Your hotel management team focuses on long term goals. A given night, month, or even year can fall within the long term fluctuations of the travel industry, so building your brand and the quality of your property are the main considerations to sustain you over time. Unfortunately, sometimes you have turnover and transitions to manage, and the short term becomes critical. At times, this can make an interim hotel manager the best option for you. When you have an immediate need, this can help you meet it.
Setting Up for a Sale
If you are getting ready to sell your hotel, interim management can help you keep it going. A foreclosure scenario, for example, may be a prime opportunity for you to bring in an expert in hotel management. Your current team may choose to leave for new opportunities, or you may simply want to focus on cutting expenses and maximizing short-term revenue. Either of these pushes you away from the longer term approach that usually applies to hotel management and planning.
Investors or owners may want to sell a high-performing hotel to maximize their opportunity. While keeping the current management team can help, you may find the current team looking to leave before you sell. Alternatively, you may simply wish to eliminate the costs involved with a full team at your hotel. An interim hotel manager can run a leaner operation and lock in on current performance to ensure you remain attractive to would-be buyers.
Property Change Management
A prime position for interim management comes when your general manager leaves. Whether the departure comes at the manager’s option or the property’s, you need to find a replacement. An interim manager can provide time and flexibility for you to conduct a comprehensive search for the right person to run your hotel. He or she will work to ensure the property is run effectively and efficiently. The interim manager can clean up irregularities and maintain or improve current operations to ensure the next manager steps into a good situation.
Further, investment in new properties can leave a hotel short-staffed. You may want your most experienced manager to help with the opening of a new location, or have an industry leader manage the initial growing pains. In either case, one of your properties needs new leadership. An effective, experienced interim manager can help you navigate the change and set yourself up for long term success.
Entering Receivership
You don’t always have a choice in the matter. If a court appoints a receiver for your property, you need to work with that person to improve the property’s performance quickly. This may mean pulling you out of the red and getting to where you can pay your bills and operate profitably again. The interim manager’s short term focus can be ideal for cutting costs efficiently and driving your property forward.
On the other hand, you may be beyond being able to keep the property. In this case, the interim manager will work to get to a point where you can sell the property at the best price. A current team might struggle with motivation or with shifting into the mindset of creating the best immediate value. Bringing in someone to help navigate the crisis at hand can be an effective alternative to help you through a difficult time.
Not every period of change makes sense for an interim hotel manager to come in, of course. There will be times that you want to keep continuity or reward a current team member with a new role. Still, managing short term crises and transitions often works best when you have someone experienced in locking in on the moment at hand. An expert interim manager will avoid the trap of doing what you’ve always done, and instead help with what the moment requires.
