Hotels: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (reading article B)

 

With millions of hotels around the world, the hotel industry is certainly very competitive. There are hotels charging thousands of pounds per person, per night - catering purely for the rich, famous and lavish. Yet on the complete opposite end dof the spectrum, there are 100% eco friendly hotels, built towering up in trees, relying on nature to provide everything needed. All sorts of hotels can be hugely successful in their own right, constantly booked up and praised by all.
However for every successful hotel, there are many more unsure, unsuccessful and failing hotels, struggling on day by day, praying for something to come along and magically turn them around. Speaking to anyone around the world with a bit of traveling experience will undoubtedly have a few amusing anecdotes or terrifying tales about previous encounters with hotels from hell.
Unfortunately for the smaller, independent hotel, it is very easy to get sucked into vicious cycles where customers are be put off by dreary and drab decor and slightly run down exteriors. Yet due to the lack of custom, owners are skeptical or nervous about taking out risky loans in order to carry out refurbishments. It is all too easy to become a monotonous place to stay, lacking in character which resembles hotels commonly found at motorway service stations.
What can be done for a hotel wanting to inject a new lease of life into its veins? Well a fresh pair of eyes is a good start, many minor things that could be easily fixed yet create bad first impressions can be highlighted and rectified. Secondly a spring clean will show off your hotel in its best light. Thirdly upping staff moral can create a world of difference, smiling, chirpy staff will reflect in customers, making life easier for everyone.
A super hero like, hotel consultant, character that travels the world, finding the worst hotels and turning them around would make fantastic television. Gordon Ramsey has done it with restaurants; Dragons Den has done it with businesses and now a hotel development extraordinaire needs to be born. Imagine a hotel such as the fictional Fawlty Towers being assessed by an experienced, world renowned, professional hotel consultant. It would definitely be an eye opening, insightful yet extremely amusing situation.
Until a super consultant comes along, all hotel owners should take a step back, just for a second, to identify its own strengths and weaknesses. Think about how to make the customer thrilled rather than just satisfied. Motivate staff with incentives to provide the best quality service around. Any hotel around the world could benefit from an external review being honestly critical, clearly highlighting potential downfalls that the hotel could be aware of, or blissfully unaware.

Article Source:
http://www.bestmanagementarticles.com
http://hotel-management.bestmanagementarticles.com

Top Advice on Starting a Bed and Breakfast (reading article A)

 

