This is the beginning of her informative series on improving your overall hotel operations. I hope you enjoy the article.

By Kim Galeano

You know it’s always easier to send someone home early than to call someone in to work on their day off. As long as you don’t abuse the privilege, schedule an extra “body” to work during traditionally busy times. If you have to ask someone to leave early, I bet you will get a line of volunteers. More help generally equals better service. Better service always equals repeat guests! It makes no sense whatsoever to be constantly short-handed. Those who are working get angry and bitter and that makes it very difficult for them to smile and make guests feel welcome. It’s just not fair to constantly work your employees to death, no breaks, no food, and no joy in their workday. We all love to be busy in the hospitality industry! You know we do. It makes time fly by and it makes the day more fun. However, most of us get into the business to help guests. This is impossible to do when you are always stretched to the limit and exhausted from running around like a maniac trying to help everyone. Customer service scores suffer as does your repeat business. Guests perceive it to be poor service and they don’t always put together that the company is trying to save money, nor do they care. It’s NOT saving you anything. It’s costing you a fortune in lost business, turnover, and general poor morale throughout the hotel. What do you think upsets employees the most? Not being appreciated? Not getting the days off they need? Not being respected? Feeling as if the best employees are always treated the worst?

Now, any owner or management company will tell you that you only have a budgeted number of labor hours to use on a daily/weekly/monthly basis. My experience tells me this; coming in way under budgeted payroll hours is not something to be particularly proud of. Service may have been shoddy and inconsistent at best. On the other hand, if you over-schedule slightly, the amount of business you garner will more than make the payroll hours balance with the budget. In other words, if you have more help, you can make more money and take excellent care of your guests. This goes for hotels and restaurants. I can’t count the number of times a manager in a restaurant sent a $2.15 per hour server home to save on payroll. Wow! Then, the restaurant gets packed and people walk out. You comp meals because the service is crappy, and guests are generally angry and upset. Then, they leave and tell everyone they know. Really, is that worth saving $6.45 to keep them a few more hours? I think not!

If you are fully staffed with well-trained employees, you will capture all the business from your competitors. It shouldn’t be such a burden on a guest in a hotel or a restaurant to try and get basic service. What a treat for them if they are pleasantly surprised with excellent service. Truth is, at my last property, guests raved about the service daily. It was a limited service/feature property, but we were staffed and we were sincerely friendly and welcoming. Just saying “welcome to our hotel/town/city” made all of the difference in the world. The guests didn’t have to wait 10 minutes to check in and someone always answered the phone. These automated phone services will never fully replace a kind person able to answer your questions with a great attitude. Try it! Why don’t we?