Hotelmatters - Issue 2 - June 2007
In this issue of our newsletter, we look across a wide spectrum of issues facing our clients as they wrestle with making their hotels, their brands and their hotel companies stand out from the competition.
All of the articles below have been contributed by Hotel Solutions Partnership network members and they are coloured by recent experiences with clients. Our aim is to share our perspective on current areas of debate and on various elements of the hotel business with you.
We hope that you find the articles thought-provoking. As always, we'd welcome any comments you have about this newsletter and the topics covered in it.
Ian Graham
Principal
In recent years, the industry has seen an increasing focus on revenue management as a core element of hotel management.
Internal and external analysts have learnt to focus on RevPAR (room revenue per available room) and RGI (revenue generation index). Laudable as this is, RevPAR and RGI as goals in themselves ignore at least three issues.
Lead associate Katrina Craig writes......
Whatever your view on where value is to be added in hotel development, the facts are that the role of the operator is paramount. It seems to us that successful investors will invest in the people that lead and manage the brand and the operator.
Lead associate Rosemary Jackson writes.....
People are often appointed as leaders on the strength of their success in different and previous circumstances. Past success may not be relevant to current challenges; what is more important is to know how to learn from experience and be able to adapt rather than to do what was successful elsewhere in a different situation.
We aim to provide consultancy with a very low carbon footprint.
More than most other consultancies, our business model minimises the impact on the environment and, in respect of the travel necessary for any assignment, we now commit to buying an appropriate level of carbon offsets.
With the ten warmest-ever years all occurring since 1980, hotel operators or owners of hotel companies are increasingly managing the effect of climate change.
Many hotel owners and operators are training avoiders. Although some employers spend considerable time and resources developing employees, both on and off the job, a large number of employers do not give training and technical skills a high priority. For many, routine jobs are designed to be undertaken by unskilled labour to whom low barriers to entry, low wages, minimal training and high levels of staff turnover apply.
We are at a tipping point; the last two hundred years have been an aberration with western
societies, industries, businesses and cultures in the ascendancy.
