How to Eliminate the Top Operational Issues Faced by Hospitality Companies

As a leader at a hospitality company, you know that optimal performance doesn’t happen casually, and operational efficiencies don’t occur by accident.

Managing teams, communicating with stakeholders, handling everyday operational problems, and, most importantly, ensuring your guests are happy are just some of the significant challenges you face on a routine basis.

Add to this the everyday interruptions, annoyances of ineffective meetings, delays in receiving critical information or losing it, workplace politics and people working in silos, a lack of data to inform decision-making, duplication of efforts, failure to recognize guests effectively, and the inability to address guest concerns adequately.

It's not surprising leaders in the hospitality industry are actively seeking out proven strategies and tactics to run their businesses better. It’s the only way to move from a reactive culture to a proactive one and a non-strategic operation to a strategy-centric one. It’s the one way to go from chaos to teamwork and achieve success.

This article includes best practices Alpha Inn Management has developed for hotel management and communications, which we’ve learned and enhanced over time. This includes those that emerged over the last few years when hospitality organizations have been required to do even more with less, including:

• Social media and rating-and-review sites putting businesses at constant risk over minor errors or misinformation

• The labor market becoming record tight

• The use of technology growing exponentially

• The pressure to grow and become more efficient

• And other factors in the workplace exacerbating communication issues.

Let’s take a deeper look at some of the key operational issues hospitality industry leaders face today.

Guest Satisfaction

In today’s world of higher expectations, hospitality practices, processes, and services that are inefficient, disorganized, or outdated will eventually result in unhappy guests and dissatisfied employees. Bad guest experiences and an unmotivated workforce will quickly and negatively impact your bottom line.

Let’s start with the elephant in the room.

How can you improve guest satisfaction?

A study published by Esteban Kolsky, CEO of thinkJar and an expert in customer experience, reports that attracting a new customer costs six to seven times more than retaining a current one. Replacing one dissatisfied guest is costly. Add to this the reputational harm a single negative review can have in attracting new customers, and you can see why guest satisfaction must be priority one.

Ensuring a positive guest experience requires having complete control over every aspect of it, including making reservations, delivering fantastic service across all areas of the operation, creating and maintaining a perfect ambiance, promoting health and safety, and other factors.

Of course, maintaining complete control over these things has become almost impossible for hospitality managers and executives – unless hospitality organizations are utilizing technologies that help track successes and identify team members doing things right.

All are typically managed through various software, systems, and devices. Add to that staying on top of guest satisfaction and responding appropriately to issues as they arise involves additional technology, including countless social media and rating and review platforms.

So, what can you do? Good hospitality leadership focuses on finding new solutions to end the spiral of organizational chaos and dysfunction. They do this by addressing issues and exploring options to improve performance including simplifying processes, connecting systems, and updating software and platforms to enhance overall management communications and results. Robust solutions like Alpha Connect are available. Don’t you owe it to the success of your operation to check them out?

Quality Control

Quality control is critical in all types of businesses — but especially in hospitality. An organization’s reputation depends on the quality and dependability of its service. Low-quality work and not recognizing best practices lead to rework and compromising resources from other efforts that ultimately negatively impact the guest experience. This can lead to bad reviews and lost customers. Identifying best practices and having well-thought-out processes in place can help identify, correct, and avoid issues before they become significant problems. In short, implementing best practices and effective quality control is a central component driving guest satisfaction.

One effective best practice method involves monitoring events and patterns during daily business operations. For example, if guests start complaining about slow service at the restaurant, management should be able to identify service delays quickly and immediately address any underlying issues before they escalate and implement corrective measures. It’s critical to have a central database or system where this information can be housed, generate service notifications, and be easily shared by managers and other leaders.

Quality control issues often stem from a status-quo, that’s how we do things here, mentality. To combat this, managers must encourage continuous real-time and long-term thinking, improvement, and innovation by promoting open communication and encouraging employees to share ideas and suggestions. It’s also critical for managers to have the tools needed to monitor performance, identify issues, and pass along best practices and corrective measure ideas among themselves.

Data and Analytics

Another critical challenge for hospitality leaders and managers is using data and analytics to make intelligent and timely business decisions. Something simple in many other industries seems almost impossible in the hospitality sector. The data needed to make informed choices is housed in multiple tens or hundreds of systems, dashboards, and reports.

