feedback as effectively as you can.
10. Be a Positive Part of Every Solution
As a hotelier, you’ll face all kinds of issues all the time. Problems with guests, issues with staff, building maintenance dramas, and hiccups with amenities will all come across your desk.
It’s essential that you maintain a positive jack-of-all-trades attitude and be part of the solution to whatever problem arises.
This not only ensures that everyone pulls together to rectify the issue, but it also makes you more approachable when something does go awry.
In Conclusion
Being a hotelier is a multifaceted job title that requires a wide range of different skills.
But overall, one of the most important aspects of being a great hotelier is simply being a people person. If you have a passion for connecting, communicating, and creating great experiences for the people around you, chances are you’re already an excellent hotelier.
However, brushing up on your skills and honing in on the other important job requirements is always a good idea.
From time management to employee nurturing and everything in between, this list of ten tips is here to help guide you on your path to becoming the gold standard of hoteliers.
Read next:
- 9 Best Hotel Management Online Certification Courses
- 7 Best High-Paying Jobs in the Hotel Industry
- Is starting a Hotel Business Worth it in terms of ROI?
- 14 Best Practices to Improve Hotel Maintenance Management
Some Frequently Asked Questions:
What is the most important quality to have as a hospitality professional?
Every hotelier needs to be a proactive, positive person who can function well under pressure and assist in every aspect of the business.
What is the personality of a hospitality person?
Hospitality professionals need to be outgoing, enthusiastic, and engaging.
How do I become a successful hotelier?
Learn basic skills, study the relevant market you wish to work in, and work hard to gain experience.
How can I grow fast in the hospitality industry?
Growth in this industry requires hard work and a proactive approach. You need to be willing to do the dirty jobs, ask questions, and learn from staff in more senior roles.
