Morning Meeting Madness

ehotelier.com
By Bert van Walbeek


Evil Erik means business while, as General Manager, he is addressing the Daily Morning Meeting every day. Cleverly this "morning prayer" is scheduled in such a way and time that his stressed department heads do not have to go out of their way to avoid guests during the busiest time in a hotel.


While breakfast service is in full swing, "early arrivals" and many "checkouts" are crowding the lobby, room service waiters are fighting with the maids for the use of the elevators and the engineering department is still "checking" the guests' complaints about low temperature of the hot water, the leadership of his hotel is faithfully gathering at 08:30 AM in the safety of the executive meeting room, next to his spacious office.

That 3 meeting organizers are fighting to get the attention of the banquet department executives for the last changes in their plans, that a VIP arrival is due in few minutes and a senior minister will open one of the conference are all minor details, since nothing can stop Erik's meeting routine and this "gathering of the clan" .......
S
ince his P.A. has to take the all-important minutes, Erik, as always, assigns the most junior secretary to handle the phone with the instruction to tell everybody : "They are in a meeting! " , and then settles in the chair with the highest back and enjoys his cafe-latte brought up by the stressed room service head waiter himself.

Once all meeting participants have settled themselves in "their" chair, claimed by ranking and seniority of service, put on their "I am important" faces and piled the various reports from the previous day on the table, the ritual of this congregation can start.
E
rik starts the process by grumbling that he had expected more revenue yesterday and after that wonders why the daily budget was not achieved.

Accounting, loyal as always, chips in and observes that Food & Beverage once again, had taken a day off and did not supervise the implementation of her so beloved up-sell program.
Food & Beverage shoots back that if the hotel had more guests, it would be easy to achieve the F&B budget and, more or less, blames Marketing for the floods in the country.
That, of course, upsets Marketing, but doesn't stop him of passing on the blame to the sales people for being too much behind the computer instead of meeting the customers face to face.
Sales, with her 30 years of service in the hotel, looks at Front Office and proclaims for the 2.747th time in her career, that if the front desk staff would be friendlier and the reservation people more proficient, then the Commercial Accounts and the Wholesalers would patronize this hotel much more.

This enrages Front Office, as she is of the opinion that poor IT equipment at the desk makes it impossible to be friendly and that she has told the Engineering 100 times that the telephones in the reservation are outdated and impossible to work with efficiently.

And since Engineering is using the hot water problem to stay out the heat in these meetings, she also grabs the chance to have a go at her arch-enemy in the hotel, the Housekeeping and tells the GM that yesterday guests had to wait up to 3 hours because the rooms were reported "clean " much to slow ......... again ............

This remark opens the door for Housekeeping to hold the Human Resources accountable for being too lazy to go up-country and recruit more maids and laundry boys, and for offering those peanuts, thus hiring "monkeys".

That remark closes the responsibility loop by Accounting standing up fuming and claiming he cannot be responsible for everything in this hotel, even while being the best in town in his profession.

This daily " circle of blame " always results in Erik's coffee-latte getting cold and Room Service already knows to have a second one on hot standby, nothing but the best for the boss!
Also, all participants know what will be the next phase of this daily routine.
Erik is now going to say : "Boys and girls, team work is the key to success" and will explain once again, like a mother her naughty child, that team stands for "together each achieves more".

After that there is a 95 % chance that he will continue with: "So, you see, all of you, the owner gave me hell last night, he needs more money to pay the bank's debts".
"What else is new, Mr. Erik ?" his controller will slime again and add, while looking at Marketing : "Hongapore rooms are selling like hot cakes , but to sell them in our city it needs a rebate".

"Great thinking," Evil Eric will then cry, "Rebates, nothing like a healthy rebate to stimulate business. Look into a rebate program for me, will you?"
Erik then glances around the table, "Let's have some more ideas, we need your creativity!"
"How about offering a discount on joiner rate? Front Office will say for the umpteenth time, hoping to get rid of their day by day nightmare .....
Evil Erik will then say, as for ever and a day: "I don't know, that might be costly, and not good for the average room rate."

Front Office then encounters: "We'll offer it only to holders of Asian passports, as they now have a 65 % market share in the city".
"Great thinking", Erik exclaims: "Develop that one for me! Boy, are we building up creativity in this room !"
"How about a secretary program?" Marketing will chime in.
"A secretary program, pass that by me again, normally we only talk to the bosses, they are much more important."
"We give points for every reservation a secretary makes, and those points can apply towards the use of free rooms on weekends with her boss."
"Great thinking" Evil shrieks, beside himself with joy: "Guys, today we're really cruising, come on, let's have some more ideas, we'll pull this hotel out of the slump yet."
"How about painting our hotel in pink color?" said Housekeeping, in charge of the property's colors, due to her ability to change colors within seconds.
"A paint job?" asks Erik carefully, knowing about her red-hot love affair with the owner. "How could a coat of paint help our occupancy?"
"Well," she said lamely, thinking about the commission promised by the Pink Paint Company, "it'll make people think we are a new hotel and therefore reason that we must have low rates, so they will come and ask."
"OK, let's run with that one a little further", said Front Office, suddenly forgetting about her enmity of Housekeeping "Let's paint each floor a different color and develop different rate for different colors, the darker the color, the lower the rate!"
"Great thinking", Eric hollers again, "that sure would work miracles on our visibility in the market place!"
By now Evil Erik is totally lost for words and while thinking about his upcoming salary review, he roars "Boys and girls, you are truly a genius, that's what I call great thinking" and glances around the table, proud as a peacock.
"You really outdid yourselves today, you guys have every reason to look forward to a brilliant hospitality career!"
He then closes the meeting, because it is nearly 11 AM, and by now most of the guests will have left the hotel for the day, the end of another full, hardworking morning.

When Evil Erik finally comes back to his office, overconfident of himself as an accomplished "great thinking"GM and as a great motivator of his staff:
he finds five messages, which he returned three days later,
he cancels all meetings scheduled for this day and instead to do some networking on the tennis court instead, he also will never realize that 2,563 room nights were booked elsewhere, because the junior secretary told the Association's CEO "he is in a meeting"
the Resident Manager, who never had a chance to say that she felt more attention towards the customers could also do the trick, resigned, without further discussion, to become the General Manager at the hotel's biggest competitor!