You do not need more rooms. You need the ones you have to earn more.
A programme for independent three and four star hotels: how the service works, how the people who deliver it are doing, and how you appear to someone looking for you. Which of the three comes first is decided by the hotel.
How the service works
I watch the service live across different shifts, evenings and weekends included. I isolate the four moments that decide a review — arrival, breakfast, complaint, departure — and write the standard for those four, in plain language rather than as a procedure. Then I put it on the floor one person at a time, during real service.
You are left with your hotel's own written standard, and a checklist you can run without me.
The people who deliver it
A standard lasts as long as the person who learned it. The work is how guests are received, how colleagues speak to each other — which guests hear even when they are not listening — and how to correct someone without losing them. And what makes a person stay in a small hotel, which is never only the pay. On this phase I work alongside a certified practitioner in Neuro-Linguistic Programming.
You are left with the induction that lets a new arrival take the standard from the team rather than from a folder.
How you present yourselves
We start with the listing on the booking channels, not the website: it is the window most people see, and it has usually been untouched for years. Then the site — what it has to show, and how many steps separate someone looking from someone booking. I do not shoot the images: a videomaker who already works inside hotels does, and I decide what has to be in them.
You are left with a listing that converts better on the same traffic, and a direct booking path that actually exists.
How you know whether it worked
Before we start we take five numbers together, in an afternoon. At ninety days we read them again the same way. Not a report: the same table, two columns.
- Your score on the booking channels, and how many reviews arrive each month
- Average rate, and how long it has stood still
- Occupancy, so the rate can be read in context
- Direct bookings as a share of the total
- How many people have left the hotel in the last twelve months
They are your numbers, from your own system and your own extranet. The result shows there, or it did not happen.
What it does not include
Said up front, not afterwards.
- I do not manage the hotel and I do not replace anyone on the payroll
- I do not take the photographs and I do not build the website: I say what they must contain and coordinate whoever makes them
- I do not bring bookings: I bring the conditions for them to arrive, and for the guest to come back
- I do not set your prices: I tell you what they are saying, the decision stays yours
Who does it
I lead the programme myself, from the first visit to the last day on site. On two of the three phases I work alongside people whose trade is not mine: a certified practitioner in Neuro-Linguistic Programming for the work on people, and a videomaker who already works inside hotels for the images. This is not an agency: they are two chosen specialists, and I remain the person you deal with.
Before committing to anything, an hour in your hotel.
It does not start with a quote. It starts by looking at the service together, because which of the three phases you need first is decided by the hotel, not by a price list.
the first consultation, credited in full
- You talk directly to me, and I have run properties at this level
- You talk first — the hotel, the team, and what you have already tried
- Then the questions that matter: where the bookings actually come from, what your rate is saying, and who was on reception a year ago
- What I see, said plainly — including that none of the three phases is what you need
- Your own questions, answered directly
- A straight read on what is holding the hotel back today
- Which of the three phases I would start with, and why that one
- What it would cost and how long it would take, before you commit to anything
- The starting numbers, so at ninety days the result shows in your own accounts
The €399 is credited in full against any engagement started within 90 days.