The summer season is peak time for most hospitality businesses. Often, this is when your hotel or restaurant brings in most of its revenue. In order to capitalize on the increase in summer business, it’s critical that you anticipate your staffing needs correctly and make sure you have the proper workforce to address the additional guests that will visit you during this time.
Here are some tips to make sure your business is ready to capitalize on the opportunity provided by this summer season.
Start by making sure you’re taking full advantage of lessons from last summer. Use data from previous summers to predict this year’s demand. You can take last summer’s numbers for specific weeks and scale them up or down according to national and/or regional predictions. This can give you a clear idea about what your guest count is likely to be on any given day so you can staff appropriately.
Next, use an accounting of last year’s successes to build an even more effective plan of action this summer. If you had activities that filled up last year, for example, try to add more sessions. Meanwhile, if some activities weren’t popular, consider cutting them, especially if they’re expensive and not profitable.
We know that hiring new people takes center stage during the lead-up to peak season, but don’t neglect your current staff. These are the people who already know the job and are ready to execute it at the highest level.
Make sure that you show your old hands that you appreciate them, especially since you’re going to lean on them for training and guiding the new hires. Hopefully, you know these people well enough to show your appreciation in ways that you know they will appreciate.
As much as possible, try to cross-train your employees to do as many jobs as they are capable of and comfortable with. The more jobs each person is capable of handling, the more flexible you’ll be in scheduling. Having multiple employees to fill each position will help significantly when you get the inevitable callouts during peak season.
This can also reduce tensions in the workplace created by the sense that some jobs are more prestigious than others. When every job is everyone’s job, people are more likely to step in as needed.
One of the ways that you can show appreciation for your experienced personnel is by promoting them. There may be only so many promotions to go around in your organization, but when you do have them available, give that position to someone who has been working at your hotel or restaurant for years.
Hiring from the outside can create resentment with your long-term employees. You can see their productivity drop. In addition, it makes them feel that they have to leave to get promoted, and that means you are likely to lose them.
It’s a lot better to head off potential problems by getting everything checked out during the off-season, rather than rushing to fix something critical while your hotel is full of guests who are upset by the discomfort and/or inconvenience caused.
One of the best ways to improve your profitability is to increase the spend per guest during your peak season. You want to try to upsell your guests whenever possible. However, your profitability can suffer if these upsell opportunities force you to incur additional expenses, such as hiring additional labor. With your workforce already stretched to its limits, creating more jobs for people can do more than increase costs. It can also increase burnout and make it more difficult to cover every shift in the event of callouts.
No matter how hard you work to bring in the right people, cross-train, and anticipate callouts when making your schedule, there are going to be times during the summer surge when you have a shortfall. When that happens, you don’t want to be scrambling to find a hospitality staffing service that can supply you with quality staff to cover your needs on short notice.
Instead, take some time now to investigate your options when it comes to staffing solutions in your area. Find one that you can trust when you need help. Make sure you like the people they supply, and that they’re good to work with.
Staffing is a key part of remaining profitable during summer surges. If you can accurately anticipate and address your summer staffing needs, you will deliver unforgettable experiences to your patrons and see your reputation increase every season. If you’ve struggled in past years to meet your staffing needs for summer surges, or if you simply don’t want to deal with the hassles of managing your staffing needs in-house, Xclusive Services can help.
Xclusive isn’t just any hospitality staffing agency. We were founded by hoteliers to create a staffing agency designed specifically with the needs of the hospitality industry in mind. When you work with us, you’ll benefit from our Xclusive Excellence™ commitment. You can count on us to provide quality staff to fit your needs on short notice. We’ll also have managers available 24/7 to help if any issues arise. In addition to providing staff on demand, we can completely take over your staffing. We offer turnkey outsourcing solutions that can address all your staffing needs, both during the peak summer season and throughout the year.
To get a quote in advance, contact us today. If you need help immediately, call one of our local offices, and you’ll be delighted at how fast our Xclusive team members can be there.
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