Article,Challenges,with,some,H business, insurance Article 1 - Challenges with some Hotel Owners and some Hotel

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Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE TH MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;mso-style-noshow:yes;mso-style-priority:99;mso-style-qformat:yes;mso-style-parent:"";mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;mso-para-margin-top:0in;mso-para-margin-right:0in;mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt;mso-para-margin-left:0in;line-height:115%;mso-pagination:widow-orphan;font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast;mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:"Cordia New";mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}I am writingnow a few articles about some serious challenges a consultant or manager mightface sometimes. Out of respect, and to be professional, I will not mention anynames. I hope thatthis and upcoming articles will inspire and help other hotel owners andinvestors somehow when planning to build and operate a hotel or resort.Article 1 -Challenges with some Hotel Owners and some Hotel Developments Ones Iwas asked to work and support a hotel owner in the northern part of Thailandwho worked on a medium sizes resort.  At first the owner was very kind,understanding and admitted that he does not have any experience on how to openand operate successfully his resort. At this stage the hotel was about 2 monthprior opening - in his opinion!  He talked a lot about the importance ofpeople and always repeated to me how kind and generous he is to local people.He mentioned that he donates ones a year about us$ 15,000 to the poor people ofnorthern Thailand. These donations make him feel good he said!When visitinghis resort the first time, my first impression was that this resort couldbecome one of the leading resorts in the north! The words “unique”, “cute”,“spacious” and “high potential 5-star” did come to my mind.After walkingaround and inspecting the resort, I however discovered serious flaws asfollows:·         There was not one single office in thewhole resort, with the exception of one small room behind the reception. Theowner proudly pointed out that this is his office which he will be use to runthe resort. Unbelievable, but no other office did exist. No Accounting, NoHuman Resources, etc. etc.·         There was no Staff restaurant (Canteen)and no staff lockers. ·        Notone single store did exist or was planned for such as for dry-foods,Housekeeping, General Store, Chemicals etc.·        Nomaid stations at all despite the size of the resort and its areas ·         Etc. When talking tohim about employees which he will need to hire, and mentioning that thoseemployees will also need to be trained well as we wants to be a 5-star resort,he totally ignored this subject only saying that employees at the area are easyto find and very cheap as there are lots of remote hill-tribe people who wantsto work. I also foundout some of this rules have been as follows…·         Employees should NOT have any day offduring the 119 days probation period.·         All future Managers (including Salesand Marketing) should NOT have a name card during the probation period as theymight leave and he might lose money.·         Employees at his companies do notreceive a minimum wage as per law of Thailand as the poor people work for less withoutcomplaining! ·         Employees at his companies do not anyreceive any benefits as per law of Thailand.When pointing at about 20 people I did observe sitting in the grass sinceseveral hours, he mentioned that this will be once the hotel staff and now theyhave nothing to do as the hotel is not really ready. I hinted that some basictraining can already be done or even some basic team-building exercises such assport or games might be good to raise the moral of this obviously bored lookingpeople, he mentioned, “I don’t want them to come here and enjoy, I want them towork as I pay them a salary…..” I started to understand soon why he feels the urge to donate yearly a verysmall amount of money to others since he took so much from his employees!Another discovery later on was that employees at his main business factoryare not allowed to leave his factory compound during on meals and break timessince he already provides a small employee canteen where he charges hisemployees for any meals as per market price (not cost price!)  Next Imentioned to this person that the resort will surly need some experiencedemployees such as Department Heads (Food and Beverage Manager, Housekeeping,Human Resources etc)! He replied as follows:·         My gardener from the construction teamwill be the Executive Housekeeper! He knows well how to clean and how tomake-up a bed…..·         Human Resource will be a friend of himas this person is also the relative of the local police chief which will solveall staff issues.·         Chief engineer will be a member of thecurrent construction team. (This person was also introduced to me.  He wasobviously very drunk with a ‘Rambo” behavior and guess what? ….. He was onlyworking at constructions - before this,  the future Chief Engineer didlogging in the mountains)·         Sales and Marketing is second priorityfor him as his resort is so nice and guest will come anyway … so he thought. When inspectingall M&E of the resort I found out that there are no construction drawings(blue-prints) for this resort at all, even before the opening, nobody couldreally remember where electric cables and water pipes are placed at in theground etc. There was no proper drainage to address the sub-tropical rains,nothing…..First I didfeel very sorry for this owner/investor and tried hard to give best advice, butit soon turned out that this owner was very over-confident and he stronglybelieved that he has a top 5-star resort where he can charge above us$ 300average rate and where the guests will come automatically.Right now thisparticular owner tries very hard to sell his resort without success. Hisaverage room rate is us$ 30 and the occupancy is around 10%.What seems tobe a future leading 5-star hotel turned out to be a nightmare just because theowner without any hotel experience did not believe others at all! He did nottrust his consultants,his managers and he also did not believe in having a management company asrecommended.  He thought that he can be the perfect hotel manager himself.For me, it isvery sad to see a nice idea and hotel to be such a failure just because of theover-confidence and the high ego of an individual. In the end it is the ownersown money and investment, but I feel sad that a potential 5-star boutiqueresort turned out to be a struggling 2 star resort with a few sad looking staffand few guests.