Time is a scarce resource for commercial teams in hotels. Lack of time has been a problem for the past twenty years, and now when the hospitality industry starts to recover, the problem is even more significant. In addition, it is hard to find skilled and knowledgeable people to fill open positions since many left for jobs in other industries during the pandemic. Therefore, the hotel industry needs to rethink the job of attracting guests.
The starting point is to rethink the overall job to acquire guests. The pandemic accelerated existing trends, which changed the segment mix dramatically, especially for city center business hotels. Therefore the commercial jobs are not the same in 2022 as they were in 2019. When hotels have figured out what they need to do, organizations will not look the same as before the pandemic. The new way of working leaves the silos in 2019 and focuses on teamwork in 2022. Hotels have to organize the new commercial team for higher flexibility, including centrally located experts, on-property sales, and external partners such as digital agencies and freelancers. The flexibility allows hotels to expand or contract the organization depending on how the demand for overnight stays develops.
The only way to maximize productivity in a flexible organization is to work as a team. Every team member should have access to the same information, such as objectives, plans, activities, and progress, in one easily accessible system. By working in the same system, all team members will have an overview and access to details. In addition, when well informed, any team member can help another team member when needed. A comprehensive system with basic functionality for all team members enables teamwork, while expert systems encourage work in silos. The new normal for commercial work in hotels is teamwork. However, time is still a scarce resource. A built-in alert system can help by keeping track of the most critical actions.
Many systems send reminders stacked upon each other until the list is so long that the human brain cannot handle it anymore. Then, when you finally start to tick off all the reminders, you discover that many of them are no longer relevant. Examples are that the demand changed, the guest already checked out, the company canceled the meeting, someone else solved the problem, and the pick-up went back to normal. So, instead of the traditional reminders and alerts that need a tick-off, warnings should be dynamic. A definition of a dynamic alert includes relevancy and impact. Relevancy means relevant in time and if actionable. Impact means the amount that impacts revenue or profits. A commercial team only has time for the most relevant alerts with the highest impact. So, how many alerts can a commercial team member handle each day? Probably not that many before the brain freezes and the alerts start to accumulate in long lists.
Here is an idea. What if the commercial system only sends the ten most important alerts to the team or each role every day? The team member looks at the alerts, makes a decision, takes action, and ticks them off if time permits. It is not possible to save or delay an alert past the workday. All warnings disappear, and the system will recalculate impact and relevance and send ten new alerts the next day. These warnings are now on the top ten list with the highest impact and relevancy. The system helps the team to always focus on the most critical tasks. The example shows how a system increases productivity and delivers higher profits.