Post updated on 15 Sep 2023
5 Tips for Better Time Management in Your Hotel
If I tell you that time management in a hotel is a real daily challenge. More than ordinary business, being open 24/7, and receiving a continuous flow of customers, makes management live in a sense of unending work in urgency. As I interacted with managers, reception managers; I have found that this state of affairs is perceived as a fatality that prevents them from projecting themselves into the future, from taking a step back, from establishing a strategy, or from forming themselves.
This situation, perceived as immutable, suggests to hoteliers that this will never change. That it can’t be otherwise. Unfortunately staying in this idea pattern will not allow you to improve your situation.
One can’t reproduce the same behavior and hope that the final result is different.
If you need investment for tomorrow, to hire a new employee, new software (to save time) or renovations, etc. You have to act today by focusing on the main function of a hotel manager who is to increase turnover.
Each company faces difficulties and must solve them by adjusting one day or the other in its mode of operation. It would be ostentatious to claim that the hotel situation is insoluble or that only large companies with large funds can succeed.
Here Are the Only layouts of the Method:
The secret of time management is that there is none. It’s not a miraculous formula that will magically give you time to do everything you need without changing anything in your organization. So if you want to change and are ready to question yourself, you can improve your daily life and ultimately your income. To be more efficient and help you focus on what matters.
Here Are 5 Tips To Better Time Management:
Plan of the Project:
Fix Objectives/Setting Goals
Set priorities
Know how to delegate
Anticipate the unexpected
Do not fool yourself
Time Management Keys
1- Setting Goals
The first key to getting out of this constant feeling of being overwhelmed is to precisely identify the objectives that must be fulfilled. It may sound childishly simple, but knowing exactly what you should do and why you should do? It will allow you to focus, eliminate unnecessary tasks and refocus on your purpose.
If your goal is simply to run the hotel without real purpose, you will probably get there but for what result going to achieve?
You will agree with me (I hope) by saying that the primary mission of a hotel manager is to sustain the turnover of the establishment, so it makes profits. You will agree, it is not a very motivating prospect, because immeasurable and vague. Your real goal is what you will do with this earning surplus, pay premiums, invest, renovate, and so on. Which is more motivating?
To make these projects a reality; you will have to set goals, then the tasks you will have to perform. Knowing them precisely will help you avoid delaying, keep your motivation in the long run and make the right choices.
Setting a goal of increasing the average price without a real action plan is just wishful thinking and gives you no idea of that How? Why? When?
SMART Time Management
To help you define these objectives here is the SMART Method, which is a mnemonic device, conceptualized by Peter Drucker in 1954:
Specific: Detail as much as possible the actions to be taken to achieve the goal.
Measurable: Find one or more indicators that will serve as checkpoints.
Attainable: It is better to proceed gradually to reach your goal.
Realistic: Do not set unrealistic goals that will only de-motivate you.
Time: Plan milestones and deadlines to organize yourself.
Example: I want to optimize my turnover using yield management techniques.
Specific: I have a good year-round activity, so I will focus on increasing the average price.
To do this I must analyze (among other things) the history of my hotel.
Read books in revenue management.
Develop my skills in Excel.
Set my budget for the coming year.
Measurable: I will follow the following indicators, average price, occupancy rate, RevPAR (Revenue per available room).
Attainable and Realistic: I need to increase my turnover by 2% this year.
Temporary: I have a month to do my budget, every morning I will check and refine my pricing policy, at the end of each month I make a balance sheet.
Once you understand the SMART method you just have to detail your different objectives for the coming year. |
2- Define the Priorities
Why hoteliers (see everyone) are always overwhelmed? Simply, they want to perform too many tasks in a short period of time. To be more efficient or better Time Management, you need to better manage your time, which necessarily involves reorganizing the list of your tasks, see which you eliminate from the list.
Do you probably know the metaphor of the vase, stones, gravel, and sand?
If you start filling the vase with the smallest elements to finish with the larger ones, your vase will overflow. But if you do the opposite, everything should come back. It’s the same when it comes to your time, hence the importance of identifying your priorities. You will find that many of your tasks do not directly serve your goals but are necessary for your activity, so you need to prioritize them.
The tool I am going to propose to you was invented by Dwight David Eisenhower. He was General of the US Armed Forces during the Second World War and later President of the United States. He was one of the actors of the landing of Normandy. This was an event that mobilized more than a million men and women. So you can trust him in organizational matters.
He developed a decision matrix that allowed him to manage his priorities. I will not go so far as to say that a hotel is a battlefield but its method can help you organize.
In the horizontal, you will find the degree of urgency of the task and vertically the degree of importance.
