Hotel Operations Management / Edition 3

by David Hayes, Jack Ninemeier, Allisha Miller

Overview

Prepare future hotel general managers to efficiently supervise and run a midsize full-service hotel.

Hotel Operations Management provides an up-to-date and comprehensive examination of all aspects of hotel administration from the viewpoint of the hotel general manager. Detailed information addresses the operating departments of a full-service hotel: Human Resources; Controller; The Front Office; Housekeeping; Food and Beverage; Safety and Property Security; Sales and Marketing; Accounting; and Facility Engineering and Maintenance. In-depth discussions highlight the importance of human resources in the labor-intensive hotel industry, franchising and contract management of properties in an ever-decreasing “Mom and Pop” segment, and hotel management in a global environment. Updated throughout to ensure that readers have the latest information, the Third Edition also includes new case studies, an entirely new chapter on guest services, and new end-of-chapter questions. This accurate book will give prospective hotel managers insight into all of the procedures effective managers use to ensure their hotel's—and their own—success.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780134337623
Publisher:	Pearson Education
Publication date:	07/20/2016
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	624
Sales rank:	731,466
Product dimensions:	7.90(w) x 10.10(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

David K. Hayes, Ph.D. has over 35 years of experience in the field of hospitality management and education. Dr. Hayes initiated the hospitality management program at Texas Tech University. He has held faculty positions at Purdue University and the University of Houston’s Conrad Hilton College of Hotel Administration; as well as the position of Vice President of the Educational Institute of the American Hotel and Lodging Association (AH&LA). In 2005, Dr. Hayes formed Panda Professionals Hospitality Management and Training, (www.pandapros.com); a training resources company that develops customized hospitality education-related computer simulations, print publications, and seminars. Dr. Hayes is a prolific author, having published over a dozen textbooks, including versions translated into Chinese, Portuguese, Croatian and Spanish. In addition to his Ph.D., Dr. Hayes earned the hospitality industry certification of Food Management Professional (FMP) from the National Restaurant Association (NRA) where he has served as a consultant on the ManageFirst program. He also has earned the Certified Food and Beverage Executive (CFBE) and Certified Hospitality Administrator (CHA) designations from the American Hotel and Lodging Association. Dr. Hayes received his Bachelor of Science (BS), and Masters of Science (MS), degrees in Hospitality Management and his Ph.D. degree in Educational Administration from Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana.

Dr. Jack Ninemeier is a professor emeritus in TheSchool of Hospitality Business at Michigan State University. His Ph.D. is from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He holds Master of Science and undergraduate degrees from, respectively, Iowa State University and Southern Illinois University. His experience includes more than thirty years of university teaching at Michigan State University and the University of New Orleans, seven years of service as a state-level administrator of a feeding program serving in excess of 350,000 meals daily, and four years of experience in various positions in commercial foodservice operations. Additionally, he was a Research Consultant for the Educational Institute of the American Hotel & Lodging Association for twelve years. Dr. Ninemeier is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of seventy-three books relating to various aspects of foodservice and healthcare management, and he has written numerous articles involving these and related areas.

Allisha A. Miller is a hospitality industry professional specializing in the development of educational and training materials targeting today’s technology savvy student. As an experienced lodging industry specialist Ms. Miller held the position of Director of Sales and Marketing for the full-service Clarion Hotel and Conference Center prior to joining Panda Professionals Hospitality Management and Training (PANDA) in 2005 as a project manager.

Table of Contents

• 1. The Hotel Industry: Overview and Professional Career Opportunities
• 2. Guest Service
• 3. The Hotel General Manager
• 4. Management, Supervision and Service Skills for the G.M.
• 5. Human Resources
• 6. Accounting
• 7. Revenue Management
• 8. Sales and Marketing
• 9. The Front Office
• 10. Housekeeping
• 11. Food and Beverage
• 12. Facility Engineering and Maintenance
• 13. Safety and Property Security
• 14. Franchise Agreements and Management Contracts
• 15. Managing in the Global Hotel Industry

Introduction

Hotel managers in today's rapidly changing technological world hold some of the most complex, yet rewarding, jobs in the hospitality industry. The hotel general manager, as the on-site leader of all the hotel's other managers, has the most challenging job. Ultimately, it is the responsibility of the general manager to ensure that each area within the hotel is running smoothly, profitably, and in a manner consistent with the guest service goals of the hotel. This book has been written to help present and future general managers do just that.

Historically, hotel general managers have risen in the ranks from a variety of hotel departments. Thus, for example, an excellent director of hotel sales and marketing might become a hotel general manager. Such an individual will likely have an excellent grasp of hotel sales yet lack experience or expertise in food and beverage, housekeeping, accounting, and other areas. Similarly, a general manager who has been promoted from a prior job as director of food and beverage may find his or her knowledge of hotel sales, as well as other hotel departments, lacking. Hotel Operations Management has been written to fill a void for individuals such as these.

