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The hospitality industry in Nigeria as of today has been experiencing great boom, all thanks to the life style of the average Nigerian who crave for good life and also the commercial relevance of Nigeria that has encouraged both locals and foreigners move about in different parts of the nation either for leisure or business stay. Over the years, hotels has always been accommodating leisure and fun seekers and We don’t see that changing soon.

With hotels scattered almost every corner of the country, most are shutting down, in loss or about to shut down. Most never live past 10 years. Use these checklist to make sure your Hotel is in track of longevity.

1. Under pay or ill-treat staffs

Most hotels subconsciously resort to employing and keeping low education, ill experienced and non-professional staffs because of cheap labor. Employing these sets of persons is not the problem, but failure of hotel managers to have a well-structured growth path including remuneration  as these staffs develop them self. Most hotel mangers even feel there is much abundance of  unemployed persons to fill unsatisfied staff who feels to leaves but the irony of these is that, the hotel keep working with people who just want survive or meet end needs which negatively affect the general growth of the hotel in long run. The very moment these set of staff gets a better offer, they leave their present hotel with some level of experience afterward. The previous hotel just ended providing experienced staffs for other hotels and  not reaping benefits benefits of giving these staffs the experience they never had.

Way forward

• Employ already skilled staffs especially if the hotel is new or has few experienced persons to compliment the unskilled ones. The benefits of employing skill persons are numerous and mostly long term.
• Keeping staffs motivated: hotel can celebrate staffs birthday monthly, buying a cake, soft drinks for celebrant of that months and staff members talk about those staff members, cut cake and wrap it up with a photo session is an affordable gesture that will go a long way in keeping staffs member morale high and they feel loved. This is a good content to be uploaded to the hotel social handles too.
• Carry staff along: Good brands are always in the habit of letting employees know when the company is doing well financially and keeping them abreast of their next moves and have staff make their contributions. This make staff part of the decision making of the company.
• Training & Retraining.
• Increase staffs remuneration as the hotel makes more profit. Top managers are entitled to profit sharing normally.

2. Not paying much attention to technologies

Technology has been changing ways we live and do business. Not adopting to these rapid changes might cost you your business. Normally Hotels need retain old customers, win new or resell to old ones and also, their operation ought to be automated and top notch as its suppose surpass the homes of their average guest . Truth is, if others hotels are innovating and you are not, guest will have no options than to leave your hotel except you are their only option which will never almost be the case.  Jumia travels, Hotels.ng, Booking.com, Expedia, AirBnB, Agoda and lots of them are technologies travelers all over the world are familiar with and your hotel is supposed to be aligned with them for maximum visibility. New amenities such as electronic doors, good interior designs etc matters a lot. People should be proud to take pictures while in your hotel. Most hotels do have outside beauty but when in, you only can pray for next day to get out.

3. Not having a strategy

Every business is ought to have a winning strategy that will make them stand out of the competition and hotels are not left out. Every hotel should know their strength, weakness, opportunity and threat and should formulate a strategy to complement their short comings. For instance, your hotel should know the class of guest that often use the hotel and come up ideas to attract and keep such customers. Hotels need constantly find new ways to meet such customers and waiting for these customers to find them and keep coming back is like opening a business and not telling anybody. 

4. Nobody likes seeing same thing

When guest stay at your hotel, the hotel should find ways to entertain rather just provide a bed and a TV to sleep over. Live bands, Dance, Comedy, etc. are highly encouraged. The hotel should find ways to notify in house guest of current ongoing activities in case they might be interested. Even after they have checked out, the hotel ought keep these guest posted on events at the hotel through email, broadcast message or their social media handle.  There are thousands of raw untapped talents in the streets and your neighborhood hotel can tap into. Your hotel can give these grass root talent the exposure they need and they will always appreciate your brand. These could even be your social responsibilities too and a content in your social media campaigns.

5. Poor Marketing & Re marketing Plans

Business owners most especially hotel owners need stop seeing marketing as expenses, rather, marketing should be seen as investment. Most hotel really don’t pay much attention to marketing. If they do pay attention, they neglect to re market. Most times, when we roll out our marketing campaigns, the people we are trying to sell to don’t need our product or service at that very time and because we are not consistent, they buy from who markets to them at that instance.

Most hotel managers usually under fund their marketing campaign. They budget irrelevant resources to the marketing campaign. The standard marketing budget for established brand is usually around 5% of your gross revenue. For start-ups, this is usually  around 7 to 12%  or more depending on its urgency and needs.

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