Hotel Operations
"Don’t ever consider a guest as another ‘check-in’, it's in your best interest impress the hell out of them, to ensure that they remember the visit as a positive encounter. Good or bad, people love talking about where they've been and they will tell people about their stay. Save on your marketing budget by making sure that they have wonderful memories that they share often."
Hotel Property, Business Reviews & Strategies
Sear hospitality has over 30 year of hospitality experience and is well positioned to review hotel operational structures, financial performances, product delivery, level of customer service and whether or not a property is delivering to both the owner and guest’s expectations.
By completing a detailed review of all aspects of the hotel operations, Sear Hospitality can work with relevant parties to implement detailed operational actions and strategies. These actions and strategies will drive the overall property performance, ensuring that all parities expectations are met.
The clear-cut measurability of KPIs is alluring. Occupancy percentages, profit indicators, return on investment. These are the type of traditional performance measures on which many hoteliers rely when it comes to evaluating hotel performance. Unfortunately, taken in isolation, they provide misleading signals, failing to adequately identify the key issues that need to be actioned.
In order to fully understand a hotels performance, additional factors must be taken into account. Does the hotel take safety seriously, embrace innovation, provide service excellence and the product required to meet the expectations of hotel guests? If not, a more holistic approached is required to ensure the hotel is delivering the required results to both the owner and its clients.
Sear Hospitality can evaluate hotel performance, based on years of experience in delivering quality results within underperforming hospitality assets. These results have been achieved by focussing on financial performance and processes, reporting and budgeting formats, cost of sales by department, property operational expenses and what actions are required to deliver improved bottom line results.
Sear Hospitality will focus on sales performance, which is a very broad topic that is influenced by a whole host of subset aspects. We will review all revenue avenues, rates, competitors, distributions channels, website performance, product/ service delivery and property sales and marketing activities to develop strategies required to drive required revenue levels.
Sear Hospitality will also conduct property reviews and detailed analyses of hotel businesses, which will allow us to identify key operational and product issues that can be improved to deliver a stronger financial performance.
A review of a property service culture and implementation of required strategies can deliver service excellence. A strong orientation towards guest satisfaction relies upon various efforts and strategies, such as reliably delivering on promises, providing a personal service and pro-actively managing customer feedback.
Providing service excellence is a challenge and doing so consistently, to the point where people seek out your hotel thanks to this virtue in particular, requires a strong and comprehensive service culture. Success in service excellence keeps guests coming back for more and the enthused reviews rolling in.
Innovation in the hotel environment is also an important aspect that can greatly improve both the hotel operations and guest experience.
Innovation can be discovered and improved via review processes, areas such as technology service, processes, management systems, marketing, distribution channels, organisation behaviour and business models including outsourcing opportunities. Sear Hospitality can make recommendations based on a clear understanding of the business, operational issues and financial performance.
Health and safety processes are often somewhat overlooked and shouldn’t be! When you think “health and safety”, think “risk analysis, quality labels and safety procedures”. It has always been important for hotels, as employers, to keep a close eye on workplace health and safety. Guests want to spend their time in a clean, hygienic, safe environment. Meeting food safety standards is also crucial for any hotel restaurant, and your legal team will thank you for staving off any potential lawsuits arising from safety-related liability issues.
The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a particularly bright spotlight on health and safety. The respective regulations have become far more stringent, and guests’ expectations have become significantly higher in a very short space of time.
Evaluating hotel performance not only in financial terms, but with a view to long-lasting success thus relies upon much more than your average metrics. This wider set of strategic, financial and operational dimensions is better able to reflect the reality of hotel performance in order to be a successful hotelier, gain a comprehensive view of performance drivers, understand how your hotel’s performance stacks up against the competition and implement continuous improvement plans. This is where Sear Hospitality can become an asset to your business. We have the experience and expertise required to be able to provide a comprehensive appraisal of your hotel and can then assist to point you in the right direction.
Outsourcing Hotel Services
There is an increase in demand for the outsourcing of hotel processes and services in smaller to medium hotels. Outsourcing can allow time to be better spent keeping up with the trends in their business and focusing on strategies for growth and improvement.
Depending on the size and need, there are many different processes and services that can be outsourced and for many years, Sear Hospitality has assisted clients to understand where and when outsourcing can be a viable option. We can also assist in sourcing appropriate service providers and assist with contract negotiation. Outsourcing various aspects of a business can result in reduced operational costs, improved processes and improved financial performance.
The hospitality industry is a service-oriented industry and on a daily basis, hotels should be providing guests with the best service and utmost comfort that they can expect whilst travelling. With this goal in mind, there are some services that should still stay in-house, such as valet, culinary, and physical front desk; however, that still leaves many other areas where the hotel and guests can benefit by outsourcing.
Outsourcing is certainly not something that should be overlooked when it comes to filing roles that you are unable to find local talent for. In fact, it can help hotels gain access to talents at a fraction of the cost of hiring a local employee. At the moment, it can be very difficult to find suitable local employee’s and outsourcing can certainly be of benefit in this candidate short market.
Sear hospitality has the ability to assist hotel operators and clients with outsourcing of the following services:
- Housekeeping
- Payroll & Bookkeeping
- HR Services
- Budgets & Reporting Formats
- Revenue Generation & Distribution
- Maintenance Services
- Sales & Marketing Reviews and Strategies (to drive performance)
- Property Management
- FF&E Procurement
- Hotel/Resort Design Services
Sear Hospitality can recommend what outsourcing areas will improve guest services and financial performance for your hospitality business.
Hotel Sales & Marketing Support Services
Whether you’re starting from the ground up with a newly built hotel or repositioning your brand in the market, Sear Hospitality will use their holistic approach, encompassing their revenue & distribution and sales & marketing strategies to identify and enhance opportunities to drive profitability for your business.
We work with our clients to develop a sales and marketing strategy that boosts visibility, drives demand and builds brand awareness across all market segments. Sear Hospitality will help you stand out from the competition and increase the conversion rate of opportunities into sales.
We identify the gaps and opportunities and then work with you to determine the right strategies that will enhance your revenue goals and position you for future growth.
Sear Hospitality use a 4-Step Approach
1. Hotel Audit and Recommendations
2. Strategic planning and incremental revenue development
3. Strategy implementation and execution
4. Analysis of projected results in order to sustain and improve strategy and embed and maximise ROI.
Hotel Revenue and Distribution Support Services
An essential part of maximising yield and hotel profits is ensuring you have the most effective revenue and distribution strategies in place. Sear Hospitality are revenue and distribution specialists and will analyse your market mix, trends, hotel demand drivers, rate plans, pricing, positioning and property management systems to ensure best practise is being adhered to in all areas.
In many locations where supply now outweighs demand, the key to obtaining your market share is to ensure you have a concise and strategic mix of offerings across all key online and offline booking channels.
Hotel Web Site Development
A well-functioning web site is vital in most industries, in the hospitality industry it means the difference between getting direct bookings or paying commissions to various third-party agencies. Sear Hospitality are able to refer clients to trusted web site developers for assistance with the creation of a new web site, with updating an existing site, adding new pages/content, adding additional security, setting up booking systems and web site hosting services.
Without a functional web site, you could be missing out on potential leads and even leaving a negative impression of your brand.
Contact Sear Hospitality now, to organise a review and recommendations for your web site. We have helped numerous hotels to improve bookings, by improving the appeal and function of their web sites.