Simple Ways to Reduce Hotel Operating Costs While Sustaining Customer Service
In the hospitality industry, customer service is the name of the game. This fact represents both a challenge for hotels to meet and an opportunity that hotels can maximize.
The challenge, of course, is in controlling costs while keeping customer service high. It’s as true in hospitality as it is in any industry: bad service will lose you customers. The opportunity, however, is somewhat unique to hospitality.
We`ve put down some simple ways to reduce Hotel Operating costs while sustaining customer services.
Optimize labour scheduling and staff training
Labour cost is a significant proportion of a hotel’s operating expenses: roughly 50 percent, on average. Labour is an obvious place to begin looking for savings, but solutions require creative thought and careful balancing. Of course, you don’t want your staff overscheduled and underutilized, but at the same time, you don’t want to be caught short-staffed with disgruntled guests and stressed employees.
Stay on top of maintenance
Develop and implement a schedule for maintaining your building’s equipment. For the HVAC system, this might mean scheduling the replacement of filters every one to six months, inspecting fans, bearings, belts, and the area around the air intake every six months, and inspecting for leaks, and cleaning and testing dampers yearly.
System breakdowns or other maintenance issues are costly to the hotel, inconvenient to guests, and give the hotel the aura of an undesirable, hassle-filled experience.
Improve the employee onboarding experience
Employee turnover is famously high in the hospitality industry. That’s a costly problem: It costs an employer an estimated 33 percent of a worker’s salary to find, hire, and train a replacement. Start your valuable employees off on the right foot by making your hotel employee onboarding as positive as possible. Standardize your onboarding with a process that helps employees feel welcome, understand expectations, and get up to speed successfully.
Consider using checklists to keep onboarding on track—before, during, and after an employee’s first day. Before their first day, for example, send an email outlining essential information like how to dress (including uniform requirements and costs, if applicable), where to park, who to report to, and when to arrive. Standardize the email with a template, but don’t forget to personalize it with the new hire’s name.
Take advantage of technology to automate processes
The thoughtful and directed use of technology can increase efficiency, save time, reduce labour costs, and provide a positive experience for your customers.
Consider the many steps involved in event booking and F&B coordination. A sales & catering CRM can set automatic reminders for the sales team to follow up with leads, schedule onsite visits, send contracts, and get signed contracts returned. Streamlining this process saves staff time, keeps details organized and attended to, and makes planners’ lives easier.
Tools like google workspace, salesforce CRM and Hubspot really help.
Look over your taxes and insurance
According to a CBRE survey of over 7,000 hotels, during 2018, property taxes averaged 3.6 percent of total operating revenue, and insurance costs averaged 0.8 percent. Review your property assessment and your insurance. How does yours stack up? Are both valuing your business and property correctly? If your numbers are unexpectedly high, you may wish to contest your property assessment, or investigate more affordable insurance options in your area.
Our team can also be helpful when it comes to reducing hotel operating costs, Contact us for a consultation call today;
