Hotel Operations

📈 Cross-training in the hospitality industry boosts hotel staff flexibility, service levels, and job satisfaction by enabling employees to learn tasks beyond their primary roles. Examples include front desk staff assisting in housekeeping and restaurant servers working in bars. Benefits include enhanced operational efficiency and service quality, while challenges involve scheduling, maintaining quality, and turnover. Best practices include job shadowing, technology integration, and strategic scheduling. Overall, cross-training fortifies team cohesion and resource efficiency, preparing hotels for staffing fluctuations and demand changes.

📊 Shift focus from market share to wallet share with data-driven insights. Increase revenue by targeting high-value guests; BI tools analyze Total Revenue Per Guest (TRevPAR). Direct bookings yield 18% more profit. Enhance booking engines with dynamic offers. Upsell 3-7 days prior to arrival using personalized data, improving conversion rates to 10%. Optimize labor with forecasting from BI tools, potentially saving thousands. Leverage AI sentiment analysis to enhance operations and boost direct re-bookings, driving growth in a flat market.

👜 Over 50% of Coach's new North American customers are Millennials and Gen Z, drawn to craftsmanship, nostalgia, and values over hype. Originally a 1940s leather brand, Coach has reinvented itself as a Gen Z luxury statement without launching new products. Lessons for boutique hotels: emphasize craft, adopt circular design, tell compelling stories, and offer accessible luxury. Coach's approach: redefine heritage to appeal to younger generations. Can hotels follow suit?

📚 Quore launched Quore University, a training platform for 7,400 customer locations, including 12 learning paths for over 40 job titles. The Denver-based initiative, developed with LearnUpon, enhances training efficiency and satisfaction through personalization, gamification, and multilingual support. Following a successful 600-hotel pilot, Quore University aims to improve onboarding and operational efficiency. Mobile-friendly, the platform enables certification portability, offering real-time progress visibility and engaging learning experiences for hospitality staff.

📖 Abigail Tan, CEO of St Giles Hotel Group, shares her leadership evolution in hospitality, focusing on empathy and authentic leadership. She emphasizes creating a culture people can feel, with a loyal team having decades of tenure. Her approach includes redefining risk as "adventure learning" to foster growth. The discussion with Emily Goldfisher highlights actionable insights for building strong, human-focused cultures in a changing industry.

🏠 Gregory Day, President of Hospitality for Mani Brothers Real Estate Group, shares insights on leading through two wildfires in Malibu, 30 days apart. His focus was on preparation, calm leadership, and service culture, facilitating actions from evacuations to support for displaced individuals. An "inverted org chart" empowered his team under pressure, showcasing culture and readiness as key to resilience. Ideal for leaders facing crisis situations in hospitality.

🏨 Hotels in 2026 should focus on fundamentals like breaking departmental silos, ensuring data quality, and thinking beyond room revenue. George Fuechsel's 1960s phrase "Garbage in, garbage out" underscores the importance of clean data. Emphasize total revenue through packages and experiences, not just room sales. Automation is beneficial, but intuition is key. Avoid copying competitors; smart strategy implementation is critical. Thijs from Xotels advocates for discipline and creativity over fleeting trends in the hotel industry.

🍵 Hotels have a unique opportunity to enhance wellness offerings via in-room herbal tea services. The Equinox Hotel New York, for example, integrates trendy tea presentations, contributing to its reputation in wellness-secondary travel. Hotels are encouraged to innovate by offering diverse herbal blends, potentially increasing room rates. Standardized tea services are often lackluster, presenting a chance for differentiation, particularly as sleep tourism gains traction. By upgrading tea amenities, hotels can address wellness demands and achieve a cost-effective competitive edge.

🏨 Gregory, in 2015, joined Mani Brothers to revamp a Malibu hotel. Upon acquisition, they closed the property for renovations, including the oceanfront terrace and restaurant, consolidating staff training at their West Hollywood office. The overhaul led to a 25% staff reduction over two months. Gregory emphasized guest name usage and service improvements, working in all positions to understand staff challenges. By January 2017, their efforts earned the hotel recognition as a Leading Hotel of the World with Virtuoso accreditation.

📈 In the hotel industry, efficient supply chain management is crucial. It's a network covering sourcing, inventory, logistics, and supplier relationships. It impacts every department, ensuring timely and quality supply deliveries. Key challenges include unpredictable demand, inventory issues, and vendor communication. Technology like cloud-based systems and IoT can enhance operations, while eco-friendly practices optimize sustainability. Effective supply chain management reduces waste, controls costs, and boosts guest satisfaction, ensuring smooth hotel operations.