AXIS Hospitality International

HOTEL PROJECT MANAGEMENT FOR DUMMIES

WHERE SHOULD ONE START IN HOTEL DEVELOPMENT? NO, NOT THERE STUPID!! OH BOY! THEY NEED A COMPASS. SOMEBODY GET THEM A COMPASS.

Starting in the middle is not cheating. It just means that you'll never get there, plain and simple. You have to start at the beginning.

It seems that the time has come for a new instructional program for those who have successfully reached a point where they have done it all already and are now ready to develop a hotel or resort. They have successfully brought up a family, made a humongous success out of a business, built a huge home, drive a high performance automobile or two and are now ready to build the ultimate status symbol, a hotel or resort.

What does one do next? It's simple really!

1. Build a hotel.
2. Get a hotel company to invest.
3. Reap huge profits.

No, No No!

The process is actually more like a marathon, and although a couple of cheats have been known to start in the middle, those who truly succeed are not always first or second, some come in last but they come in to warm applause and admiration. Those that fail do so for different reasons. Typically their preparation was not quite complete. Perhaps their speed was too fast at the beginning, their breathing too quick in the middle or their hydration insufficient. Those that completed it prepared well, trained through thick and thin, set and met deadlines, kept their eye on the date, compensated for shortfalls and climaxed to their best performance on race day.

The process is far from a quick sprint. It can never be done quickly and efficiently. There are more than one that win and success generally starts well before you start and then after you have hit the tape.

This is my pre-amble for the development process of a hotel or resort project. It is important to realise up front that there is more to the process than construction and operation. There are several steps necessary before an investor, a banker or a hotelier will show any genuine interest. Oh I do not mean that they will not write nice letters of intent, letters of interest and provide the developer with eloquent assurances of commitment but there are some half dozen critical steps that must be complete before these three 'characters' will sign anything meaningful.

Here is a list of some of those things that might be required before signatures will start to flow. Choose any six and you will be off to a good start!

1. Finalized land documents. Title. Lease. Environmental study. Access & egress. Control by owner/developer. 
2. Market Study & Financial Projections. A positive, credible market study completed by a recognized international group. The study will recommend size, market positioning and average rates. It will review growth plans, supply and demand, historical performance of the competition and will estimate market share. The operator and lender will sanity-check these numbers from their own experience and discount where necessary. 
3. Architectural program and Preliminary design. Most hotel groups start with the size of a basic regular room and bathroom module. This is a "Go" or a "No-Go" measurement. 
4. Team. An experienced team will be important to the success of the project. This will include a review of the track record of the Developer, the builder, the architect, interior designer, kitchen & laundry planner, landscape designer, engineers and other specialists where necessary.
5. Board of Directors. A background check of the Board members will be required.
6. Construction permit.   
7. Management contract. A signed commitment from a recognized brand or management company.
8. Investment Strategy....Equity (25%-50%). No, land value is not enough. You must have some cash! Exit strategy.......no, this is not a scam when the builder heads for the exit with your cash, it is the planned exit from this investment.
9. Debt (50%-60%). Details of the loan will be important to the equity investors and the operator. The existence of a construction loan under the right conditions may make a big difference.
10. Development budget. Many believe that the budget is merely the design, construction & FF&E and forget the financing, pre-opening and other development expenses. 

Financing early operating losses needs to be thought through before running into them! Operating losses are almost guaranteed in most cases. We used to guess at five years. Now we guess at three. How much will be dictated by the operator who, accept it or not, does not ultimately control demand.

Hotel Project Management today does not start with construction, it starts with 'Developer Kindergarten' where the ten building blocks of development are played with until they are fully
understood, rest solidly in the right order, are no longer hurled around............ and ends in Year Three when the lucky student graduates into dark, thick oily black ink. 

For your set of Building Blocks for a resort development, contact [email protected]

THE DEMISE OF RESTAURANTS & BARS IN HOTELS?

IT HAD TO COME. THE DAY A HOTEL GROUP GAVE UP ON THAT UNPROFITABLE 'LOST LEADER', THE FOOD & BEVERAGE DEPARTMENT.

 The announcement by Hilton that they will test a new Business Area concept to replace the Lobby Bar is admission, albeit not surprising that we have failed to retain our edge in running restaurants, bistros and bars and now need to re-invent our basic product mix and maximise our huge, wasted public areas.

Having personally closed some 20-30 discoteques some 20 or so years ago with the full realisation that most business people would rather get a good night's sleep than join the kids on the pulsating dance floor, I can sympathize with Hilton's dilemma, and more particularly the pain of the hotel owners, in dealing with the huge losses created by these unprofitable, tired and cavernous public areas.

I was enthused by the Hyatt initiative that twinned their food outlet with a snappy deli style counter and takeout food area and have seen countless chains attempt to reinvent, restore, reno and retire their public spaces in favor of other weak concepts.

However all of these efforts are shots in the dark, weak efforts to make a little difference rather than large, coordinated community efforts to maximise the huge chunks of unused indoor (and outdoor) space in every community.

This trend leads me to imagine what they should have been in the first place. Here are some future options for development consideration. Future ways in which locals can benefit from this excellent space and create traffic, interaction and interest............sort of like what the airports have become but with more of a planned and changing theme.