There's an exciting new "down-home" kind of business springing up among homeowners all across the country. It's called Bed and Breakfast.
Basically, this is a transplant of European Hospitality, adapted and refined to the American way of doing things. To foreign visitors, it's the comfort and hospitality of home - staying overnight "with people of the land" and enjoying a hearty breakfast - without the traditional gaudiness and plastic feelings visitors get from most big cities in the United States. To U.S. citizens, it is a welcome alternative to the same old hotel/motel circuit,
Now, all it takes is a spare bedroom, a good cook and an outgoing personality. Prices per night range from a low of $25 to $100 or more.
If you have an extra bedroom, a large home, or extra space in your farm house, you have the necessary beginnings to start making extra income as a Bed and Break fast Inn. One of the beautiful aspects of this idea is that so long as you're hosting "over night visitors" on a small scale, no licenses will be required. It's always best, however, to check with your local authorities just to be sure.
Naturally, your "visitors" will expect a clean, neat and comfortable home. So assuming that your home meets these prerequisites, and you have a spare bedroom, simply "doll it up" a bit. Make sure it's painted brightly, there's an outside window, lots of room, closet space and bureau, and perhaps a small writing desk, and a large comfortable bed, or twin beds.
Most foreign visitors will expect and appreciate a "quick tour" of the interesting sights in your area. However, as your particular popularity as a B & B Host grows, you'll find that a lot of American tourists and business people on the road will begin availing themselves of your hospitality. Certainly with these people, it won't always be necessary to give the "Red Carpet" visitors' treatment.
This brings us to the basic appeal of a Bed and Breakfast Inn. Travellers seem to be looking for, and appreciate a quiet "home-style" place to stay. Generally, they enjoy visiting with the people off the superhighway and want to get away from the sterilized atmosphere and sameness of hotels and motels.
Most people will either write to you ahead of time, inquiring about the possibilities of staying at your home while in your town or city. This means a bit of advertising on your part, or listing your availability with a B & B broker. Some people will check the local telephone listings and the newspaper advertisements when they arrive in a strange town. And some people will just be driving across the country, come to a town or city they think is interesting, and start driving through the residential areas looking for Bed and Breakfast Inns.
Now, suppose you're organized and ready to receive your first customers. You greet them as host or hostess and offer to assist them in getting situated in the room or rooms you have for them. If they'd like to take a drive around your area and see the points of interest, you do that. And then in the morning, serve them a big, delicious breakfast.
You'll probably find that foreign visitors will want to stay several days. With most people of this country who are just travelling through your area, it'll be a one-night stopover. Whatever, if they want to sleep comfortably through the night, eat breakfast in the morning and be on their way, so be it. If they want to sit around after breakfast and plan an itinerary for a complete visit of your area, your assistance and help will be greatly appreciated. (Remember those recommendations)!
That's it! The complete how and why of this tremendously profitable business that's becoming more and more popular. It's called Bed & Breakfast, and it's very definitely a low investment idea. And you can parlay it into a very interesting and comfort able income producing business - all from the comforts of your own home!

Article Source:
http://www.bestmanagementarticles.com
http://hotel-management.bestmanagementarticles.com

Private Catering - Brief Business Techniques (Reading article C)

The catering is becoming a great business in these days. The main advantage of catering business is the requirement of capital for this business is quite low. In fact if you have a good chef with you then you can rent the catering equipments and appoint some people to join you in daily payment business initially. Later you can have a stable catering set-up including the manpower and the equipments for your business. In short the catering is of two types viz. the event catering and the mobile catering. Event catering includes the catering for some special events such as wedding catering, catering party and dinner party catering etc. So now let us discuss a little about the business of catering.
While you are in the catering business, then the most important thing is to plan the business strategies carefully. Finding clients is also an important part of this business. You can have the clients through the classified advertisements or through your personal contacts. First of all you should learn the ways to be modest with your customers. Because the modesty you can have some more orders through the contacts of the client. After that you should listen the requirements of your client carefully. Now you have to organize a little more than the requirement of your customer. Some times the event catering includes the catering orders for the breakfast catering, lunch and the dinner - all three. These types of orders are always profitable. So you should deal these types of orders with immense care.
Now, before going through the factors like menu or food, it is very much important to look through some other factors. First of all, you have to organize the fresh drinking water to be used in cooking and drinking purpose of the guests. Secondly, the related equipments are very much essential too. Equipments include the food containers, dishes, spoons, glasses, and napkins etc. You should look for the good quality dining tables too. You can have collaboration with any good catering service equipment supplier for this purpose. After organizing all these, appoint some people and divide the responsibilities on them. Some will help the chef while some will be involved in serving and cleaning. Positively appoint a catering guide while your employees are serving the food.
The let us come to the major part of the private catering service business that is the catering menu. It is always better to leave the responsibility of selecting the menu to the client. While he is selecting the menu you can explain the pros and cons of a particular menu. You can suggest any other menu instead of any particular menu selected by the client with the particular reason. Now, you should suggest the menu that most people like. For an example, when a client wants to go for the Italian menu you should suggest him to include pizza in the list of menu as most of the people like it.
Lastly, you should have a good chef with you and you should try your level best to hold him with your company. Along with the mobile catering and event catering, the future of private catering and the buffet catering are seemed to be bright too.

Article Source:
http://www.bestmanagementarticles.com
http://hotel-management.bestmanagementarticles.com