Networking. Attend local community networking events, get involved on committees, attend dinners, galas, grand openings. Partner with your local Chamber of Commerce, Visitor’s Bureau, Economic Development Council, Sports commission, etc… Join an association, attend meetings that are open to public and members, know what is going on in your community.
Lot Shops. Good old fashion parking lot shops. Know your comp set, drive through before 6:30am and after 8pm during weekdays and weekends. Vehicles love to wrap their business name for visual. Share your findings with your ADOS for follow up.
Shop the Competition. Visit your competition as if you were a potential client. Have they had a recent renovation? Does your hotel have something extra to offer that they do not? Know who you are selling against, and how to sell against them.
Social Media. Make sure you are taking every effort to keep up to date on your hotel social media channels. Follow your competition. Follow your corporate accounts. Know what they are up to before your competition does. Be proactive vs. reactive. Sign up for their newsletters, blogs, white pages, linked in, Facebook, twitter, and trip advisor. You can research your competition as well through many search options. You can research your corporate accounts, and uncover new business (who else is coming to town to work on the same project?).
Online Competition. We all know the importance of parking lot shops. Did you know you can also "shop your competition online"? By reviewing your competitors' websites and looking at the demand generators that they list on their site (local attractions, events, businesses,...), you could find a new source of revenue! Take a look at the things they are listing that are missing from your webpage. Is there an opportunity to add these to your Experience Page as well?
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The
West Gazette
Integrity | Accountability | Empathy | Passion
Training
To ensure the safety of our hotels, it is important to know scams are on the rise. Phone scams come in many forms, but they tend to make similar threats, or ask you to send money. Please take all precautions to ensure you and your staff don’t fall for a scam.
There’s never a good reason to send cash, and we as a company we will NEVER call a property and ask for money to be taken from the drawer, deposit, etc. to be wired or sent to anyone from the company. The only people that will ask you to do anything with money is accounting if your daily deposits are missing and the only place they will ask you to take money is to your properties bank with our deposit slip.
Here is what you need to know:
Scammers create a sense of urgency. They rush you into making a quick decision before you look into it.
Scammers use intimidation and fear. They tell you that something terrible is about to happen to get you to send a payment before you have a chance to check out their claims.
Scammers use untraceable payment methods. They often want payment through wire transfers, reloadable cards, or gift cards that are nearly impossible to reverse or track.
One thing you can count on is that a phone scammer will try to get your money or your personal information to commit identity theft. Don’t give it to them.
Train Your Employees
Your best defense is an informed workforce. Explain to your staff how scams happen.
Encourage people to talk with their coworkers if they spot a scam. Scammers often target multiple people in an organization, so an alert from one employee about a scam can help prevent others from being deceived.
Train employees not to send passwords or sensitive information by email, even if the email seems to come from a manager. Then stick with the program — don’t ever ask for sensitive data from employees by email.
If you are unsure who is calling and what they are asking of you, do the following:
Ask for name of person calling and the company they are with
Ask for a call back number
Inform the caller that you are not authorized to provide this information or perform a task and you will have your supervisor call them back. If this is a legitimate business, they will not take offense or try to persuade you to give them information.
Contact your General Manager and/or RVPO. Supply them with caller information: name, company, call back number and details of the request.
Never give out your co-worker’s personal information, such as cell phone numbers. If the caller is a legitimate business, they should be calling direct to the hotel business number or can call back to the hotel phone to reach the manager.
If someone calls requesting money notify your General Manager and/or RVPO immediately and complete an incident report for it to be on file whether no loss of funds occurs.
Call the police and report it with the information you gained from the caller.
Training
NOW AVAILABLE on WEST Edge. https://rriwest.bizlibrary.com
Check out the updated version of the Linen Inventory Tracker.
The Excel spreadsheet has been formatted with monthly tabs to track linen inventory on-hand, what’s in lock up, what has been ordered and what are your losses.
What is the purpose of tracking inventory?
Inventory tracking can provide you with data on how much inventory you have on-hand, the status of your inventory (damaged or backordered) and can help deter theft.
By effectively managing your inventory you can have the right products in the right quantity on hand and avoid products being out of stock and funds being tied up in excess stock.
The general purpose of this management tool is to keep an inventory of linen supply on hand as well as track "discards" (referred to as losses for the purposed of this form). Losses may be items that are re-utilized as housekeeping wiping cloths, pool towels, maintenance drop cloths etc. or simply thrown away. Losses also include any theft from the property. The main purpose of this form is to identify theft so that it may be kept to a minimum as well as ensuring that L.T.O.S. is managed and useable guest ready linen is not discarded.
What are some ways to better manage my inventory?
Be well organized
Having a clean and well-maintained storage area can avoid products from getting damaged. This will also help you understand the level of inventory you have on property to avoid ordering too much or not enough. Label shelves properly, even empty shelves, with what should be put there in the future. Those designations can always be changed if needed, but you don’t want things ending up where they shouldn’t be, just because an employee thought a certain space was freely available.
Proper labeling
Inventory labeling goes hand in hand with inventory organization. Good inventory labeling will help with finding the right product/material. Each item needs to be properly named and marked with details which fully describe the item as well as any special considerations (e.g., expiration dates).
First In / First Out – FIFO Method
Following the FIFO method will avoid using any expired products (e.g., food items) and bad reviews or surveys that it may cause do a guest receive an expired product.
Track your inventory levels at all time
Creating a standardized perpetual tracker when you remove a product/material from storage will help monitor the frequency and usage as well as deter any theft.
Limit access to inventory
An easy safeguard for managing inventory is to limit the number of employees who have access to product/material. This will make it easier to manage the tracker, reduce errors and implementing change when needed.
Fine-tune your forecasting
Accurate forecasting is vital. Watching the demand such as events, promotions, predicted growth in the market should be part of your projected calculations when tracking inventory and before placing an order.
Loss of linen and terry
Linen and terry can get damaged and stained over time or by guest. If you are seeing a higher-than-normal level of linen being damage, check your chemicals. Ecolab representatives can inspect the machines to verify the laundry chemistry is correct and maintain pumping equipment.
You may also have more stains due to the limited service that stayover guest is receiving. Even though we are only providing service once a week, we need to make sure we are getting their terry and linen weekly. If a guest doesn’t want service, we should still be exchanging towels and/or linen.
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