What’s critical is for business leaders to align on the top key performance indicators to stay on top of constantly. For most hospitality operations, these include:

• Guest satisfaction

• Employee satisfaction and retention

• Financial performance, such as like-for-like sales and profitability

• Marketing and sales 

• Teamwork

• Individual productivity.

These should be readily available through a single source, with other data accessible as needed. The revolutionary Alpha Connect app can help with this.

All hotel, restaurant, and bar group leaders must have best practices to also stay compliant with food, health, and safety regulations, on top of maintaining operational and brand standards. This work is necessary, but it can take much of your team’s time. Manual, paper-based processes and systems that don’t link up also leave room for human error, affecting your customers’ safety and satisfaction.

Like many things in life, daily procedures and checks can be made much simpler by using the right technology. Digitizing checklists, processes, and other paperwork, along with information from various systems and making them available to your team any place, any time, through any device, provides a clear picture of all their daily tasks and current issues. 

Perhaps most importantly, site and area managers must have a clear overview of completion rates and issues and be immediately notified of any incidents so they can take action when necessary. This can help limit the impact of guest issues, employee difficulties, accidents, and other problems.

Without waiting, wasting time, and being required to constantly hunt through paperwork, emails, multiple systems, and different devices, managers can optimize their time use and focus on the issues that impact essential KPIs, sales, and customer satisfaction.

Team Development

An issue touching everything we’ve covered so far is team development, learning, and coaching.

Recruitment in the hospitality industry has never been more challenging, so retention is critical to guaranteeing high service levels and securing talent for the future.

Employee learning is fundamental to not only equipping your teams with the skills and knowledge they need to do their jobs effectively but also to keep them motivated to constantly improve and contribute so they’re not tempted to look for employment elsewhere.

Training is crucial for implementing best practices, eliminating inefficiencies across operations, and ensuring everyone knows their responsibilities, how to perform them, and how to gauge their performance against company standards. A well-trained staff eliminates the need for micromanagement, as employees are always aware of best practices, key policies, and procedures.

For a deskless workforce, having easy cloud-based access to learning modules always at the ready allows managers and supervisors to provide employees with the direction and insights needed to be successful. They can also be delivered in videos, which show workers how to do things right rather than simply explain how. Video demos are also more effective for the many non-English speaking employees working in the industry.

Your staff is on the front line, constantly interacting with guests, meeting their needs, and exceeding their expectations, which is paramount to driving growth. Engaged employees are motivated to meet and surpass performance standards and commit to making operations run smoothly and seamlessly. They don’t miss as many shifts as their non-engaged peers, have lower attrition rates, and are generally more proficient at their jobs and productive.

Well-trained and engaged workers need less supervision, which is critical for allowing managers to walk the floor, communicate with guests, have a more hands-on approach to leading their teams, and focus on implementing strategic plans for future success. Better engagement means greater value for the guest and hotel.

This is especially true regarding the only guest satisfaction statistic that really matters in the end: the desire to return and recommend.

Property level and area managers are the most experienced team members and play a crucial part in team development, as well as nurturing future talent from within.

A proven way to do this is through a culture where managers empower, coach, mentor, and challenge their teams.

Today’s best managers hire front-line people with future potential and then develop that talent into leadership roles. They set high-performance goals and allow their teams to thrive, supporting and coaching them as they work and grow.

You must provide managers with ready access to your company’s best practices and educational tools so they’re handy when teaching, coaching, or mentoring opportunities arise.

Improve Productivity and Reduce Labor Costs 

In today’s hyper-competitive hospitality market, executives and managers are constantly pressured to improve productivity and reduce labor costs. Of course, the best way to do this is to implement best practices and ensure that staffing is both efficient and effective.

Managing staffing levels has also become even more complex as COVID-19 and workplace trends have reshaped the labor market. According to a 2022 American Hotel and Lodging Association report, 94 percent of hotels are understaffed, 47 percent are severely understaffed, and 96 percent report that they cannot fill open positions.

The issue — and it’s not news — is that hospitality businesses are subject to daily, weekly, and seasonal fluctuations, making team scheduling a nightmare. Not getting it right results in too much or too little staff, directly impacting customer satisfaction and business costs.

The key to success is to balance keeping staff lean while avoiding overburdening employees. Understanding and implementing best practices can ensure management makes the most of its resources while providing the high-quality experience guests expect.

