Tag Archive for: Hotel Management

The Banana Republic Hotel

The Banana Republic Hotel

Reader’s Note: The story that follows is presented as fiction.
It is inspired by experiences accumulated over more than thirty years in hospitality and organisational advisory work.
Events, conversations, characters, timelines, and organisations have been altered, combined and fictionalised to protect confidentiality and prevent the identification of any individual or enterprise.
The management lessons are real.

Among all the hotels I have worked in and advised over the years, one stands apart.
It marked a turning point in my career.

There was a time before it, a time during it, and a time after it.
I knew when I accepted the assignment that it would not be easy.
The hotel had established a certain reputation.
I was brought in, or so I believed, to change that culture rather than become part of it.

I soon discovered that experience alone does not always prepare us for the choices we must make.
The experience taught me humility as a person and a deep appreciation of governance as a professional.

Over the years, working with hotels in many different countries, I encountered levels of pilferage and corruption that took my breath away.
It reflected a broader environment in which weak governance had become normal across both the private and public sectors.
Having worked in both luxury and volume hospitality, particularly in emerging markets, I learned that hotels attract more than guests seeking a good bed, food, and friendly service.
They can also attract colourful and opportunistic investors, managers, and employees who are drawn to the movement of cash.

This very large hotel, with more than 1.000 beds, operated more like a factory than a hotel.
It had developed its own informal economy resembling a small banana republic.
Throughout its history, as I had observed also elsewhere, informal payments and personal favours had become widely accepted.
Salaries were not always what motivated behaviour.
For some, the real money flowed elsewhere, through vendors, suppliers, and commercial relationships that existed largely beyond the hotel’s formal controls.

Everyday life reflected that same culture.
The lobby bar had become a regular meeting place for individuals whose presence created an intimidating atmosphere for guests and employees alike.
I experienced the intimidation myself when I stood up for how some of the staff were being treated by customers.
One colleague found an elegantly simple solution—the credit is all his.
The nearby police station was offered discounted lunches in the staff canteen, requiring officers to walk through the lobby several times a day.
The regular police presence quickly persuaded the unwanted clientele to find another venue.

One day, a trusted employee quietly drew my attention to filming taking place in the hotel that was wholly inconsistent with its purpose and reputation.
This was not incidental but part of a series of adult films recorded over time on the hotel premises.
Young ladies, barely of legal age or past it, dreaming of glamour or stardom, were waiting in the hotel lobby to be escorted to the guest rooms chosen as the film’s settings.
What surprised me most was not the activity itself or its having become common knowledge throughout the hotel.
What surprised me was that it had become impossible to ignore.
It made me conscious of the risk of when and how I reported my findings to whom.
It was another reminder that, where governance is weak, organisations gradually lose control over how their assets and reputation are used.
I could have looked the other way, as others had seemingly done before.
In the absence of appropriate governance, I chose not to.
The practice was being stopped immediately.

The hotel management company promoted a culture inspired by values, spirit, and bespoke authenticity.
It had engaged highly capable professionals who genuinely believed in the standards, processes, and services defined in what management was supposed to deliver.
Regular meetings were held to review key performance indicators, with discussions centered on revenue, profitability, and operational performance.

Yet, when I walked the hotel floor, the reality told a very different story.
The expectation of management’s compliance seemed strangely disconnected from everyday operations.
The language spoken in boardrooms bore little resemblance to the behaviours I observed throughout the hotel.

It does not take too much effort to diagnose what is wrong by studying the numbers.
The hard part is to accept accountability upon diagnosis and take responsibility to fix it.
When this is absent, it destroys value, weakens businesses, and ultimately erodes the morale of the very people who make those businesses possible.

Over the years, I have learned that while problems are often diagnosed from the top, sustainable solutions are usually built from the bottom up.
The devil is in the details, and he is rarely found in public but somewhere at the bottom where no one has looked before—or perhaps no one did want to look too closely.

