Hotels! Hotels! Hotels!

TV's in the bathroom mirror

2006-05-31T08:22:00.000-07:00


	The Charles Hotel

Point a remote and an image appears in a bathroom at The Charles Hotel in Cambridge, Mass. T.V's are appearing in the bathroom mirrors. Is this where we really want it? I supposed you can watch the news while we brush our teeth or shave. Or are we going to cut ourswleves shaving?

Now What?

2006-05-27T20:50:00.000-07:00

Hotels in Hoi An, Vietnam

2006-05-23T00:43:00.000-07:00

New beach resort destination in Vietnam
I had the privilege to visit the Hoi An area in January and to evaluate a hotel. The area will be one of the new resort destinations in Asia. It is near Hue the old capital city of Vietnam.

The development of Hoi An is in its infancy stage, there are many three star hotels and there are only a few four star hotels.

To me it reminds me of Phuket in 1980 the first year I visited it.

In this phase of development it’s quite a challenge to make a hotel project viable especially in the four star sector and above. An "Aman" or a "Banyan Tree" product can be feasible as these two groups have a good followings. Another approach I found quite successful in Phuket or Bali is to build a three star chalet type accommodations on a fairly large piece of land and redevelop it 10-15 years later when the market moves to the high growth phase and the land is more valuable.

How would you approach such a market?

tags:Vietnam Hotel , business , 3star

Sydney Hotels

2006-05-23T00:27:00.000-07:00

Hotel operational challenges in Sydney
Recently I have the opportunity to review the operations of a few hotels in Sydney. Due to the high labour costs in Australia the hotels there are fairly cost conscious in the area of manning.

There are also numerous regulatory requirements which are quite strict and which a hotel is required to conform to. This is good for the customer but it does cost money.

However I noticed that the bulk of the managers are high school graduates with a few certificates.

We have learnt that the complexity of managing a hotel today requires a person to be at least at a University level and this is probably one of the main challenges there.

What is your experience is allowing a person with such qualification only to run a hotel or a business?

Tags: mangement , youth , Sydney Business

Sex as a perk!

2006-05-08T07:23:00.000-07:00

In the hotel industry when a person becomes a senior manager, booze is free and sex is free!!!

I have seen many senior managers takes advantage of drinking as much as they like on the hotel’s expense. On top of this, quite often they harass junior staffs for sexual favour. This is especially true of the expatriate managers. Part of the problem is that local staffs offering themselves too. Often these managers treat these actions almost as perks.

In the case of one hotel I handed to an international chain, the three expat's were having affairs with local staffs within three weeks! When we took over a hotel in China I was told that the eight expat's managers under the previous management all had a girl friend each within one month!!!

What is proper conduct? Why do many of the international chains not take actions against these staffs? Is this a case of the sticking one's head in the sand like an ostrich?

Tags:sex , expat , conduct

Laptop thefts on the rise!

2006-05-07T04:18:00.000-07:00

When we made free wifi available in all the public areas, restaurants and meeting halls in all our hotels we didn't foresee that laptop thefts would be a great problem for us.

Over the last two months we have had a few including a theft from one of our staffs.

Guests do assume that a hotel or a restaurant in a hotel is safe and leave their valuables or laptops unattended. A friend of mine even left his table in a hotel restaurant to go back to his room for 15 minutes! Luckily for him I was at the restaurant a few minutes after he went up.

Our cctv managed to record one theft and these guys are professional, in this particular instance it was a gang of three who are prepared to run interference if they had been caught in the act.

I have also seen people leaving their luggages and laptops on a trolley in airports unattended to visit the toilets!!!

The guy who steals may just be another guest!!

Tags: laptop theft , crime , cartoon

Hotel fever in China!!!

2006-05-02T08:58:00.000-07:00

Everyone is rushing into China to start a hotel chain, especially the 3-star category.

I just attended the Shanghai Investment Conference on hotels. There appears to be a gold rush to establish mid market or 3 star hotel chains in China. Every major world wide brand was there. A few Chinese local brands have also been established.

It would be interesting to see in the future whose strategy will work in China. If the brands follow a cookie cutter approach they are bound to fail.

Tags:china , hotels

Customer Service

2006-04-23T20:16:00.000-07:00

how to attract candidates who are warm, friendly & truly customer driven?

There were several comments in a local daily last week about how customer service in Malaysia is generally poor. It brings to the fore the issue of how the hospitality industry actually recruits people who are warm, friendly and customer focused. While some argue that friendlyliness can be trained, it is becoming difficult to get people who are genuinely friendly and warm - people who can anticipate the customers' needs and respond before being asked.

While visiting a zoo, some years back, I had come to the sun bears' enclosure. While the other bears were lazing away, there was a single bear who got up, tried to reach me (for some reason) and then tried to do some antics to get my attention for about 5-10 minutes. At this point, I already had to take a photograph of this warm and friendly bear. The photograph reminds me of how the bear made an impression on me - a lifetime impression. Well I guess that was excellent customer service - but on a different level.

