Mr. Ely

Sales & Marketing

New Brand or Ownership Brings New Opportunities for Invigorating Your Staff

By John Ely, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Signature Worldwide

With the recession lifting, the hotel landscape is bound to change. Some brands will fade away and many new ones will replace them. Instead of fearing change, help your staff embrace it and plan for a new brand or ownership team. Make them a part of the process to encourage easy adoption.

Hotels are a different breed. I have worked in many industries over the years, but the hospitality industry has some unique qualities that I have found nowhere else. One of these is the sheer volume of “transitional” moments. Many companies merge, get acquired or bought out, however a typical employee may experience this only once or twice in their entire career, if at all. When considering the hospitality industry, this cycle of change happens on a regular basis.

There are many reasons for this constant shifting that are based on how hotels are operated and managed. There are management companies that come in to run new properties, brands that enforce new franchise protocols and owners looking to expand. This all leads to changes in how a hotel is run. In the coming year, we could be looking at a record number of changes as we begin to pull out of the worst economic downturn in memory for most of us. There will be hotels under new management, new ownership, new flags and all combinations of the three.

For an employee, the thought of new management usually means times of fear, uncertainty and endless hours of stress. I think back to times when companies I worked for changed hands, and the commotion it caused among the workforce. We had no clue what the future held for us. Will we still pursue the same strategic direction? Will we be working for a new set of managers? Will we be working at all? All of these questions would race through our minds and when you’re worried about what tomorrow will bring, it’s hard to be 100 percent effective today!

As managers or new owners, we have just as many uncertainties as the employees. Will we be properly staffed? How will we train the new employees? How will we retrain and retain the old workers? Many times lost in the turmoil is one very important question: How does this affect the customer?

I spoke to my resident hospitality expert Holly Zoba, formerly of Milestone Internet Marketing and The Scout Report, about her experience with management changes. She had a lot to talk about!

“I’ve seen it done well and not so well,” Zoba said. She insists that the best transitions were well planned. The managers and workers knew of the change in advance and had time to emotionally “adapt” before the transition, not to mention prepare for process changes in their jobs. However, she added, “There were times that we knew of a new owner or management change only hours before it took effect, and everyone suffered — especially the guests!”

New Management

According to Zoba, a new management company is usually a more seamless change, especially when compared to a brand change. New management happens for a reason, and the reason is that the owner feels the property could be performing better under a new operator. These are not easy (or inexpensive) decisions to make, but the result is an improvement in most cases. Zoba advocates open communication lines with existing mangers and setting some expectations up front. Is the new management company focused on sales, customer service, brand image or a combination of all three?

New management officers should meet with all property department heads and lay out a strategy for change. Are we focusing on sales and developing sales action plans for each rep? Are we trying to “raise the bar” for customer service and instituting property-wide training? Do we have cash flow problems and need to cut non-profitable services? Answers to any and all of these questions should be detailed in a written plan complete with timelines.

Having a written plan is not just a sound business practice, but elicits confidence in the new management company from the workers. Along the same lines, the workers must be open to new management processes. Zoba explained that she would get very weary of hearing, “We’ve always done it this way,” from her new staff when the management company would take over a new property. She would have to remind them that a management change was in effect just for that reason!

New Owners

New ownership is fairly easy to spot because those prospects are led on tours of the property and most folks I know in hospitality say that those people are easy to detect. Even so, when new owners take over, they look for ways to put their “stamp” on the place. Are there areas of the property that are collecting junk? Is every inch of the place clean? Are all the hotel processes efficient and bringing value to the bottom line? If not, be aware that a new owner will bring these things to the forefront and will want to make changes sooner than later.

New Flags

A brand change can mean new management with the added inconvenience of a total disruption of the physical property and the computer systems. More than a management change, a new flag has the potential to displace the guest too. Have you ever shown up for a reservation and the hotel you booked wasn’t there? That’s what happened to me about 10 years ago before I learned of “flag changes.” I drove around the highway exit for an hour looking for a certain brand of hotel only to find out they had changed brands in between my making the reservation and the night of my stay. I had no idea that this could happen, especially without notifying me. Plus, that last hour of driving around with tired and cranky kids in the car was enough for me to never book another room with that brand.

The changes for the workers can be equally stressful. From the reservation agent to the housekeeper, to sales, their jobs will certainly change. A new flag usually brings a new reservations and property management system. As complex as our systems are today, any sweeping change means workers must enter a steep learning curve. This means stress, and less attention to serving the guests because they’re simply trying not to make entry errors.

On the sales side, the customer base is surely going to change. It may move from limited- to full-service or vice versa. Either way, the sales representatives will be working with a new type of clientele and their “Rolodexes” may be full of contacts that don’t fit the new brand’s model. Also, new sales managers often implement processes that are foreign or counter-intuitive to the “old” ways. Making proactive sales calls and other methods may be introduced to a sales person who has spent the last few years simply answering the phone and writing up contracts.

Physically, the property will change — new logos everywhere, new sales and marketing materials, additional remodeling, highway signs, computer systems, right down to the operational forms. These changes affect everyone internally, and we can’t forget that it may affect the guests most!

Change is going to happen — more so in our industry than any other I can imagine — and every transition is a shift in culture. It’s disruptive, stressful and sometimes it’s not fun. But it is necessary, and in the long run, I believe it’s good for the industry. At the end of the day, we make changes to make things better, and every change is an opportunity to improve. If we keep this in mind; communicate fairly and in a timely manner; and project a positive attitude to every employee, we can be confident that they (and we) will buy into the process.

John Ely is senior VP of marketing for Signature Worldwide. He is responsible for developing, implementing and evaluating strategic marketing and corporate growth plans, and has industrial and consumer marketing experience. He has an associate degree in electrical engineering, a bachelor's in technical management and a master's in marketing and communications. He is a member of the American Marketing Association and Product Development Management Association. Mr. Ely has served as a professor at Franklin University and is certified as a "Teaching at a Distance" (TAD) online educator. Mr. Ely can be contacted at 614-766-5101 or johnely@signatureworldwide.com Extended Bio...

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