The ability of hospitality managers to train and schedule staff effectively is directly impacted by the speed of organizational access to best practice information and systems to help anticipate appropriate staffing levels. If management has challenging or inadequate access to systems that help with staff training and scheduling, the impact on guest satisfaction and financial performance may be immediately subtle but more profound over the long term.  

What’s critical to remedy this is for hospitality organizations to take advantage of current systems and software like Alpha Connect that can streamline the implementation of best practices, simplify employee training and scheduling, and facilitate communications across entire organizations. It’s the only way they’ll measurably accomplish the dual goals of optimizing productivity and improving financial performance.

On top of this, efficient systems and improved communications save managers time so they can focus on their planning, tasks, team, and customers. It can also provide employees with greater shift security, increasing retention.

Hospitality operators must also address employees performing tasks that do not directly contribute to producing revenue, referred to as labor leakage.

To fight against this, organizations should prioritize preventative measures over reactive ones, which are slower and can take longer to solve. The best-run companies tackle potential issues before they arise — especially those related to maintenance and staffing.

To reduce redundancy and unnecessary spending, managers and other leaders should track expenses diligently, conduct industry-level benchmark research, carefully manage variable costs, and get tough on fixed expenses. They should consider investing in a comprehensive system that pulls together all the metrics needed to track and identify areas to reduce redundancies and make cost-saving changes. A relatively small investment typically pays off significantly for companies that use them right.

Financial Performance – Driving Sales and Controlling Costs

Another significant pressure for hospitality executives and managers during this period of economic uncertainty and rising prices is driving sales revenues and keeping costs in control on a timely basis. Like many other issues they face today, a significant barrier is that hospitality organizations have too many disconnected systems, and it is a slow, delayed process to effectively review and analyze financial performance to make appropriate, timely strategic organizational decisions. Add to this communication inefficiencies, and economic performance becomes more the result of laggard versus timely strategic thinking. Companies that don’t take steps to modernize their stock management systems and create an effective communication ecosystem will fall behind their more advanced competitors.

Ultimately, operational inefficiency is due to a lack of collaboration. Poor communications rob hospitality executives and managers of flexibility, insight, and impact. They spend more time putting out fires than interacting strategically, spending more time with guests and their teams.

When that happens, guest satisfaction falls, and eventually, market share and revenue quickly decline.

Faced with this reality, it only makes sense to make a relatively small investment in systems and software like Alpha Connect, which can help prevent these issues through more effective team collaboration, improving access to important information and critical operational systems, centralizing educational resources and improving communications by consolidating them.

While non-customer-facing responsibilities like scheduling, inventory management, budgeting, and employee training are integral to operations, they don’t have to occupy most of your managers’ time and attention. The right technology can play a critical role in unlocking efficiencies by providing managers with centralized access to the data, systems, communication tools, functions, and other things they need to significantly streamline and improve day-to-day operations so they can spend more time interacting with guests and enhancing their experience with the facility.

The latest hotel management and communication software empowers executives and managers by placing critical data, tools, and solutions literally in their hands for use at any place and time. Every moment a manager spends running back to the office or searching for files and information is a moment not spent improving the guest and employee experience in some way.

Conclusion

Operational improvements can seem daunting. However, by picking the right battles and leveraging the correct technology, hospitality organizations can build momentum and realize significant operational efficiencies and improvements.

When implementing change, operators must listen to staff members and maintain a positive employee experience. As we’ve already covered, a highly motivated staff will improve the guest experience, employee retention rates, and engagement levels.

To ensure things are on track, consider deploying brief stand-ups daily for managers and employees, leveraging collaboration technology to share what happened the day before, updates, and issues that could hinder your improvement efforts. Also, recognize and reward success. When people work in a positive environment where their achievements are identified, they are likelier to try hard. Finally, constantly request employee feedback. Surveys and forums that allow employees to express themselves are imperative. They can help identify issues before they become significant problems.

Remember, the hospitality industry constantly evolves, with higher guest expectations, new technologies, innovations, and competitors trying to disrupt the market. It's essential to focus on identifying and closing efficiency gaps, eliminating communication issues, streamlining technology, committing to continuous improvement, and embracing technologies to simplify processes and improve guest experiences. It’s the only way your organization will survive and thrive in these rapidly changing times.

Get started on the journey today by checking out the revolutionary Alpha Connect app and connect with a friendly and helpful Alpha Inn Management representative today.