• Specialty Retail (electronics, or fashion or fine foods, exotic automobiles)
• Shop Local (local produce, home-made food specialties, cheeses, local wines, tomatoes)
• Franchising (networking, short term rentals, interviews, sample rooms)
• Sports (fitness & health products, golf & tennis lessons, )
• Technical training (woodworking, auto mechanics, computer science)
• Product displays (electronics, computers, sports equipment, Home furnishings, real-estate)
• Wheels. (Motorcycle & scooter displays, bicycles, skate boards, in-line skates, surf boards)
• Music & Theatre. (Concerts & chorales, school plays, community art shows)
• Local artisans & Handicrafts (artwork, glass blowers, stained-glass etc)

All of this making it obvious to me that what is needed is the equivalent of a 'public space or community planner', or a person who can plan for the sale, rental and regular use of all these spaces on a weekly, monthly and seasonal basis. A dynamic person (or company) who treats these areas like a staging area, an exhibition centre, an exciting place to visit or stay at, an interactive urban happening, a stage, a scene.

It is time to become creative, time to work with the other hotels, community centres, police & fire departments in the community to plan a destination around a theme.......imagine a cheese week in which all hotels and public buildings in town threw open their public areas to host a Cheese Festival, or a Garage Sale with shuttle service between the sites.  

This is the time to re-think our communities' public spaces and expose them to our existing visitors while creating reasons for others to visit our areas and meet the people.

This is a huge sponsorship opportunity waiting to happen.

WHAT IS A BANQUET CHAIR YOU ASK? IF YOU KNOW NOT, PLEASE ASK.

HOW CAN THIS HAPPEN?  A MAJOR HOTEL GROUP STEPS OUT OF THE MOULD AND CHOOSES A CHAIR THAT DOES NOT WORK, IS NOT DESIGNED FOR BANQUETS OR MEETINGS AND IS NOT YET TESTED.

All in the name of re-inventing a brand, I find my client with over 3,000 chairs that will not work for all the functions that these all-purpose chairs must serve. How can I explain that this came from one of the largest hotel management companies in the world, a company that knows more about banquet chairs than God.

As I think about the functions of a banquet chair, I ask myself how a designer can use pure aesthetics to make this critical decision that has seen the design evolve over 30 or more years.

Here are the features of this office waiting room or cafeteria chair selected by this brand currently under 're-invention'.

• Tubular frame with plastic stoppers.
• Arms to require movement of the whole chair when entering or exiting either a banquet table or a schoolroom set-up.
• Faux leather material that ressembles plastic......but looks like leather.
• Limited seating due to wider sweep of arms. (reduction of capacity by 20%)
• Inappropriate for Theatre Style due to size. Watch for fingers trapped between the arms!
• Requires push back to exit chair.
• My arms do not have access to my Blackberry while seated.
• Not dressable.
• Can not hold a jacket unless you decide to sit on it.
• Dubious strength for those who wish to tilt backwards.
• No handle....requires 2 hands for lifting.

We call it a banquet chair but is a lot more than that! Think about it, think hard and long. It has been tweeked, re-invented, re-designed and re-upholstered. It is thrown, stacked,  and can be carried in groups of six, by most men and in groups of three by most women. Here is my list.

1. A stool for all sizes but actually a chair.
2. A coat hanger.
3. A three directional chair.
4. Fits ten around a round table.
5. Allows mounting and de-mounting without push-back
6. A frame with one handle to haul it, a frame to push from to relieve your weight, in long speeches.
7. Stacks ten high.
8. Re-upholsterable again and again.
9. Schoolroom seating in tight spaces.
10. Theatre seating with no lost space.
11. Allows access to hip-held Blackberry and wallet while seated.
12. Material that breathes during long sessions.
13. Fits children and the obese without embarrassment.

How then can one of the world's largest hotel groups select a chair that does not meet one of my criteria!! How is that possible. How can they hire a a designer that pays no attention to function at all. Allow me to elaborate. The design of our wonderful 'banquet chair' has evolved over the years.

1. I call it a stool but it is like a mini-stage. Only because it serves well to sit on facing left and right (sideways), straight ahead and even backwards with legs straddled, all without moving it from a its' original position.
2. It holds on to a jacket as a coathanger when needed or can be dressed with multiple colours for weddings and gala dinners.
3. Works for banquets, theatre style, schoolroom style and weddings.
4. Looks good for 8 around a table and is also good for 10.
5. Allows a sittee to leave or arrive during a tightly packed event without shuffling the chair back, sideways or around.
6. The handle at the high point allows lifting by staff with one hand, holding by a visitor chatting with a sittee and a frame that allows sit-ups to relieve lower extremeties during long speeches.
7. Designed with its' own cart to easily store and transport ten chairs (or more) at one time.
8. When the upholstery wears out, replace it. The frame lasts forever.
9. In tight spaces, the chair requires no push back to enter or exit.
10. Fit tightly together and can be inter-locked to form a rock solid line of seating.
11. Lean forward and retrieve a ringing phone off your hip without having to stand up.
12. Material that breathes allowing long sessions of comfort.

Incompetence comes at many levels and for this one I blame not the designer that obviously has no hospitality experience but has been given the authority and responsibility , I do not blame the brand, their interests lie in growth and growth alone. This is a leadership issue.

There are some things that are not broke and they do not need to be fixed.

But this poor decision will haunt this hotel's management team forever. They will never be able to replace all these poorly chosen chairs. they will buy more to replace the many that break. they will replace the torn plastic material with more plastic.They will adjust the capacity downwards of their banquet and meeting rooms and the owner will suffer profit potentials forever.

For a critique of your favorite piece of hotel furniture or for assistance in the selection of FF&E, contact [email protected]

And check out this Blog

http://www.ehow.com/how_5931360_choose-commercial-banquet-chairs.html