Urgent and Important:
They are the activities that must be handled immediately and solely by you:
Accounting problem
Customer complaints
Any shortcomings or leaks
Important but not Urgent:
Group more or less recurring tasks that you can plan.
Make the Block, groups to achieve the task.
Process bills
Payroll
Remember to add them to your calendar/calendar.
Urgent and Unimportant: These are the most time-consuming tasks. For better Time Management, it is important to try to delegate them:
Update rates in the channel manager
Respond to the monthly country economic survey
Archive documents
Not urgent, not Important:
Consists of unnecessary tasks that can be removed:
Useless meetings
Anything that does not has a positive impact on your turnover.
At first, you will realize that everything is urgent and important to you; however, the interest of this exercise is to lose weight by delegating or enlarging the non-urgent important box of the tasks.
Increase your Productivity Through Time Management
Another advice is to increase your productivity. Always start your day with the task that requires the most concentration, which you like the least. Before you even open your mailbox or take news from the front. This will relieve you for the rest of the day and you will have no excuse for being interrupted by an emergency.
3- To Know How to Delegate Responsibilities:
You have prioritized your priorities but you realize that you can’t eliminate as many as you thought? Perhaps you are like many hotel managers who are reluctant to delegate tasks because in any case “it will not be well done”? Unfortunately to succeed in your new organization you need to be helped by your collaborators. You are responsible for the turnover of your hotel and the success of your goals. Will spending half a day with a non-important and non-urgent task on your list help you reach the target? You will tell me that they do not have the skills and are not motivated, blablabla…….
I will answer you that it is up to you to train them, to explain, to repeat, and to control because it will allow you at the end of the month to save dozens of hours.
You need to focus on “real value” tasks that have a real impact on the profitability of your business.
Delegate a task will have many benefits for your team, you will increase their motivation by giving them your trust. By valuing their skills, you will allow them to break the routine, to empower them and to make them evolve professionally. They will be able to help you in the future, in the accomplishment of your goals.
As mentioned above, you have to change the way you work to see the difference that will not come overnight, but patience is the mother of all virtues.
4- Anticipate the Unexpected
One of the reasons we are always overwhelmed and it is even truer in a hotel, where there is always an “emergency”, complaint from the reception, reservation problem (when one is complete otherwise this is not funny), leaks and various breakdowns. There are a number of things that can’t be predicted. This is where anyone interested in time management will tell you that the secret is to schedule a time for the unexpected.
Eh yes! When planning your week or month, remember to keep busy times in your calendar to deal with these types of unexpected events. If you have a busy schedule you will only postpone your tasks that you will not have time to do, they will accumulate and you will end up discouraged.
Also, think about setting rules with your teams. By determining the reasons why they can come to see you or the steps to follow before having the presumption to annoy you. (Especially when a person arrives at the reception with a confirmation and that we have no reservation in the system) You can also arrange time slots in your diary (when you have to concentrate) during which you do not may annoy you except for imminent earthly danger.
5- Do not Fool yourself Stay On Time Management Practice:
Let’s be very clear sometimes the problem is with us! Between the mobile phone and the computer, we are surrounded by potential distractions. You were looking for the address of the nearest tax office and without realizing it, end up watching videos of cute kittens on the internet or something else.
To Help You Here Are Some Tools:
For example, you can block sites during certain hours of the day. All you need to do is create a list of sites on which you like to get lost (social networks, video sites, and info). To select the days and the hours (from Monday to Friday from 9h to 18h)
Stayfocusd for Chrome
LeechBlock for Mozilla and Explorer
WasteNoTime on Safari
You have to produce a report or strategy. Bring the inspiration in your team members and you will end up playing as the de-miner. You can use Focus Writer. It is a word processor that will hide your entire desktop and taskbar. You can set goals in terms of words or time. You will not be able to leave the word processor until you reach the goal.
If you can’t silence the voices in your head, you can use the SimplyNoise white noise generator that promotes concentration. It’s a bit like a CRT television that has no signal.
The best solution if you really can’t concentrate, keep paper and pencil on a bench.
Also remember to disable notifications of the phone, computer, and program applications. Keep only the really important alerts. As you remember a particular appointment or task you need to perform. If it’s really important people will call you.
I could have gone on to do many other things about Time Management and get you organized, but if you can apply some of them, you should see improvements. When you have reorganized, you will have time to do more things that will have an impact on your hotel and you will have a sense of accomplishment.
The last advice would be to plan times when you could be more effective at work and sit back to re-evaluate your organization’s performance. Moreover, you will the time to get into a constant process of improvement.
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