MANCHESTER, England — Staffing. Labor. Recruitment. Retention.
All aspects of hotel industry staffing are big news right now, as employees opt for new careers and lives and COVID-19 continues to make working on the front line of hotels unappealing.
Labor is at the heart of revitalizing hotels to meet new guest demand, and finding new revenue opportunities requires communication and support from the very top of any company or property.
At a panel focused on hotel operations at the Annual Hotel Conference in Manchester, Liutauras Vaitkevicius, managing director, of Zetter Hotel Group, said Zetter’s new owner Orca Holdings has given his firm the perfect springboard to analyze operations.
“We did not want staff multitasking. We wanted departmental excellence and to empower them,” he said.
Michael Coletta, managing director of Langdale Leisure, said his two Lake District hotels also have live-in accommodations for staff.
“There are 180 staff, and our priority was making sure our staff were good," Coletta said. "Then I wanted to understand the purpose of the business, and we were not so concerned about profit. The business did take time to address some capital needs that we might not have reached if it had not been for the lockdowns.
“We will be spending more money on [staff accommodation]. We were closed in every lockdown, and the staff were trapped there. Yes, they were able to work around the lakes, but the third lockdown was in winter."
Lynn Hood, chief operating officer of Focus Hotels Management, said it's also critical to assure general managers that the show will go on.
“It is important that [general managers] felt part of something. They came to work in very difficult circumstances, so we learned more about people’s mental health, that of general managers right through their staff,” she said.
Vaitkevicius said good leaders keep calm under pressure, and that trickles down to the employees working under them.
“Critical is the attitude and professionalism of line managers and how that moves down through the staff. The only way out of the worst crisis anyone has ever known is through the human element,” Vaitkevicius said.
Paul Bayliss, general manager of Hotel Brooklyn, said his major challenge was that his Manchester hotel opened weeks before the pandemic began, then closed and later reopened in August. That made securing a new staff that had the necessary talent more difficult during a period with labor in shorter supply.
Vaitkevicius said the staffing situation is also dire in Europe. If another lockdown occurs, he and the other panelists agreed they were now far better prepared to meet any challenges.
“We know more now, and there are fewer staff, too,” Hood said.
Bayliss said while employees are busier and perhaps more stressed, they are being looked after like never before.
“There is zero tolerance, and there were a few guests we did ask to leave,” he said, citing rudeness and impatience, as well as for lapses in social distancing.
“There has been a giant-size leap in terms of looking after the team,” he added.
Managers have been much more proactive in stepping in during intense encounters, Coletta said.
“Front-line staff do not always have the life experience to deal with problems, so it was important for management to be very focused on this,” Coletta said.
Taking Time
In some ways, the pandemic came at a good time for Hotel Brooklyn, Bayliss said, because it gave him and his staff more time to perfect procedures, communications and distribution.
“When we reopened, we saw we were more popular than we thought we’d be. We had managed to keep the interest going between the hotel and guests,” he said.
He added that when Hotel Brooklyn reopened, 800 people applied for 45 positions. Among the original staff, none had employment rights, having been there less than two years.
Bayliss said the requirement to motivate and reassure staff is critical and requires utter honesty.
Hood's management team at Focus also had time to reanalyze the business, to look analytically at how processes produced revenue and how tracking profitability through the team allows profitability from the bottom to the top.
Revenue management has moved from an intelligent look at sales to an in-depth analysis of how channels can maximize revenue, and she said the industry’s job is to further strengthen such skills and intuition.
Positives
There are always positives, even in the direst of circumstances, panelists said.
Hood pointed to an increase of simplification, especially with hotel food and beverage, which she added tended to be an expensive side of the business.
Coletta said his business has fully transitioned away from cash payments.
“We always had wanted to do that, and that provides huge benefits for staff,” he said.
Vaitkevicius said one initiative is to offer guests daily cleaning of their rooms or a 15 [pound sterling ($20)] voucher for a cocktail,” adding that so far few people have elected the cocktail option.