Hospitality Industry

The lodging (hospitality) industry is different from other types of industries because the inventory (rooms) cannot be stored and sold at a later date. There is a fixed amount of inventory which needs to be sold (rented) each night. Any rooms which are left unsold represent lost revenue. This places a tremendous amount of pressure on the owner and manager of lodging establishments, and forms the basis of hotel and motel management. The goal in this industry is to maximize the yield (revenue) for the property by renting the most rooms at the highest rates. This requires that the property build a strong customer base, have employees who are able to encourage repeat business (a critical aspect of this industry), and market the property appropriately. This research examines the experiences I have had in the hospitality industry and considers how those experiences have contributed to continued learning regarding fundamental operating and management principles.

Since 1980, I have purchased four properties in the Carmel/Monterey area; three of these have been sold and I remain the managing partner of the fourth. When a property is purchased, the staff remains with the facility. This means that the new owners must work with the current staff in implementing the changes that are desired (few owners purchase a property because they believe that it can continue without any changes).

At one of the first properties I purchased, the h

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improving the property's performance in the offseason. Because the computer was able to perform routine tasks much faster than I could do them manually, I now had additional free time which I could use to walk around the property and interact with guests and employees. This enhanced the interaction among us and helped guests feel that they were special. The return rate of guests went up, as did referrals to first-time guests who were friends of those who had stayed with us previously. I learned this information because we could now track how a guest learned of the property in the computer system. The computer system also tracked when certain bills were due, and reminded me when these needed to be paid. This improved my ability to manage the finances of the property and enabled us to earn the maximum amount possible by not overpaying or paying bills too early. Principles Developed I learned that the information that the computer held was important, but that I could not rely on it totally. For example, while the computer could tell me that a certain week in January was not booked as high as I might like, it could not tell me that it was because the Super Bowl was scheduled for that week and we were traditionally underbooke

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