Did you ever manage or were part of a Hotel Pre-Opening?
Or your concern now is your Reopening?
If so, keep scrolling, as we give you 4 tips for your Reopening at the very end.
Opening a hotel is a totally different challenge than managing one. The to-dos of a hotel pre-opening are enormous, from creating the business plan up to the final validation before the ‘big day’.
Among various steps in the complexity of opening a hotel, most of the final steps are managed through printed checklists and require you to be carrying the legal documents and project plans everywhere.
💡 4 advices to optimise your HOTEL PRE-OPENING in the best way possible:
1. Execute and control your pre-opening digitally
Managing your opening through printed documents is a no-go. It will take you more time, with more room for errors and miscommunications, and makes it harder to have a clear overview of every stage of the process.
“Hub automatically generate work certificates and reports in a few seconds.”
2. Create a detailed hotel pre-opening plan
- Pre-opening budget for expenses regarding staff relocation and training, temporary equipment, and sales & marketing actions.
- Project plan documents and building book (that includes all the hotel information, documentation, executed projects, contracts, etc.) in one place, where you can access it anywhere at any time (with or without internet access).
How? By having the Hub OS E&C module.
- Control of the timelines and required resources every step of the way.
- Obtain your digital snagging list to track any faults reported, the repairs and timings.
With Hub OS you can have all your checklists on your mobile phone for quick and easy access.
- Start preparing your maintenance manuals.
3. Choose your tech kit
There is a lot of technology to decide from in a new opening. And it’s important to check if the operating system you’ll be implementing can help you also in these pre-opening challenges.
That being said, your hotel tech should include:
- Property management system: We’re integrated with many such as Mews, Protel, Opera, Infor and very soon with Roomraccoon and Wincloud.
- Maintenance & Housekeeping: Hub OS (trusted by IHG; NH Group, Eurostars, RoomMate and many more)
- Keyless system: Goki, Salto systems; 4suites; Openkey, and more other great ones.
- Revenue management system: Pace Revenue; IdeaS; RoomPriceGenie; Atomize and more.
4. Hiring the best people
Building and training a strong team is very important to move forward successfully, but it takes time, so don’t leave this one for the last.
As you probably know, the challenges don’t stop once you open, they simply change. For that reason, we want to give you an extra suggestion, this time for your post-opening:
‼️ Evaluate your products life cycle and providers.
There are a lot of assets to be controlled and managed in a hotel. And you should know their lifecycle and audit them every 6 or 12 months.
This is critical in order to evaluate the best assets, the respective providers, and save money!
In the case of multi-property hotels, makes it so much easier to know which providers to keep in new openings.
Preparation and focus are the essential aspects that every General Manager we spoke with mentioned when opening a hotel.
There are many other key factors to take into account before and right after opening your hotel, but we leave you with some that we are already tackling for you.
💡 4 extra advices to prepare your HOTEL REOPENING:
1. Start with Teamwork
Communication with staff was key during Covid-19, specially for those who were in lay-off.
Now is the time to get your teams together and communicate clearly how and when your reopening will occur.
It might happen that you won’t be able to bring your entire team at once, but it’s important to inform the reasons behind to every single person of your team.
Plus, for those coming back, it’s crucial to let them know how important will be the teamwork to make your reopening as smooth as possible.
2. Verify your Maintenance checklist
If you neglected your preventive maintenance during the pandemic, you will probably see some of its consequences. But there’s still time to redeem this.
How? By running some checks before you reopen your doors.
Hub OS Maintenance module allows you to create customised preventives, reviews and checklists. It is flexible as it can be, because we know that every single hotel operates differently.
Some of the checks you should be running are:
- The elevators – make sure they’re working properly and the last inspection was done.
(Did you know that you can also control your legal inspections and add the corresponding reports and status of these inspections in Hub?) - Verify all your air conditioners and make sure the filters are cleaned or replaced.
- Check all the important hotel assets, for example, your boilers, for any malfunctions or other anomalies.
- Review your plumbing.
- Make sure all the light bulbs are working in the hotel.
And the list can go on and on, depending on your hotel size and services like gym, spa, restaurant.
What is important to bear in mind is how crucial preventives are to avoid problems and extra operational costs.
3. Housekeeping – your key department
Your housekeeping team has always played a crucial part in your hotel operations. And now even more!
You can expect more demanding guests and with it comes the cleanliness at the top of their mind.
Even though most of your rooms won’t need a deep cleaning, they will need, for sure:
- Some dust cleaning;
- Windows opened for the air circulation;
- Clean sheets;
- Flush toilets;
- Run showers and taps;
- Clean minibar and refill it;
- Amenities;
- And so on…
A checklist will be super handy and your Housekeeping team can count on us for that.
Know more about Hub OS Housekeeping module here.
4. Contact your Suppliers in advance so you don’t miss a thing
With many hotels opening at the same time, suppliers will be full with new orders. So make sure you contact them in advance to have everything you need for your reopening, such as amenities and food and beverage.
You can also manage your suppliers, contracts, incidents and send new orders from Hub, which means from one single platform.
It might be a good idea to also ask your tech partners for some extra trainings, since for many, they didn’t work with the tools for months and months.
AND DON’T FORGET to take in consideration your new guests desires!
Struggling with any other area of a new opening or reopening?
Let us know, we are here to help you!