Tag: service

2006-04-10T11:14:00.000-07:00

Calling all Bloggers!

Firstly, thank you for reading our blog. We're new to this. But like all Bloggers, we believe we have something useful to say. What we don't have is Blog-Savvyness! We'd really appreciate if some of you more experienced bloggers out there, would leave comments.

Any comments will do.

But we'll especially appreciate comments that answer this question.

What can we do, on our blog, to make you want to come back and read it.

Thank You! BLOGGERS!

2006-04-01T07:47:00.000-08:00

Reducing crime in Hotels.
What are the many things we can do to reduce crime in hotels?

We had tried many things and our experience shows that having security guards does not necessarily prevent crime. The thief studies the patrolling rounds of the guard and normally they are able to avoid them.

With the recent drop in prices of CCTV’s it is very cost effective to install CCTV’s in all the critical areas of a hotel. Our experience has shown that after the installation of CCTV’s crime normally drop almost to zero. And in the instance that it happens, we almost always are able to solve the crime.

Tags:hotel,cctv

2006-03-30T07:18:00.000-08:00

Bring your brains to work!
How do we motivate our people to come to work motivated and willing to contribute to the success of the organization?

Where shall we start? A challenging work environment free of favouritism and politicking? A place where one can learn and grow to one’s full potential? A forum where your opinion, right or wrong is encouraged. All views are heard before major decisions are made?

In many organizations we fail to do this and then we expect our people to bring their brains to work. When top management makes all the decisions without participation or on the pretence of hearing out the lower ranked people?

How do we keep encouraging our staffs to be participative and bring their brains to work day in and day out?

Tags: motivation , service

2006-03-29T06:30:00.000-08:00

Location, location, location
The most important decision in building a hotel is the location.

Every book on property development and every business course emphasize that the most important decision in building a hotel is to choose the right location.

We have evaluated and design more then 100 hotels all around the world over the last sixteen years. Other then location, what come close are the timing of the project to the property and economic cycle and the construction cost of the hotel. We have seen the advantages of the best of location been more then nullifies with the wrong cycle and over design of the hotel. The result is a hotel that never makes money.

2006-03-28T00:04:00.000-08:00

Is the customer always right?
The customer is the king, he is the sole reason we exist.

Do we always accept that the customer is always right? In our organization, our people are empowered to make decisions initially up to US$25 and after proper training US$125 on any transaction. We let them use their best judgments in settling any customer complaints that may arise as we believe resolving a customer’s complaint speedily results in much goodwill.
Once in a while we do get a customer whom we know is trying to take us for a ride. In such cases what should we do?

2006-03-24T08:26:00.000-08:00

Low cost rooms for US$5
Will dynamic pricing be as successful for hotels as it is for the low cost airlines?

In January, we started to use low cost carrier pricing model, using dynamic pricing for our 3-star Prescott brand. Prices start at RM. 18.88, roughly US$ 5 per room per night. It’s available only on the Internet. So far the results are quite encouraging.

What would you want as a user?

2006-03-23T06:41:00.000-08:00

Complaints handling
What is reasonable time to reply to a complaint?

In 1995, I was having dinner with my wife in an extremely well known 5-star international hotel. I complained that the steak was tough. The restaurant couldn’t do anything right.

At the end of the dinner I wrote a complaint to the General Manager, asked for and got a receipt for it.

The question is how many days did the General Manger take to respond to my complaint?

What should be reasonable time no matter what the star?

2006-03-22T07:13:00.001-08:00

Naked in the corridor!
Don’t mistake the room entrance door for a toilet door in the middle of the night.

Over the years we have many stories of a guest getting up in the middle of the night to go to the toilet in a hotel and inevitably opens the room door, steps into the corridor and the door slams shut.

Once we have a lady who in her drunken haze steps into the corridor completely naked, not only locks herself out but also completely forgot her room number.

The situation may sound hilarious, but how do we prevent such a thing from happening again?

2006-03-21T07:37:00.000-08:00

Qualities of a Manager
Choosing the right type of person to manage a hotel????????????????????

One of our biggest challenges in the hospitality industry is to find suitable qualified managers for hotels. We have many managers in the industry who come from rank & file with a high school diploma only. Can these people who rose up from the rank be the super managers we are looking for? Or should we hire suitably qualified people to be our future managers and take the time to train them?

How about their character? Aptitudes and interests?

These are the questions that cross our mind day in day out.

2006-03-20T17:08:00.000-08:00

If you are managing people at any level we love to hear from you.

Thought I share with all of you the challenges, the frustrations and the joys of managing hotels.

This blog is for those who are experts in hotels which means all of us. If you are interested in any aspects of hotel management, help us improve our services to our guests in any way, currently in the hospitality industry or wishing to join the hotel industry - check back here regularly. If you are interested to join our organisation this blog is also for you.

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