Are you re-opening for the 'new normal' with the 'old'?
Up until March 2020 or thereabouts, you were quite familiar with your operations. You had a handle on what type of room occupancy you expected (if you had planned accurately), what time your coffee shop got really busy during morning breakfast, which days of the week your restaurant required additional servers, etc.
All of us in the hospitality industry, were totally focused at filling our hotel room beds every night, turning tables several times in the restaurants every evening, seeing a packed house on weekend nights at the bar, herding customers continuously in and out of meeting rooms and banquet halls, day and night. Things turned out the way we imagined on some days, while it did not on other days. But the intensity to drum up business in “every which way than loose” (taken from Clint Eastwood’s film series) was very much a fervent hope in all of us.
Then the coronavirus came along and instantly changed those oh-so- predictable patterns. Virtually every business on our planet took a steep nose-dive. Empty beds, empty seats, Empty places was the order of the day, as ‘lockdowns’ and ‘curfews’ kept everyone off the streets.
As restrictions began to be lifted…but not without enhanced safety measures that include social distancing, the question arises ‘are you ready to adapt to the new way of conducting business? If you operate a hotel or restaurant and are hoping to re-open once given the ‘go ahead’, what steps have you taken to recalibrate your operation. Have you developed new processes, procedures and practices to serve your customers?
In all likelihood, you’ve been either shut for business or in ‘crisis mode’ the past months. If so, do not think you are alone. Thousands of others are in the same situation. So, it’s absolutely important that you carefully consider all angles including plans to fully open.
For sure, most of you would have taken steps at work to comply with proper sanitation, enhanced cleaning, social distancing and health & safety rules to protect both your customers and employees. Those days of having a ‘packed house’ with people sitting elbow-to-elbow are things from the past – at least for the next couple of years, and with the ‘new normal’ been the ‘next normal’, are you still on the old standards of operations?
Which of you have updated your standards of operations to not only include the mandated or legally required guidelines issued by the authorities, but also prepared new SOPs (and minimum quality standards), to espouse the daily sanitisation drive in your property? Do they pinpoint accessibility of hygiene and sanitation machines? (Much the same as determining where and what type of extinguishes is placed in your fire safety plan). What are the active re-filling timings/requirements? Have you indicated the temperature settings of all air conditioning devices in the premises? Does your bellman know the new standards on handling guest baggage? What are your standards in terms of ‘Tracing’ – for customers, employees and vendors?
Safety of the customer is not just confined to the front-of-the-house operations, everyone from Engineering to Security to Purchasing and other supporting departments will need to re-examine their departmental SOPs and change them as the hospitality industry overcomes the evolving challenges of adjusting to the new way of work.
Shafeek Wahab – Editor, Hospitality Sri Lanka, Consultant, Trainer, Ex-Hotelier.
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