We all know the twisted story of Covid and what it has done to the face of a hotel management team. With a possible 2022 return to business as never before the question everyone wants answered is what will the hotel executive and leadership team look like once we come back? Will we go back to pre-pandemic head counts? What’s the right sized team for the future? Will we keep the combined property and regional positions? Is this really in our best interest? For our culture and the future, what is the right direction for our industry? Owners, management companies and brands all have a stake in this ongoing debate. Who will win out and what does that mean for the very survival of hotel leadership?
Post Covid-19, more than ever what will get reinforced is that resources (human & others) will follow business volumes more closely even given that the hospitality is a seasonal business for decades.While this may not necessarily cause drastic changes in rank and file headcount, in my opinion what will definitely be shaken up is the managerial level and the manager to employee ratioMore supervisors and assistant managers will be expected to take on managerial roles while managers will be expected to become more hands on – ready to take on an assistant manager or sometimes even supervisor role when business volumes are strained Cubicle bound managers (if ever in the hospitality business that scourge existed!) will be eliminated; I see something else coming – the back or rather heart of house roles like finance, human resources, engineering may now need to become all round operation individuals and contribute to serving the customer; after all, say, in finance, what accounting will need to be done when there is no customer coming through the door. As far as leadership is concerned, what will change is a mindset of general managers becoming hands on – they may not have the luxury any more of delegating to a RM or HM who honestly may not be there. Given volatile business levels, having combined property and regional positions may not be justifiable as a business decision; moreover, in that combination, the property focus will now become 100% which again negates any combination positions being thought ofIn all of this, and underpinning strategies, a Flexible Budgeting process will become mandatory – flexibility in headcount levels in conjunction with fluctuating business volumes, remuneration cuts when business volumes drop below a certain point, increments tied to incremental revenue and bottom line and so on.
Original story by hospitality net