Just as the conductor in an orchestra need not be an expert player of each musical instrument to ensure the orchestra's outstanding sound, the hotel general manager need not have the most technical expertise in, for example, the food and beverage department, to guarantee the production of quality food. In this book, the reader will learn what general managers need to know and do to properly supervise and monitor the activities of the food and beverage, housekeeping, salesand marketing, and engineering departments, to name but a few of the areas of general manager responsibility. To further clarify the purpose of the book, consider the case of carpet stains in a guestroom corridor. It is not the intent of this book to detail the best procedures for removing the stains. That is -the responsibility of the housekeeping department and the specialists within that area who are charged with the task of keeping the hotel clean. It is the general manager's job, however, to monitor the effectiveness of the housekeeping department and to ensure that the department has the funding, supervisory personnel, and equipment required to keep the carpets clean. Thus, readers seeking a book that explains "how to" operate individual hotel departments will be better served selecting books on those specific departments. For the general manager, however, this book is a first compilation of the skills and knowledge required to effectively supervise all of the activities in a midsize full-service hotel. As a result, the book is comprehensive and detailed.

Hotel general managers are often perceived as the "best of the best" within the hospitality industry. The authors believe that this perception is most often accurate. Outstanding hotel managers ensure that their hotels prosper by their attention to detail, support of the managerial and hourly staff within the hotel, and the vision they exhibit for the hotel's goals and achievements. In this book, current and future hotel general managers will learn about the procedures effective managers use to ensure their hotel's, and thus their own, ultimate success.

INTENDED AUDIENCES

Instructors

Instructors will find, for the first time, a comprehensive text that addresses all of the operating departments of a full-service hotel. The key word is comprehensive because Hotel Operations Management is detailed in its coverage of the general manager's responsibilities. It is intended to be so. It is not, however, redundantly laden with information on "how-to" perform tasks that are addressed in other hospitality courses or in hotel departmental-specific textbooks. It is unique in that it addresses hotel management from the viewpoint of the general manager, a position to which many hospitality students aspire.

Students

Serious hospitality students quickly learn that few individuals can be experts in every area of hotel management. It is simply unrealistic, for example, to assume that a hotel front office manager will have the same technical knowledge as the hotel's chief maintenance engineer. Front office managers are experts in their own functional areas, which include managing Internet reservation sites and sophisticated computerized property management systems, whereas the chief maintenance engineer stays current on topics such as the availability of improved building materials and energy conservation techniques. Either of these two individuals, however, may be promoted to the job of hotel general manager. At that time, they each need to understand what they must do to properly manage the new areas they will administer.

It is also unrealistic to assume that one's first hotel job will be that of general manager. In most cases, students will start in a functional area of the hotel, and as their careers progress, they will gain added expertise. This book will be of critical assistance when the student actually reaches the position of general manager. Thus, it should be an important addition to any hotel management student's professional library.

Industry Professionals

There are many parties interested in how effective managers do their work. Hotel investors need to understand what general managers should be doing to help ensure the quality and growth of the hotel investment. Those lenders to the hotel industry can also make better lending decisions if they analyze the activities of a general manager. This book presents, in copious detail, the systems a general manager should have in place to monitor departmental effectiveness. Lenders who are aware of such systems and can verify their presence are in a better position to make quality lending loan decisions.

Those individuals in the franchise community, such as franchise sales representatives, inspectors, franchise services directors, and others in corporate franchisor positions may not always have a strong background in hotel operations. This book will help those individuals better understand the challenges facing the modern hotel general manager.

Within a hotel, department heads and assistant managers benefit if they understand how the segment of the hotel they manage meshes with all other areas within the hotel. The general manager has that perspective, and it is presented in this book. In addition, department heads and those that aspire to become department heads need to know what a general manager will expect from them. In this way, they can better develop their own skills and thus improve the quality of their work and their career advancement potential.

CHAPTER ORDER AND CONTENT

An important decision to be made in the production of a book such as Hotel Operations Management relates to the proper sequencing of information. There is no uniform agreement on this sequence. Thus, for example, some would state that a thorough knowledge of front office management should precede learning about the sales and marketing department, whereas others would maintain that the reverse order best ensures understanding. The authors realize that there is honest disagreement on how best to "learn" the hotel business and celebrate the differences of opinion as healthy and quite beneficial to the field of study. In the final analysis, however, sequencing decisions do have to be made, and in this book the authors elected to begin with a history of the industry (Chapter 1), followed by specific information about the role of the general manager (Chapters 2-3), information related to the actual management of the functional areas of the hotel (Chapters 4-11), a chapter related to the unique situations of hotel franchising and operating under a management contract (Chapter 12), and, finally, a review of the processes encountered when buying a hotel (Chapter 13), a long-term personal goal of many individual hotel general managers.

