Quote of the Week on Managing Service Quality

• When you talk about quality, first, you must employ the right people, who can deliver quality output, not just occasionally but consistently.  Second, you must explain what is expected of the employees, may they be chefs or front office employees.  Third, the entire organization must strive for quality and continuous improvement.
• If you don’t set measurement, you cannot make improvement.  I’ve learned this early on.  You need to know:  “Where am I now?  Where am I going?”  . . . . . . If measurements are well-defined, every employee knows what is expected of him/her.

Ricco deBlank, CEO, Hotel Division, Sun Hung Kai Properties (SHKP), Hong Kong
For more information, read Ricco's interview.

Quote of the Week on Revenue Management

At the point of revenue maximization, it does not necessarily mean that the profit is maximized.  At the point of profit maximization, neither the room rate nor the demand is necessarily the highest.

Consider this:  Comparing selling 90 rooms without a discount as opposed to selling 90 rooms with 25% discount, in reality, you will have to sell 120 rooms to make up the revenue difference. 

Lily Lin

Quote of the Week on Motivation and Leadership

• Cleaning 17 rooms a day is no fun, but if you can motivate people to come to work every day to clean rooms, you can manage almost any team.
• In general, I don’t like being in a status quo situation, I am very solution oriented, and I like action.

Caro van Eekelen, Managing Director, ACCOR Netherlands
For more information, read Caro's interview.

Quote of the Week on the Future of Marketing Development

• Marketing is a part of the force that drives revenue.  Decisions would be easier if marketing and revenue management were integrated.  When you look at the development of social media, to me, it is an opportunity to work together.
•  We are still in the early stage of social media.  Technology, personalization, and the use of different distribution channels [to communicate and to capture the targeted segments] will be the important issues for a number of years to come.  The future is about how we can successfully manage these issues.

Tjibbe Lambers, Director of Resorts Marketing, Hershey Entertainment and Resorts, Hershey, Pennsylvania, USA

For more information, read Tjibbe's interview.

Quotes of the Week on Internal Communications

You want to ensure that there is trust between you and your team, and this can only be achieved by regular and open communications.
Everyone in a large organization is focused on his or her expertise but if we are to understand the bigger picture and know why some decisions are taken, someone must explain and clarify the vision regularly, so that it becomes clear to everyone where we stand. Taking time for this task is the key.

Peter Verhoeven, Managing Director, ACCOR Germany

For more information, read Peter's interview.