The Ultimate Hotel Manager’s Guide

Hotel general manager skills and traits to become succesful:

Today the role of the Hotel General Manager (GM) is often all-encompassing. He or she must be able to manage company goals for several departments and they need to have practical communication skills to work with employees throughout the company.

The Hotel General Manager also requires strong leadership skills to manage resources and dynamic organization skills to maintain daily operations. All in all, he or she holds the ultimate responsibility for oversight of a property, including all sales and marketing, operations, events, maintenance, and customer service.

As a general manager, every day is different and your role often requires wearing several hats, from understanding operations, overseeing events, and delivering exceptional customer service. To help you be the best general manager you can be, we’ve put together a series of traits. These include:

• Being creative: a successful general manager should be able to avoid inertia and think outside the box.
• Analyzing and understanding data: in order to achieve success, a general manager shouldn’t just review the data but should be able to analyze it and extract insights and takeaways.

Find below more traits that can help take you from a good to a great general manager:

1. Inspirational – As with any great leader, it’s imperative that a General Manager do more than just manage. The GM needs to be someone that people want to follow and work their hardest for. An inspirational leader will bring out the best characteristics in his or her team. Having a happy and pleasant team is even more crucial in hospitality than in other sectors, and driving that enthusiasm, passion, and hustle comes from the top.

2. Decisive – No matter the size of the property, a General Manager has to make decisions on the fly for all kinds of situations and with a calm exterior. The GM owns responsibility for the successes and failures of a property, and while he or she should positively empower the management team to make their own decisions, there will always be situations requiring special attention. Whether it’s working with the teams to help them make the best decisions for guests quickly or calling the shots herself, no GM is going to succeed if she can’t think on her feet in this fast-paced and constantly accelerating environment.

3. Analytical – There are a lot of reports and financials to be considered in the hotel industry and that’s only likely to continue to grow exponentially as data is available and can be aggregated across various systems. A GM needs to work with the team to quickly review, understand, and action on data he sees on a daily basis. There is a constant pivot to make rates and packages appealing to the right guest or planner at the right time, not just based on local competition, but on a hotel’s unique offering. Seeing not just numbers, but patterns and trends will become even more necessary to be successful in this role.

4. Creative – While we often hear that people tend to be either analytical or creative, the future GM needs to be both. Budgets aren’t growing, but the expectation of the guest is. A GM needs to be able to digest the data with an analytical mindset and then shift to a creative mindset to problem solve in unique ways. Not only that, creativity from leadership is the only way to truly create a novel experience at a property that both guests and planners will seek out and pay a premium for.

6. Adaptive – Despite the other traits, if a General Manager is hard-headed and stuck in her ways, she won’t be successful. There is too much change in the hotel industry and really all around us at all times when it comes to technology and expectations to not be open to change. We never know when the next big OTA will pop up and affect our bottom line or when the next social media channel will change how we advertise and communicate. A General Manager needs to be bold and willing to try new things while being smart enough to change course if those trials aren’t performing well. Having a plan is important, but sticking to the plan isn’t paramount to success. Being open-minded will serve the future GM well.
7. Visionary – A General Manager sets the goals and strategy for a hotel. In order to set his property apart, the GM needs to constantly evaluate the competition, market, region, and audience. Beyond that, he needs to look to the future and envision how the property will be perceived and operate in 5 to 10 years and then determine what will be needed to achieve that vision. An excellent General Manager needs to keep a pulse on not just the hotel industry, but also the technology industry and how guests are buying and communicating outside of their travels and group business. To truly achieve success in the future, the GM will need the visionary trait, always thinking to the future for planning, budgeting, and improving the overall experience of a property – understanding what a guest wants before the guest even knows.

Want to learn more? Here are 5 tips on how to become a hotel General Manager.

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Key Hospitality Acronyms

In the world of Hospitality, we’re faced with different terms every day of our business. Whether you’re front of house, back-end, or something in between, there’s a few key terms we should all be aware of. Some of the most common ones you may encounter include Average Daily Rate (ADR), PMS (Property Management System) and GDS (Global Distribution System).
If you want to access a complete hotel abbreviations dictionary, check out these Hospitality Acronyms Defined.

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Introduction to Generation Clean

COVID-19 has created many changes in behavior world over. Since 2019, clean has been a keyword for hoteliers world over and a notable change is the renowned focus on hygiene and safety standards. Depending on geographical location, hotels must now comply with new regulations to prevent the spread of diseases such as COVID-19. On top of this, travelers now also have higher expectations of cleanliness standards. We refer to this new cluster of hotel guests as Generation Clean. In order for hoteliers to deliver on these new expectations, they will need to think about how they communicate these standards as guests shop and book trips, and how to clearly display and implement new measures throughout each stay.

One of the key differences hoteliers should be aware of is what is classified as disinfecting vs. cleaning. As you prepare your property following COVID-19, download our complimentary disinfecting checklist to ensure you’re following all of the necessary steps.

Aside from this, many hoteliers may now be faced with reduced or limited resources. This might result in less time available to dedicate to cleaning every room or enough staff to adequately cover all necessary processes.  To check that everything is in order and working properly, this housekeeping checklist is a handy first step in improving your overall operational efficiency. The benefits of following these checklists include increased efficiency and guest loyalty, which can lead to more repeat bookings.

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Guest Management email templates

In the same way that welcome letters can go a long way to increasing communication, and ultimately enhancing the guest experience, with over 4 billion daily email users, this is one marketing strategy not to be miss. Many hoteliers often under appreciate the value of a well-structured email to communicate with guests before, during and after their stay. These emails can then be automated using your Guest Management System.

Some of the best practices to follow when creating emails include:

• Relevant copy and information
• A clear call-to-action for readers to take
• Clear layout with a balance between images and text

Find out more about how to create effective emails for different needs.

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