6 Habits of a Successful Hospitality Business Leader

Hospitality business leaders are under much pressure during these competitive and economically uncertain times. You must generate results or be left in the dust.

Here are our top tips for maintaining a leading position in the hospitality industry.

1. Know Your Numbers

Of course, the hospitality industry is all about delivering superior guest experiences. It’s your job one. However, it’s also about the hard-nosed reality of running a business and generating strategic results.

Passion, commitment, and skill are essential but must be connected to sound business management. You must be familiar with important performance indicators and rely on numbers to understand your business relative to those indicators to know what is happening across your organization at any particular time. It’s the only way you can run things at an optimum level. If leaders, managers, and employees don’t currently know what is happening across every department, aren’t analyzing performance and responding appropriately — your business can’t be efficient and effective and compete with data-driven organizations.

Knowing your numbers means having data about each essential element that contributes to the revenue, profit, and efficiency of your business. A solution like Alpha Connect can help link together all your systems and solutions, pulling all your data into a single place.

2. Encourage Repeat Visits and Guest Advocacy

Intent to return and the willingness to recommend are the most important criteria for a guest hospitality experience. Advocates are guests who love your hospitality properties and the experiences they have in them. They are willing to go out and tell others about it. They are your most powerful form of marketing.

To build advocacy, you need to understand precisely what your guests want, deliver it to them, and also exceed their expectations if possible — each and every single day. Of course, that’s simple to say and much harder to execute on an on-going basis without your complete team’s focus.

Understanding your guests is fundamental to building advocacy. Internet sites providing customer reviews such as TripAdvisor, Yelp, and Google as well as loyalty programs can help you better understand your guests’ habits so you can gain insights to deliver tailored, personalized service and experiences that make them feel special and keep them coming back. Surveys can also help you find people who enjoyed their stays.

When you identify guests who are loyal to — and love — your hotels or restaurants, provide them with simple ways to leave ratings and reviews on popular hotel sites, social media, or Google. It’s the best and easiest way to encourage others to visit your properties.

3. Streamline Your Processes

It’s never right to do things like you always have, or because it’s how a competitor does it. It’s essential to deconstruct your processes and procedures and identify ways to remove friction, double handling, and inefficiency. Regularly ask yourself questions like:

• What can we do to better anticipate our customer’s needs and exceed their expectations?

• How can we improve our management meetings?

• How long does it take to access and review the management team plans we currently have in place?

• How can we improve our employee training and development programs?

• Can guests be incentivized to check in through their phones, bypassing a more extended in-person check-in process without negatively impacting the experience?

The only way you can streamline your workflows is to step back, take them apart, and use your experience and creativity to rebuild them better.

4. Ensure you Have Access to Real-Time Information

If you have significant staff absences on Tuesday, there is no point in knowing about it on Friday. Or even Tuesday afternoon.

Having access to real-time performance information allows you to take immediate action, such as calling in replacements or reprioritizing work. It’s the only way to ensure guests are not negatively impacted when something unexpected occurs.

5. Focus On Growth and Scalability

Your hospitality company may only have a few locations now, but if you get things right, your business could grow. What are the important ingredients and components of your business success? What is holding back your growth? While you never want to have to throw everything out and start again or redevelop processes and systems when expanding a business, you want to change out things that are holding back your business expansion. It is critically important to plan for growth and scalability every single day so your systems, processes, and procedures can be used at more — and larger — properties.

6. Leverage the Right Technology

The tech you use should fit your business, not the other way around. Technology is crucial for helping to deliver all the critical strategies in this guide. A solution like Alpha Connect can integrate most of the essential elements of your business, including your communication and management solutions, providing easier access to the real-time data and insights that will allow you to be the leader of the growing business you want to be.

Hospitality is undoubtedly a challenging industry, and it’s also potentially a very rewarding one. It takes work, commitment, and not a little skill to build and maintain a successful organization. However, understanding and following the six habits explained here will undoubtedly help you on your way. Also, feel free to connect with an Alpha Inn Management representative to get fresh insights on how to run your business more effectively.

6 Proven Strategies to Improve Your Guest Experience

Do you want to deliver the ULTIMATE hospitality experience in your hotel properties?

Of course, you do!

In today’s competitive environment, three stars just don’t cut it. You need to earn those golden five-star reviews that bring in the business. 

In this guide, we share our top insights on providing guests with the best experience possible.

