How Performance Reviews can Help Your Hospitality Management Career

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Performance reviews cover two aspects of hospitality management, effective budgeting and employee/customer relationships. A company review will involve a comprehensive report on the facility’s performance in relation to the owner’s expectations and relative market conditions. The objective for the review is simple; maximize revenue and services while minimizing expenses. Reviews are used for feasibility studies and market analysis. They study the structure of the services for developing new concepts in staffing, menu, quality control, cost, and expense management.

A performance review can help you in identifying areas that need improvement. The focus on your hospitality management may be on revenue management, labor and cash management, expense variations and other factors that will maintain costs and minimize waste. Budgeting is an important function for hospitality managers and demonstrates the degree of commitment you feel toward the successful development of the enterprise you are servicing. However, as the McMillan Consulting Firm recently wrote, “Budgets are no longer the best measurement of performance.” Because you are working with the hospitality industry, it is also important to know the effects of your management on employees and customers.

What Clients Want

When people utilize hotels, restaurants, entertainment, or amusement facilities, they expect a stress free environment. They not only want efficient, affordable service, they want it with a smile. If the employees are unhappy in their work, it shows in their attitude. Even the most efficiently managed, carefully budgeted establishment can lose its popularity status with a staff that is more automated in their handling of services than receptive to customer needs and rapid employee turn-over. Guest and employee satisfaction are as important in a review as effective budgeting.

Innovation

Another subject for review would be your degree of innovation. No two customers are ever exactly the same and there are no one size fits all solutions to customer complaints. A good hospitality manager is flexible, finding unique answers for existing problems. At times, all it takes is changing a hotel accommodation, or offering a replacement dish if the customer complains the steak was grilled for too long or the soup contained too much salt. Sometimes, you may have to use innovation, such as expanding the services for a wedding in which a number of guests have chosen to spend the night, giving them a package deal for using the private lounge services at a discount rate.

Innovations can also be found in giving incentive to the employees, such as discounts or free use of the spa, hot tub, or exercise equipment. They may be rated on a point basis, with discounts for family meals or hotel services. The industry may give employee discounts for charter boat services, offer free tickets to concerts and stage shows or arrange special employee/family picnics.

Hospitality managers are personable. While their duties involve the aspects of running an establishment efficiently, using quality control and good time management, part of the review is your degree of involvement with the community. A hospitality manager is a public face. Your degree of participation in community affairs makes a statement as to your concern for the well-being of the community. Hospitality managers often attend fund raising events for charitable organizations, involve themselves in local chapters of youth organizations and communicate their support. Their facilities might be used to sponsor an event, offering special package deals for services.

A review can help you measure your effectiveness as a hospitality manager and serve as a guideline for concentrating on areas that need improvement. If you’ve received satisfactory to high ratings both in your abilities to manage a budget while providing quality service, and the satisfaction of the employees and customer, you have a truly promising career in hospitality management.