Amin Deroui - Essential Traits of a Successful Hotel Manager

Hotel managers at these luxurious resorts are required to wear multiple hats to fulfill their daily responsibilities. Amin Deroui says they must be able to provide a resort environment teeming with hospitality while creating a dynamic work environment for employees. The largest hotels in  New York can have more than 6,000 rooms while employing as many as 10,000 people. While this may seem daunting, skilled hotel managers are more than willing to accept the challenge of creating a warm environment for everyone at the resort.

Listening

The most fundamental of these characteristics is excellent listening skills. Managers who find the time to regularly engage employees can gain valuable insight as to what programs are working, and which programs could use improvement.

Frontline employees tend to offer the most valuable feedback since they have daily first-hand contact with hotel guests. Through regular interactions, they learn what services guests use and enjoy, and what services they would like to see added.

Motivation

Successful managers are also skilled in methods to effectively motivate their employees. While it is true that employees are getting paid; motivation is much more than only getting a check. Motivation also means making sure employees are recognized, appreciated and have a clear path for career advancement.

Amin Deroui Knowing each employee as an individual, and not just a name on a schedule can go far in ensuring the employee is motivated to provide the best service possible to guests. When employees are motivated and appreciated, these positive feelings often trickle down to better interactions with hotel guests.

Share Knowledge

Another crucial trait for successful hotel managers is the ability to share knowledge. The best in the industry waste no opportunity to groom their staff for a long term career in the hospitality industry.

Guest challenges are the perfect opportunity to train staff on effective problem-solving techniques learned from experience. Open and free exchange of industry best practices is vital to the success of any organization, especially those that are people-centric.

Accept Change

Change is almost certain, and the best managers embrace change and convey a positive attitude to employees that change is a necessary element for the survival and success of the industry.

Fighting the reality of change is futile, and a negative attitude regarding change has few positive advantages. With rare exceptions, change is good, and the best managers make this message abundantly clear to employees.

Integrity

Amin Deroui says the best hotel managers have rock solid integrity and set the bar high for both themselves and employees. When the staff sees that a manager is honest and can be trusted, it makes following instruction all the easier. The reputation for having integrity may come from doing the right thing for a guest, or making difficult but correct internal decisions.

Amin Deroui - Roles & Responsibilities of a Marketing Manager in the Hotel Industry

A marketing manager in the hotel industry is responsible for maximizing a hotel's revenues. The manager accomplishes this by developing programs to increase occupancy and make profitable use of its accommodation, meeting and leisure facilities. Amin Deroui says a hotel marketing manager must maintain awareness of the factors that influence the hotel industry and gain a deep understanding of the needs and attitudes of a hotel’s customers. The marketing manager is also responsible for coordinating marketing and promotional activities to meet guests' needs, working closely with other hotel staff to ensure guests are satisfied with the facilities and their time there.

Conduct Marketing Research

Customers may choose a hotel on the basis of many different factors, such as its location; its access to road, rail or air travel; its meeting facilities; its reputation for hospitality; or its price. As a marketing manager, you must identify the factors that shape your hotel’s appeal to customers.

Monitor customer reviews on your own website or on hotel booking sites to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your hotel. Speak to guests in person or in followup calls. Review travel industry research to identify trends that could affect your hotel, such as increasing demand for low-cost family accommodations, or fuel prices, or better facilities for business travelers, for example.

Maximize Customer Awareness

As marketing manager, you must make it easy for customers to find out about your hotel. This is no small task when you consider all the options a traveler has, like hotels, motels, inns, B&Bs or peer-to-peer home shares. Your website should be appealing and include up-to-date guest information on hotel facilities and rates, travel and location with detailed information on meeting facilities for event organizers.

Post hotel details on destination websites and online booking sites to increase reach to your target audience. Collaborating with other meeting venues to offer their delegates accommodations or meeting space can give you access to other potential customers.

Promoting Your Facilities

Developing promotions is an essential part of hotel marketing. You need to increase occupancy during times of the year when bookings are low. Amin Deroui says Running special events such as gourmet weekends, or offering incentives such as one night’s extra accommodation when booking for a period, can help to attract more guests. If your hotel has conference rooms, you need to fill them when events are not taking place. Consider offering meeting rooms to local businesses for short-term use.

Build Customer Relationships

To build a stable revenue base and ensure high levels of repeat business, you need to develop strong customer relationships. A customer loyalty program that rewards customers who book regularly will benefit your hotel and your customers. Keep it simple so that customers know how to accumulate points and use them for rewards. Target the program at individual guests or at corporate customers who require regular meeting facilities or accommodation for large numbers of traveling staff or visiting customers.

Liaison with Staff and Managers

As marketing manager you will work closely with other members of the hotel management team to identify marketing priorities. Review future booking levels to plan dates for promotions to increase occupancy rates. Work with the event management team to schedule marketing to attract additional conferences and events. Share the results of customer satisfaction surveys and customer reviews with the customer service team to enhance standards of customer care.

