What Makes Winners?

With March Madness just behind us and football season just around the corner, I started thinking about which players were returning this year and which ones were lost to the pros. Year after year I watch ESPN, and they always talk about the same teams: Ohio State, USC, Texas, Oklahoma, and Florida, all in contention for the championship. It makes me wonder how these teams are always in the running, especially when the average career of a college player is only 3.5 years. These teams have managed to build a tradition of success, triumph, and winning that spans over generations of players. Certainly it’s the players that go out and win the games, but how do those players manage to be as successful as their predecessors? I think it has less to do with the individual talents of each team member and more to do with the programs these schools have in place: conditioning, practice, game prep and so on. Even though players come and go, these programs remain in place, and the teams continue to be victorious. Coaches, trainers, and support personnel follow their programs to the letter as a means to keep the whole team strong, regardless of who is playing the game.

Our business is similar. The hotel industry as a whole also has “teams” that are constantly changing. Yet despite the changing of faces from time to time at our hotels, our company has its own tradition of success and triumph. Our hotels are consistently recognized for their excellence by our brand partners. We have not only survived, but we have thrived during times of economic hardships, even as other hotel companies have gone under. We always strive to hire the best of the best, but we also know that our success is dependent upon the “programs” that have remained consistent throughout the history of our company. By programs I’m talking about Deep Cleans, PM’s, Revenue Strategies, Cost Controls, and Service Recovery. Tharaldson believes in these programs so much that we have named them our Diamond Core Programs.

Besides recruiting the most talented people, our Diamond Cores are the reason our hotels are consistently the better performers in their markets. These tools have allowed us to survive the turnover rate and still run successful hotels, even when times are hard. As we go through the current economic stress, our programs have enabled us to cut costs without sacrificing service to our guests. The success of these programs has driven the profit of our company, which drives the success of our ESOP.

Like the teams above, we will always recruit the best talent possible, but the way we will keep ourselves victorious within the industry will be by following our programs that have led us to this point.

High School Physics

Does anyone remember learning about a guy named Lord Kelvin? He was a Scottish mathematician who came up with the value of “absolute zero,” the temperature at which all motion stops. We may have a hard time applying this to hotels, unless we are looking at Sunday occupancies, but one aspect that we can apply from Lord Kelvin’s work is a quote I have heard dozens of times over the years.

“If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.” Lord Kelvin

This statement is the thinking behind guest satisfaction reports, lost revenue reports, suite shop profitability, website compliance reports and just about every other report that comes out of our corporate offices. I like to think that we have a lot of smart people working in our company who receive these valuable reports. If reports are used correctly, we can see where we are, where we need to be and how to get there. However, if we can’t get there on our own, there are resources within the company to help us. We just need to ask.

I hope that everyone takes the time to look at those reports and put actions in place to improve performance. Running hotels isn’t simple, but processes like this simply make sense.