The client

A quoted Irish company owning and operating hotels in Ireland and Spain.

What did Hotel Solutions Partnership achieve for the client?

A route map to success addressing quick wins and medium term opportunities in each of

• People and Organisation
• Brand, Sales and Marketing
• Revenue Management
• Food and Beverage Management

As a result of internal discussion post completion, the client re-engaged HSP to deliver aspects of the Revenue Management route-map.

Consultants

Ian Graham, Ghislaine Oliver, Dorothy Cusack, Stephan Juliusburger.

Background

The hotel is a 4 star country hotel located in the suburbs of Dublin. It aims to be the number one hotel for conferencing, leisure and weddings in the area. The hotel was recently awarded Hotel of the Year by the AA. Clearly, the client has an excellent operation at the hotel but it was felt that nevertheless the business could generate more revenues and deliver more profits from today’s market with more aggressive sales and marketing management, room revenue management, and possibly room refurbishment.

Project objective

Drive for short and medium term room revenue and rooms profitability

• Where can revenue be maximised?
• How can we squeeze sales & marketing better?
• It’s not just more revenue we are after but revenue that is more profitable.

Review the F&B operation

• Revenues in first half of 2014 up 3%, but costs and in particular labour costs, have increased faster such that F&B profitability has declined.

Identify Quick Wins (requiring no capital expenditure) and Medium Term Opportunities.

Project scope

We assembled a team from the UK (Ian Graham and Ghislaine Oliver), Ireland (Dorothy Cusack) and the USA (Steven Juliusburger).

A Dropbox was provided for client and team. Data and reports requested by our team were filed in Dropbox by the client. Our team then reviewed the data and reports reviewed. External sources of knowledge consulted included STR Global and Tripadvisor comments. The client’s website was reviewed as were the websites of competitors. The original architectural designs were reviewed.

All the senior managed team were interviewed as well as certain providers of technology tools. All the team experienced the customer journey – different check in dates; different room types, midweek, weekend, F&B outlets including observing weddings and events being delivered. Several hotel and restaurant competitors were visited.

The team shared ideas, challenged recommendations and made sure conclusions in one area were consistent with conclusions in another and developed recommendations. The advisory team met with the hotel’s executive team and presented findings and recommendations. What did Hotel Solutions Partnership achieve for the client?