Amin Deroui - 5 Key Hospitality Management Duties to Expect

Essentially, hospitality managers run the day-to-day operations of a restaurant or hotel, including overseeing personnel, ensuring that the facilities are properly maintained, taking steps to ensure customer satisfaction and overseeing the upkeep of administrative and financial records. 

Amin Deroui says Hospitality management degree programs include a strong core of business courses, including accounting, economics, marketing, and human resource management. Their role is to define the commercial and management strategy of the establishment in line with profit targets, the quality charter and hygiene and safety norms.

Depending on how big or small an operation is, pursuing a career in Hospitality Management can entail several responsibilities. Although the job description for these duties varies, there are mainly five key responsibilities every Hospitality Manager should expect to administer: Managing budgets, customer service, supervising maintenance, coordinating departmental tasks, and overseeing food and beverage.

Manage Budgets

There can’t be a business to run if the money isn’t there. Whatever the business is, managing any hospitality operation is a complex position that requires overseeing several departments within its organization. All of these sub-departments have budgets allocated to them. It is the Hospitality Manager’s job to disperse enough money to these departments that will ensure an efficient workflow toward the overall goal of the company. Two major responsibilities are marketing and approving/controlling expenditures.

Marketing

Marketing is yet another important task that a Hospitality Manager must oversee. In order for a hotel, cruise line, restaurant, country clubs, and amusement park to thrive, they must let people know they exist!

Amin Deroui says Planning and strategizing smart marketing projects mean nothing without the money to support it. Everything from advertisements, sales plans, investing in signs, banners, community involvement, even down to the business cards and customized marketing trinkets all need to be taken into consideration when managing a marketing budget.

Customer Service

It’s one accomplishment to have a guest check-in. It’s another to get them to come back. Implementing the best customer service is going to almost guarantee repeat business no matter how expensive the accommodations may be. If guests have had a pleasant experience with an establishment, they will not only come again, but they will recommend it to their friends and colleagues. If that business is doing it right, that guest will not realize that he or she is recommending the business. They will simply rave about what a great experience they had. This is where customer service plays a big role in making guests happy. The three ways to do this is to meet and greet guest, have excellent housekeeping, and address and rectify customer complaints.

Meet & Greet Customers

First impressions are the important ones. It is hospitality, after all! The overall goal of hospitality is to make temporary accommodations feel permanent. This is done by acknowledging their presence and making them feel like they are welcomed, and most importantly wanted. No one wants to feel like they are unwelcomed. Seeing that every guest is properly greeted when checking in to an establishment sets the tone for good customer service.

Amin Deroui - How Food and Beverage Accounting Principles Will Increase Profits

Restaurants, pubs, and eateries, and any business that serves food and beverages, are always tricky places to do accounting. There are many reasons why food and beverages are difficult to track: they are consumable, food and beverages can spoil, and orders can be returned to the kitchen by customers. Amin Deroui says Food and beverage accounting principles can help to prevent financial losses for your establishment. If you follow these simple pieces of advice your business can improve its accounting, and hopefully increase profits.

Conduct Menu Engineering

Before you open your establishment or consider introducing a new menu item, you should conduct some menu engineering. This involves analyzing how many meals a certain amount of food can make, and determining the price that a customer will pay for an item. Menu engineering also determines an item's popularity, and therefore, its profitability. This is the start of quantifying and controlling food and beverage for accounting purposes.

Use Standardized Recipes

The use of standardized recipes that are followed by everyone in the kitchen is the next step in food and beverage accounting. You need to make sure that your food inventory will make a certain number of meals, and your beverages are poured to a common standard. All employees should be trained to follow these guidelines. When they don't, your business is losing money and profit.

Track Sales Carefully

Amin Deroui staff that deals with ringing in meals, customer payments, and cashing out cash registers should be trained to do so properly and diligently. Proper training can prevent many errors at the till that can throw off inventory and skew your accounting numbers. Make sure that everyone is well versed in how to use the register and your food and beverage accounting will be so much simpler.

Strict Purchasing Guidelines

Everyone in your establishment should be aware of and adhere to strict purchasing guidelines in order to establish effective food and beverage accounting. There should be one person designated to make purchases for the business, and he or she should be informed of inventory counts so that he or she can place orders. This prevents over ordering and food spoilage, which cause eateries a lot of money! Prevent this by putting a procedure in place before ordering and purchasing becomes an issue for you.

Have Effective Inventory Management

Effective inventory practices are essential to proper food and beverage accounting. You should create inventory sheets and an inventory policy that guides employees as to how often they should conduct inventories, and how they should be conducted. Inventories can aid with ordering the necessary amount of supplies, and also with determining if standardized recipes are being followed.

Food and beverage accounting is essential to the success of any eatery. You need to do menu engineering to determine the profitability and costs of individual items, and you need strict recipe inventory and purchasing guidelines to make sure food orders are being used to their full potential. If you own a restaurant, pub, or bar, it's extremely important that you implement the suggestions detailed above to improve your food and beverage accounting practices.