What brands don’t know is, that they can create great financial bench strength in their hotels and their owners will pay 100% of the cost.
Hospitality financial leadership – Measuring labor productivity part II
In food and beverage, you want to get obsessed about a similar measurement like you do in the rooms division. In F&B it is Òhours per cover served.Ó
Flying by the seat of your pants
In most hotels, the system for forward looking for financial management is non-existent. We rely on the top line coming in and if it does we expect a certain profit picture to emerge. When revenues are good this works, sometimes. When revenues donÕt materialize because of an event or something that produces headwinds in our business, we almost always fall flat on our face of the desired profitability. ThatÕs flying-by-the-seat-of-your-pants.
How can we create financial leadership every day in our hotel?
“Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work” – Seth Godin. I think leadership is about two things that are continuously and endlessly evolving: communication and the development of people including you. Financial leadership is also about the same two processes.ÊÊÊ
Hospitality financial leadership: Create a ÒRelationShiftÓ
ThatÕs right, your eyes and my fingers have not failed, I wrote the word on purpose ÒrelationshiftÓ and I got this word from my coach, Steve Chandler. He wrote a book with Michael Bassoff called relationshift and it’s about fundraising and fundamentally changing the relationship between fundraisers and donors.
Creating financial leadership in your hotel
The business of managing the hotel finances is not terribly technical or complicated. What makes it challenging is that itÕs usually a very large job involving many people. In a 500-room hotel, you can easily have 20+ forecast contributors.Ê The communication system in the hotel is the key to both smooth management and predictive financial results. This is the how to.
