The main problem hotels and restaurants face is a constant and costly battle with their competitors. This problem, which is in fact caused by the hotels and restaurants themselves, and its solution, I will briefly and easily understand in the framework of this article.
Blaming tough market conditions due to strong competition for disappointing revenues and profits is easy and may sound good. However, looking at this more closely and putting it bluntly, it is actually a clear display of incompetence on the part of those executives who should be helping to solve the problem of not being better than their competitors.
In other words, saying ‘We’re not making higher profits (if any) because we’re facing strong competition’ means ‘We’re not good enough to be better than our competitors’. Why else would they continually complain about competitors and invest a lot of time and money in competitive analysis in the hope (mostly in vain) of finding something that would give them a decisive competitive advantage over their competitors? This leaves us with the question of why these companies, despite all efforts, are not better than their competition. Why don’t they see their true strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, even though everyone does one SWOT analysis after another? The answer is ‘because they are like their competitors thinking the wrong way’. So what does it take to get things right?
Both identifying and solving the real business problems of the hospitality industry require first and foremost a good understanding (and the skills to expertly turn this knowledge into powerful competitive advantages) in an area that is (although most important to success in the hospitality industry) in, for example, hotel management schools are virtually untouched at all or, at best, only marginally touched; psychology. This fact is reflected in the result of a recent survey conducted by a major global portal that provides the latest insights and news from the hotel industry for hospitality professionals according to which: “GM’s number one focus is NOT the guest” . Hotels whose General Managers do not put their guests at the center of what they do? That says it all and requires no further elaboration!
The lack of understanding of how the human being works is the main source of problems in most hotels and restaurants. Not knowing why human beings act and react the way they do, not knowing the main driving forces of their hosts (actual and potential) and consequently not knowing what they really need, makes it impossible to plan, properly implement and manage a successful hotel industry. business. After all, hospitality is all about people, and as mentioned above, hotel GMs not only don’t know enough (if anything) about human beings (yes, guests are human beings). ), but also do not focus on them. Actually, this shouldn’t be a surprise. In catering schools, etc. it is taught to run and manage the administrative parts of a hotel or restaurant once it is operational, which requires non-hospitality skills to be efficient. As for the operational areas in the training centers and in the hotels or restaurants, they teach how to serve (deliver) food and drinks, how to cook, how to clean, etc. This leads to the problems detailed below.
The main root cause of competition in the industry is simply ‘not knowing how to do better than the competition’, something for which the hospitality industry serves as a prime example. A glance at hotels and restaurants makes it immediately apparent that they are suffering from a serious identity crisis called ‘equality’; they are ‘me-too-business’.
As long as mankind has existed, there have been ‘hotels’ and since then, regardless of the superficial changes during the development process from the first resting place to the hotel as it is known today, nothing much has changed. Now, as always, hotels mainly offer their guests something very simple; the opportunity to rest/lodge, eat and drink, i.e. rooms, food and drink (restaurants only food and drink). Even if you add to this facilities for events, swimming pools, saunas and gyms this does not change anything at all. To cut a long story short, at the heart of this traditional understanding of ‘hospitality’ was and still is the satisfaction of bodily needs, which are lower order human needs. Since hotels and/or restaurants continue to operate within the narrow limits of meeting material needs, their chances of becoming truly unique are slim, to say the least. The result: too many companies in the hospitality industry are fighting to share too little with the same inappropriate weapons on the same wrong battlefield.
Thinking and acting in the same way as others leads to exactly the same mistakes they make and to uniformity instead of distinction. That said, the big question is why should a potential guest prefer one hotel or restaurant stereotype over another? Where is the distinguishing mark? All hotels and restaurants claim to be the best but in reality none of them are because they say the same thing, show the same thing and offer the same thing in the same way. Just take a look at their advertising. Yes, there are quite superficial category-specific differences (reflected in the prices!!!), but basically it’s the same within and across categories. Each category is filled with companies striving for greater uniformity, with neither having a competitive advantage over the other. In this context, it becomes clear that entering established prospect consideration for reasons of being better than others is practically impossible. From this it follows that the remaining selection criteria are price and location because the prospect does not expect to get anything better than what hotels offer: a place to sleep and something to eat and drink, that is, ordinary things that he can get. in almost every corner in good quality and at reasonable prices. Here’s what Bruce Henderson, founder of Boston Consulting, said: “Unless a company has a unique advantage over its rivals, it has no reason to exist.”
How can a hotel or restaurant gain and maintain a unique advantage over its rivals? Here is the short and sweet answer: in that they learn about the human being (their guests!), they change their philosophy and put, ideally at the beginning of the planning, the purpose of being a hotel or restaurant and they begin to be an exciting experience. with the guest as an integral part of it. It is the guests and the satisfaction of their general needs (with an emphasis on immaterial values that are much more valuable than material values) that should be front and center and not what hotels generally provide, i.e. rooms , food and beverages and rather basic services Once this is understood by the owners and administrators and translated into actions, the respective ‘hotels’ and/or ‘restaurants’ will remain pending; until then, they’re just ordinary at best, and have, to borrow Bruce Henderson’s words, ‘There’s no reason to exist.’