Even with the recent announcements of impending COVID vaccines there is still much uncertainty for the health of the 2021 travel industry. Widespread immunizations will be a giant step towards easing some of the anxiety for travel, yet it is still too early to predict when business travel, large meetings and conferences and F&B will return to pre-COVID 2019 levels, if ever. Many experts are pinning their hopes on a full recovery by 2023-2024.
Operators with the best survival instincts have been forced to make horrendous, split-second decisions regarding labor, services, new SOPs and operating costs just to make it past the initial wave of the impact from the pandemic. Those operators and management companies sophisticated enough to have deployed a majority of industry best practices prior to the pandemic and who were managing assets with finely-tuned, time-tested processes have been at an advantage. Some less sophisticated or smaller owner-operators found themselves quickly behind the eight ball. Even some of the larger management companies, who may be doing some good things in the way of Employee Engagement, may not fully understand all of the nuances involved and how to maximize it. As the recovery begins its slow progression upwards, ALL operators should take a step back and assess their current processes and procedures to ensure they are not missing out on any revenue generating, efficiency-gaining or cost controlling opportunities.
However, as it’s often said, “Sometimes, you don’t know what you don’t know!” If this is the case for you, or you’re just curious about whether or not you are utilizing the best systems available to improve your chances for success, perhaps a FREE, online assessment would be beneficial to you?
#HotelProfitabilityAdvisors has just such assessments available on our website, each with 15 “yes/no questions”. For example, on our Operations/Profitability Assessment, in question #1 regarding Employee Engagement, we explain that qualitative and quantitative research has shown that engaged associates (which is measurable yet quite different than satisfied associates) will achieve 38% higher results in productivity, 27% higher results in profitability and are 50% more likely not to voluntarily leave your organization than employees who are not engaged. The underlying questions are, “Are you currently measuring Employee Engagement? Do you have a system in place to continually address and improve your employees’ engagement levels? Do you have the systems in place to hire the right people and then manage them in a way that increases their engagement?” If not, you are missing out on huge opportunities that cost little money to harvest. Hotel Profitability Advisors can customize a training session for you or your team on Employee Engagement/Onboarding/Management Development that yields a great ROI.
The strategic execution of these very Employee Engagement philosophies, over the seven year period of my leadership role at WCG Hotels, enabled us to achieve a 40% increase in Total Revenues and a 63% increase in NOI. And frankly, while my background is in hospitality, the impact of employee engagement is not hospitality specific. Much of the prior cited research results were actually from studies conducted in a retail setting. This goes to show that Engagement can be beneficial in any business, any industry, at any time.
This is just one example, of one question, on one assessment. If you are interested in seeing the other questions and assessments they can be found here.