Hotel and Hospitality Consultancy
Five benefits of hiring a reputed hotel & hospitality consultant cum chartered accountant
Probably you own a chain of hotels or a hotel, and have a trustworthy management team and quite satisfied with the results derived. But, you may realize that there may not be any internal resources that can respond to some events or situation, be it external or internal, which might perhaps affect your results.
You may be concerned about the possible expenditure involved along with the implications of consuming good amount of time for developing new strategies or capabilities on your own! Are you aware of the different areas that needs improvement and even if you know, you may be unsure as to where to start from! With the market changing fast, you need to act fast or start losing your profits and precious customers.
Although you have operated successfully your hotels in the past, but do need help to take care of few parts associated with operation and stay ahead in changing times. This can be key turnover, market repositioning, market changes, transition, renovation, rebranding, all or any of which might require professional assistance. Short term help can always prove to be valuable in the long run. The best solution will be to hire a consultant to do the job, which lead to significant improvements, within short time-period.
Benefits of hiring hospitality or hotel consultant
. Change Management: It is systematic change management within the organization and everything which moves to future from current state. Often, it works along with project management, however, involves few strategies and softer skills to help people to deal with difficulties that comes with changes. With the hospitality being dynamic, periodical changes are inevitable and may come from different sources like divestments, ownership changes, mergers, acquisitions, etc. Renovations, increased competition, business evolution, brand changes, market influence, technological change, generational differences may motivate need to change the states. The knowledgeable consultant can focus better upon the project and at the same time can take up their related responsibilities. No comprise need to be made and they can provide specific experience and expertise which can ensure the project moving in correct direction. This way it becomes easier to execute tighter timelines and costly mistakes.
- External voice: Fresh eyes and objective solutions perhaps are few things that the consultant can provide. The consultant does offer an external voice as well as perspective to the hotel. Also, they will not have traditional or emotional connection with the current state of the hotel. Their experience also offers meaningful shift within the perspective and specific knowledge provides more knowledge when compared to in-house employees. The can make quick suggestions, help to lead the team to have clear picture of the desired future state, provide a proper path to reach the objectives and also highlight concerns. The consultant also identifies issues with the operation that you might not be eager to admit to or can’t view properly, which they are capable of objectively. If the hotel faces cleanliness issues, then they point this aspect very clearly. They do offer training, develop solutions and make appropriate recommendations.
- Training: It is quite natural for everyone to learn from his/her mistakes. But mistakes are likely to cost money and time. Experienced consultants are of the opinion that if the different aspects of the hotel are checked out to identify the possible areas of development, then most of them can be solved by fixing up two things: 50% of issues are related to training, while the other 50% being resource support. Training does involve some investment and time. But you may be posed with the question as to where to start, how to train world class people in case, lack of training is found to be the issue or perhaps the operations people are fabulous, but the maintenance or sales team require some training. Perhaps, the F&B Manager is a good one, but was never in the past involved in developing any revenue generation strategy of any type. The consultant can accomplish the task very quickly.
- Project Work: Consultants can help with any specific project work. Anything deemed important and needs to occur now also is to be executed properly. Probably, you lack proper human capital for the same. This can be related to executive turnover, hotel openings, technological changes, rebranding, brand mandated improvement or changes, strategic repositioning, etc. The consultants can be hired as and when required to take care of all or any of these aspects.
- Experience & Expertise: The consultant is generally hired for any specific reason. If the desire is to oversee general operation of the business, then it is a 3rd party management company or operator that you need to search for. Upon hiring consultant to serve some specific purpose, it is essential to select one having more experience and expertise than the in-house employees. With the industry witnessing changes at a fast pace, it becomes essential and crucial to train from time to time the concerned employees of the business, so that they can adapt well to the ongoing changes and enhance their productivity as well that of the business. The latest status quo perhaps is disruption, which is a fact. It is quite natural for your business to start losing profits, if it lacks in having a team who have that cutting edge. If you are not able to retain talents, seem to be hiring for key positions always, not able to meet growing expectations or targets consistently, then the team is lacking the necessary experience and expertise, or not adequately trained to do the job. This issue can be fixed easily.
Conclusion
The fact is that consultants do charge some amount. But the job done by them can work for your hotel or hospitality business and also allow you to be ahead of your competitors and win favors of clients. Reputed consultants do give lots of time to understand the current, specific situation of your business, your goals and needs and accordingly try to develop the most appropriate and fitting solution.