CHAPTER FUNDAMENTALS

There is not, the authors believe, another book that takes the unique approach to hotel management presented in Hotel Operations Management. Because this is true, the authors were free to create a new, and first of its kind, user-friendly book, and they were also challenged to produce the book in a way that could serve as a model for the efforts of future authors. As a result, the book includes the following fundamental components.

"This Chapter at Work"

Each chapter begins with a narrative summary that describes what will be presented in the chapter, as well as why the information is important to the success of a general manager.

"Tiered Content Outline"

Each chapter's outline has been carefully developed to provide the maximum ease in finding important information. The outline also provides a detailed preview of the chapter's content.

"Hotel Terminology at Work"

As is true in many professional fields, hotel managers often speak their own unique language. Thus, for example, guests may be "walked," "par levels" will be established for laundry items, "STAR" reports will be analyzed, and the "GDS" will ensure reservation connectivity. When hotel specific terms are used in the book (and they are used extensively), they are defined at the time of usage, often with direct usage examples that help to further clarify their meaning. The special language of hoteliers is both creative and extensive. In this book, the reader is thoroughly exposed to that language without being burdened by definitions of common words that are not unique to the hotel industry.

"Managers at Work"

Hotel General Managers routinely face unique problems and situations that require outstanding decision-making skills. The "Managers at Work" component of this text places the reader in the position of general manager through vignettes that require decisions to be made to solve realistic problems of the type that must be faced now or in the future. The situations presented are often complex, reflecting the fact that in many cases, the problems presented to the general manager are not easily addressed, or require an analytical solution that can best be provided only by a manager with thorough knowledge of the goals of the entire hotel.

Instructors will find that the assignment of these problems as homework, in-class essays, or use as in-class discussion items will allow student knowledge and understanding of concepts to be readily assessed. Multiple numbers of this important text element are contained in every chapter.

"The Internet at Work"

In many cases, the amount of additional information a specific Web site could provide to a General Manager was so significant that the site was presented at the point in the chapter where the information would be most useful. Thus, for example, in a description of the tasks and qualifications of a competent concierge, a reference to the organizational Web site of Les Clefs d'Or (the International Order of Concierges) at www.lesdefsdor.com provides additional information to the interested reader, as well as content that can be regularly reviewed as long as the Web site remains active. In many cases, the addition of Web resources enhanced the book's own content. The Web references in this book are purposefully extensive and exist in every chapter.

Managerial Tools

Where it was deemed helpful, checklists, forms, and step-by-step procedures that help general managers better do their jobs were included. For example, inspection sheets that general managers would use to evaluate the effectiveness of a housekeeping department were included, as well as sample Pace reports used for monitoring the quality of the hotel sales effort. These examples are only a few of the dozens included in the book. As a result, readers will be saved the trouble of "reinventing the wheel" in the many situations where a common form or procedure is the industry standard, or where such information can be easily modified to meet the needs of a specific hotel.

"Hotel Terminology at Work Glossary"

At each chapter's end, a complete listing of the industry-specific terms defined in the chapter is presented. As a result, readers can quickly review these terms to ensure they are understood and can be used in their proper context.

"Issues at Work"

This chapter-concluding feature encourages students to think about the material they have mastered in that chapter. The questions and issues presented allow the student/ reader the opportunity to reflect on and develop their own views of hospitality management, as well as challenge them to express themselves clearly to others.

The production of a book such as this is truly the culmination of the: efforts of many. The authors' thanks go to Vernon Anthony, our editor, for his belief in the project; Ann Brunner for her outstanding assistance in textt development; and the entire production staff at Prentice Hall for its tireless efforts. In addition, our text reviewers, Peter Ricci, University of Central Florida; Kimberly A. Boyle, University of Alabama; John Knight, Indiana University-Purdue University of Fort Wayne; and Candice Clement,, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, added much to improve both the structure; and content of the text. For their efforts we are truly grateful.

The authors believe that Hotel Operations Management describes, in great detail, exactly what the general manager of a midsize full-service hotel must know and do to be successful. Its up-to-date and comprehensive coverage of all areas of hotel operations make it an essential addition to the professional library of the serious hospitality student. It is our hope that students, instructors, and industry professionals will find it to be a significant contribution to the field of hospitality management. If they do, its success is assured.

David K. Hayes, Ph.D.
Jack D. Ninemeier, Ph.D.