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The problem with General Managers

General Hostel Operations

Rucksack Brian started this discussion 12 years 3 months ago

Do you think a hostel manager should have some kind of formal business training or a degree such as an MBA?

According to an article entitled The Problem with General Managers in Hotels, General Managers tend to be promoted from within the ranks of hotels. That’s great for understanding the operations and services of the hotel, but not so great for running the financial side of the business.

Surprisingly, we see many hotels being managed by former food and beverage or front desk managers with little experience in finance or business strategy.

The hospitality industry is known for its policy of promoting from within. But putting an inexperienced or not sufficiently skilled manager in charge of a hotel operation, without the proper support team, means hoteliers are taking a risk with the results of your investment.

The article finishes with:

A hotel is a multi-million Dollar or Euro business which requires a CEO-type leader to generate a healthy ROI. We hope our industry will develop into a more professional one in the next few years when it comes to strategic management.

Don’t let the strategy be run just a hospitality professional! It takes more than pleasing guests to make money in hotel, so get a real business manager on board…

Many hostels may run into the same problem. A great employee doesn’t necessarily make a great manager. An avid backpacker doesn’t necessarily make a great hostel owner/manager either.

How many hostel managers/owners on this site had formal business training before you started? Do you think that training, or lack thereof, was important for your hostel?

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Sampson

11 years

Many industries have 'non-management' career advancement paths for employees that wish to advance (and stay within a particular organization) but don't want to/can't make the leap to management. This may be a capability issue (they aren't great at management tasks) or a personal desire (they don't like management tasks). This solves some (but not all) of the un-qualified-but-have-to-advance issues.

In the hostel industry, populated with a large number of lifestyle business owners (same as the B&B industry), there really isn't a depth of talent or resources to pursue this kind of flexible advancement strategy within a single, small hostel business entity. There just aren't that many roles available in a business with 1-10 employees.

Perhaps there is a role for specialized training courses for small hostel owners/operators such as:
"Finance for small hostels"
"Managing cash-flow in small hostels"
"Risk-mitigation strategies for small hostels"
"ADA Compliance and hostel properties" (replace ADA with any guiding regulation)

These sessions could be held as a structured section of an existing conference (WYSTC?). The only item on the current 2013 WYSTC speaker list that would apply to this category of subjects is the discussion of J-1 visas.

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karel_mondt

11 years

The topics that are proposed are indeed key for non-"MBA style" managers. Great idea. We should start sharing ideas and our experiences here on this site.
But, I also see in daily operations that mgmt capabilities required are strongly depending of the size.
Smaller businesses are facing teh same problems as bigger ones, but not in the same way.
This means that targetting segmentation is necessary when tghinking about trainings...

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