“You’re always on stage when you’re a GM—people are always looking at you,” Ingebretsen said during an interview at his property earlier this month. “You have to put your game face on when you walk the property.”
As he’s walking the $140-million, 300-room convention hotel in the heart of the San Isidro district, Ingebretsen takes every chance he gets to interact with his associates, making sure to remind them how important the guests are.
“Who pays our salaries? Our salaries are paid by our guests,” he said. “I always keep that in mind. We have six hotels in our (competitive) set that are waiting for us to make a mistake to take our customers away. So we try to anticipate that and anticipate the guests’ wants and needs.”
As important as guest satisfaction is to hoteliers, Ingebretsen said during his career he has learned it’s just as important—if not more—to focus attention on making the associates happy. He said he often debates which is more important for a GM—satisfying the guest or keeping employees happy—and he would always argue for the latter.
“You’re only as good as your team,” he said. “Take care of your people because it’s all about your people. Your willingness to teach is so important.
“The major difference between a manager and a leader is leaders are willing to teach and managers aren’t,” he continued. “I want to prepare someone for my job—I’m not going to be here forever, so I don’t mind sharing my school of hard knocks.”
Ingebretsen is a U.S. expat; he grew through the ranks of Holiday Inn and has been working in hotels in Latin America for more than 25 years. He’s a self-proclaimed “tropicalized gringo” because he “thinks like an American and acts like a Latin.” He said there are advantages to managing hotels in Latin America because the cultures already are centered on hospitality.
“They are more serviceable, hospitable-type people,” he said. “They all have an eagerness to learn from a leader like me who is willing to share. I’m not perfect; I make my mistakes, too, and they hold me accountable.”
He has learned to manage behind the philosophy that a good leader needs to empower his people. This wasn’t always the case, he said.
“You don’t have to be in control today,” Ingebretsen said. “I’m learning that more and more now. As this new generation comes in—these junior managers at 30 to 40 years old—they don’t want to be micromanaged. They want to be mentored and trained. Generations have changed.”
As an example, Ingebretsen said managers can no longer raise their voice when speaking with employees—a practice that was common 20 years ago.
“Nowadays, you yell at someone and they’ll walk out on you,” he said.
Foundation
The Westin in Lima, owned and managed by Grupo Libertador, opened in May 2011 and is owned by the affluent Peruvian Brescia family, which owns eight hotels in the region.
Ingebretsen brought a well-rounded background, including two years in quality assurance with the Holiday Inn brand. Spending time in QA was “a great learning experience,” he said, because he was able to see best practices from all different types of managers.
“I kept notes on every property that I inspected and took a lot of best practices with me,” he said. “The GM needs to be visible; he needs to know what’s going on in his hotel. He needs to know who his key accounts are and who his customers are.”
Ingebretsen joined Grupo Libertador a year before the Westin opened and was able to have a hand in putting together his team. “Since the first brick was laid” the hotel began accepting résumés, Ingebretsen said. Grupo Libertador accepted 9,000 applications and interviewed more than 5,000 people to fill 400 positions.
“We were able to choose very well,” he said. “We set our standard high. We went for the paramount and tried to bring the best people in; not necessarily with empty promises, but wanted to deliver a solid, world-class product.”
“The owners have given us a very important investment to manage,” he continued. “All 400 of us are honored that we’re able to say we’re part of the Westin Lima Hotel & Convention Center.”
Management style
Ingebretsen’s No. 1 goal is to ensure his employees are happy. Because they, in turn, will make the customers happy, who in turn will make the owners happy.
“I manage the hotel with three bibles,” he said. “One, customer service scores and TripAdvisor scores and reputation scores; two, (gross operating profit) for my owners; and three, my employee climate survey and my key indicators of (human resources)—absent rate and employee retention. So I keep a close eye on those three indicators, and that’s how I manage my hotels.”
Regarding the Westin’s online reputation scores, Ingebretsen said he pays close attention to what’s being said about the property online. He personally responds to each comment, whether it’s positive or negative, “because I want the customer to know I do care about what they say and how they feel.”
He said reputation management has always been a big part of the industry.
“We have to remember we’ve always had (reputation management),” he said. “I had reputation management that came through letters written to the office or comment cards. Today, of course, with social media it’s a lot easier. But you’re definitely more at risk for somebody to be very explosive. If your customer is very emotionally distressed, they can go off on you.”
To combat that, Ingebretsen empowers his employees by giving them authority to make decisions.
“Service recovery,” he said, “is of utmost importance.”