LAS VEGAS — The challenges the hotel industry has faced through the pandemic led many leaders to self-reflect and evaluate how they lead.
During a roundtable at the Aimbridge Summit Live! 2023 conference, hotel managers from across the U.S. and Canada shared their experiences and the lessons in leadership they learned.
The pandemic didn’t necessarily change how Justin Blanchard, an area general manager of three Aimbridge Hospitality-managed properties in Tampa, Florida, led his staff. But he said it reemphasized what he was already doing and gave him faith in himself to juggle three hotels.
“It gave me a sense of confidence that things would get figured out; we’ll work through it,” he said. “Having a good team — you can get through anything. … It definitely gave me a sense of self-confidence where I could not have to worry about some details and get out of my head not having to worry.”
As a young professional, Jessica Thompson, general manager of the Voco Franklin New York and Voco Fiorello - LaGuardia East, said she took a black-and-white view of what it meant to be a manager, so she didn’t engage with her employees on a personal level.
“That’s how we were always taught — that was professional, right?” she said.
Over time, Thompson started to engage more with employees, and building a culture has become important to her. Going through the pandemic with her staff gave her “an aha moment.”
“Wow, these people routinely really crave that interaction. They want an organic interaction,” she said of her realization. “I’m not the boss. I’m the leader, and I’m going to lift you up with me.”
There’s an expression that Murray Lowe, general manager of the Westin Resort & Spa Whistler, said he likes: “Make it better than it was before.”
When talking with employees after they make a mistake, don't ask how could they get it wrong, Lowe said. Instead, he prefers to ask them how they would do it differently in the future.
“You’re going to go, ‘Oh, great, here’s what I’m thinking,’” he said. “Whereas if I go, ‘Why did you do that?’ you get defensive.”
Lowe said he’s seen a lot of recessions, but it was never because of something that put people’s lives at risk. The way forward was how they cared for sick guests and sick employees. The focus on making things better had a positive effect. Associates who didn’t get a guest experience exactly right don’t dwell on it, because they know they’ll have another one soon and they can try again.
People who aren’t working in fear of making a mistake will value working for the organization that creates that environment, he said. They also won’t be afraid to point out something wrong because they believe they can make it better instead of worrying about getting in trouble.
The pandemic helped Ralph Mahana, general manager of the Windsor Court Hotel in New Orleans, cut his priority list from 20 items to two. He was previously the assistant general manager and oversaw the hotel’s operations, and he entered the general manager role with that mindset.
The first is take care of his people, which has to be done on a micro and macro level, he said. If someone walks into Mahana's office, he needs to make time for that. He also needs to make time to be strategic with his leadership team to make their lives better.
The hotel partnered with an educator to create an early childhood education program to help associates who have children from ages 1 to 5, Mahana said.
“I had too many mothers calling me; they were crying they could not come back to work because it was going to be a negative cost effect,” he said.
Mahana said his other priority is to adapt or fail. The industry has gotten stuck at times doing things the same way because that’s how they were always done, he added.
“There are chunks on my calendar now left open to throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks because we have to fail in order to excel, and it is really fun,” he said.
Employee Priorities
A lot of times, improving employees’ situations comes down to flexibility and finding out what they want, Thompson said. One of her associates is a single mom with three kids, and she has to drop them off and pick them up from school. The hotel’s traditional day shift runs from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., so she would either have to leave early, causing strain on the hotel operations, or pick up the kids late.
To fix this, she checked with the other employees, and they changed the shifts, moving them all ahead by one hour, Thompson said.
“It’s one minor thing that we did that changed it for them, and that’s a loyal employee,” she said. “It’s being engaged with them and building a culture where they feel comfortable coming to you and telling you what the problems are, because for the same reasons that a guest won’t, an employee won’t — they don’t feel that inclusion. They don’t feel like they have a good culture.”
Blanchard said while he has always had respect for housekeeping, that has grown over the past several years in particular. A well-staffed department can make the difference in whether a hotel has enough rooms to sell or if the hotel has to close some inventory.
“It gave me this incredible difference of perspective and value,” he said. “I valued them in terms of how hard it was before as well, but just in terms of like sheer value of the operating piece of it, because that was never the challenge that I had to experience before that.”
Career Growth
As she looks at potential employees, Susan Garcia, general manager of the Kissel Uptown Oakland, said she’s also talking with the candidates about what they want to do in the future.
“There’s a lot of opportunity, as we grow, for internal growth,” she said. “We’re also shifting that a lot more than we were before. We always were trying to grow associates, but we’re really pushing that.”
In recent months, Garcia's hotel had an overnight houseman accept a maintenance position, and now he’s one of the hotel’s engineers, she said. That approach helps employees grow their careers, and when they see it happen with colleagues, it builds more loyalty because they see it’s possible.
There are several Aimbridge-managed hotels in the San Francisco Bay Area, and that creates opportunities for employees to grow their careers in nearby hotels. Given the company’s presence in the U.S., they could potentially advance their career somewhere across the country.
“That’s huge, because I can get people in with that, people who are interested in the industry,” she said. “That is a huge plus that we have for that job. It’s a career.”