Are you Curious? Linda Glick-Garvey is!

As a little girl growing up, my favorite TV programs were Magnum PI, Fantasy Island and Hotel with Connie Selleca. I was always drawn to shows that involved mysteries and trying to figure out who-done-it by the end of the program. In fact, many of you may have heard me say that I always wanted to work in the hotel industry because of Connie Selleca and how the show Hotel took care of their guests and solved mysteries. By nature, I have always been a curious person and liked to figure this out in a logical way.

Curious people will look for new information and always be looking for answers to solve challenges. The challenge before us is making our top line revenue goals. With curiosity, you can seek new techniques to solve this challenge.

This will require involvement from everyone on your staff, as they are ALL sales people. There is no separation between sales and any other department in your hotel. From the front desk upgrading a reservation to a suite for an additional $20.00 to a housekeeper leaving a pleasant surprise that makes a guest feel special and becomes a regular customer. It takes everyone to contribute to the sales process.

We need to explore the growth of relationships between the sales department and operations. It is up to the entire team to re-think how they are going to solicit new business and protect their current accounts. Do you have a shareshifter warboard or target account list hung for all employees to see? You never know when an associate will say “hey, my uncle works at ABC company; they are using the competition for their quarterly meetings.”

Curiosity will have you driving the competitors’ parking lots, engaging their guests in conversation while taking a look around their hotel, asking current guests at your hotel if there is anyone else in their organization that travels to the area.

Curiosity will even make you ask your potential clients some very important questions. What’s important to you when selecting a hotel? Can we book your next group at our hotel?

Are you curious to find that ‘trade-down’ customer? Have you gone after the full-service and upscale hotel guests?

People are still traveling and businesses are still having meetings. Your curiosity will find them and place them in your hotel.

Nothing happens until a sale is made. You can’t produce new revenue unless you are curious enough to go find it.

Advice From My Father

I look at the growing number of unemployed people in the U.S. and it makes me sad as an American and optimistic as an employer. The number of recently unemployed Americans in January was in the neighborhood of 3.7 million. We have to assume that at least 25% of those laid off were good at their jobs and simply victims of the economy. With this assumption, we have 925,000 good employees out there looking for work. Maybe 10% of those employees would be interested in working in the hotel industry. So, we have 92,500 good workers out there who would love to work in our hotels.

Our company currently operates 222 hotels. If we figure that the average hotel has 20 employees then we employ about 4,440 people. I would like to think that 9 out of 10 people we choose to employ are great at their job. This means we may have about 444 employees across the company that aren't in that top 90%.

I grew up in a house where my father owned and ran his own business. As kids, my brothers, sisters and I learned a lot about the time and effort it takes to run a successful business. We also learned a lot about how to find and treat good employees. I recall a time when my father was discussing his decision to hire someone even though he did not have a position open for him. He simply said, "If you have the opportunity to hire a great employee, do it and then make room." His thought was that if someone walked in the door who was better than the weakest link on staff, it's time to replace that weakest link. Maybe the silver lining in this cloud is that we have an opportunity to strengthen our hotel staffs?

With the quick math outlined above, we could have 92,500 good employees out there interested in working harder than 444 people we have on staff in our hotels. Maybe it is time to look at who we employ and make sure we get closer to 10 out of 10 great employees?