1. Get to Know Your Guests

Understanding your guests’ needs, preferences, and expectations is central to optimizing the lodging experience. Do this by requiring management to speak with the people staying at your properties and by conducting surveys, emailing post-stay feedback forms, and requesting ratings and reviews. 

Also, to better connect with your guests, leverage data analytics and customer relationship management tools to segment them and deliver personalized offers, recommendations, and loyalty programs. Even within a single property, you likely have different kinds of guests. Families won’t appreciate the same things as young singles. When you understand your guests, you can tailor your services to their specific needs and exceed their expectations. You can also supply your staff members with the correct things to say to each one to leave them feeling delighted.

2. Constantly Train and Develop Your Team

Train your staff to provide professional, courteous, and attentive service to your guests that is wholly aligned with your brand.

Do this by:

• Setting clear standards

• Defining procedures

• Providing regular coaching and feedback

• Rewarding stellar performance.

You should also consider investing in online courses, workshops, and certifications to upgrade your staff's skills and knowledge. By being online, team members can train when it’s convenient. It also prevents having a significant portion of your workers in training when they should be serving guests.

Also, remember that training isn’t once-and-done. It’s an ongoing process that keeps people from developing negative habits and helps take skills to the next level.

Finally, a solution like Alpha Connect can place centralized training and development tools like videos and demonstrations at your manager’s fingertips so they can have training moments whenever issues arise, the best time to deliver the most significant educational impact.

By training your staff, you ensure consistent quality and efficiency in your services and create a positive work environment.

3. Invest in the Latest Technology

Embrace technology and leverage it to streamline your operations, improve your communication and team collaboration, and enhance the guest experience.

If you haven’t adopted digital solutions like mobile check-in, smart keys, chatbots, virtual concierges, and artificial intelligence (AI) backed assistants, what are you waiting for? More and more, guests expect these things. You should also use technology to automate tasks, optimize resources, and monitor performance. A system like Alpha Connect can help organize your various tech solutions in a centralized app, making them easier to access and use.

By embracing technology, you can save time and money, reduce errors and risks, and offer a better, more personalized experience to your guests.

4. Improve the Services You Offer

Today’s travelers expect more out of their stays. That’s why it’s critical to offer something unique, memorable, and valuable to your guests. Do this by researching and staying on top of the latest trends, best practices, and customer demands in the hospitality industry. Also, check out what your competitors are up to. Use a little creativity coupled with customer and staff feedback to develop new services, products, packages, or experiences that appeal to your customer base. Find ways to brand them to make them irresistible.

You can differentiate your hotels from your competitors, attract new customers, and retain loyal ones by offering something fresh and different.

5. Deliver a More Focused Hospitable Experience for Your Guests 

Delivering a hospitable environment that makes your guests feel welcome, comfortable, and happy is central to creating a satisfying stay at your property. Ensure you have a theme and features for your properties that your visitors can embrace. Then, focus on improving and highlighting those features as part of the overall theme to create a more enhanced customer experience. Consider using aromatherapy, music, food, and art to create a more immersive environment.

Don’t stop there. Ensure cleanliness, hygiene, and safety in your facilities because they are a critical part of creating a world-class location.

When you provide a hospitable environment with highlight features, you enhance your guests' mood, comfort, and well-being.

6. Solicit Feedback During a Guest Stay and Positive Reviews After They Leave

Don’t wait to find out a guest had a problem or issue after they’ve departed your property. Solicit feedback from visitors and leverage their responses immediately to improve the hospitality experience during their stay with you. It will allow you to address any concerns or issues and take corrective actions so you can avoid negative reviews. 

After confirming a positive experience during their stay at your property, it is easier and more genuine at departure to solicit positive feedback, asking for ratings, reviews, testimonials, and suggestions. You can also use online platforms, social media, and email to collect and respond to feedback. 

Spending time to analyze guest feedback to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your services and guest experiences is incredibly valuable for fine-tuning your business. By soliciting feedback and making improvements based on it, you can show your guests that you care, value, and respect their opinions and are committed to delivering the best service possible.

Don’t you owe it to your guests and the future of your hospitality organization to leverage the six tips in this guide to improve your operation? Also, feel free to contact the friendly experts at Alpha Inn Management to find out how our revolutionary Alpha Connect solution could streamline your workflow and deliver a better employee and guest experience.