The hotel was caught between its past and its future.
Looking back, I could have walked away.
Instead, I chose to confront it.

I chose to lead through accountability rather than through control and punishment.
That sounds straightforward, but it proved to be one of the most difficult leadership decisions of my career.
Resistance rarely presented itself openly.
Instead, it was quiet, persistent, and often invisible.

The team working alongside me did an extraordinary job.
Replacing everyone would probably have been easier, but economic reality dictated otherwise.
I have found that people employed at the same company have a remarkable tendency to accept what is inappropriate when management has normalised it.
To reduce reality to villains would have been too easy; people deserve better.
Therefore, when signalling a different approach, one that was guided by transparency, many members of the existing management team chose to walk that path with me.

Departmental managers were trained to understand their departmental KPIs.
Responsibility migrated to where decisions were made.
As a result, I no longer needed to chase operational shortcomings.
For example, when F&B guest capture rates or average guest check values fell below target during a particular shift, department managers initiated the analysis, identified the cause, and implemented corrective action themselves.
That allowed me to spend less time exercising control and more time providing leadership.

We eliminated the inappropriate use of the hotel store.
Rather than banning unaccountable staff purchases, I publicly bought the same items during management meetings, paid with my own credit card, and asked for a receipt.
Nobody needed an explanation.
The signal was clear.
What applies to the General Manager applies to everyone else.

We chose to work with the trade union rather than around it.
I realised that the primary challenge was to change the organisational culture.
I addressed this two-fold; on the one hand, I studied the existing labour agreement and worked diligently with the trade union in preparing a new one.
Second, to achieve immediate impact, I presented the hotel’s performance to the staff each month in language everyone could understand—together with the trade union.
Sharing reality fostered a shared sense of ownership.
Gossip and speculation gradually disappeared.

I was invited by a leading newspaper to be interviewed.
Such PR opportunities are often used by hotel management to raise the hotel’s profile within the local business community.
I chose a different approach.
Rather than putting myself in the spotlight, I asked the journalist to interview members of my line staff instead.
Over the following months, interviews were published with maids, clerical staff, and many others who would normally never find themselves in the limelight.
I deliberately chose not to influence, edit, or manipulate these interviews.
It was a gamble.
The outcome still gives me goosebumps.
The care, pride, and sophistication with which these colleagues represented the hotel were extraordinary.
Each represented the hotel as though they carried ultimate responsibility for it.
Sharing the hotel’s performance with them had made a difference.

Wholesalers, tour leaders, and suppliers occasionally arrived carrying envelopes, hoping to negotiate next year’s contracts.
They left with those envelopes unopened.
Instead, I insisted on transparent pricing.

Slowly, steadily, and deliberately, we repositioned the business.
We developed a new market positioning strategy and established a sales team to implement it.
Low-yield wholesale business was gradually replaced by a market segment the hotel had never seriously pursued before: Meetings & Conferences.
Direct bookings increased through a fully redesigned website that rewarded guests with additional value rather than discounted prices.

We worked diligently on improving cash flow, not just short-term gross operating profit (GOP).
Despite resistance from both inside and outside the organisation, I gradually tightened payment discipline while reducing wholesale allotments.

The Food and Beverage proposition was strengthened by recruiting a signature Executive Chef.
For the first time, the hotel actively promoted its culinary competence—not to compete with the city’s restaurants, but to demonstrate that we were no longer simply the cheap half-board hotel.

We converted an unused restaurant into a multifunctional staff canteen that also served nearby office workers.
A cost centre became a profit centre, strengthening both staff morale and management’s relationship with the trade union.

Leadership also meant accepting that not every operational inefficiency should be eliminated automatically.
For example, I disliked the twelve-hour reception shifts.
They were physically demanding for the front-line staff and, from a service and revenue perspective, far from ideal.
Yet they created alternating short- and long-work weeks that allowed several receptionists, many of them single mothers, to balance work and family life.
I could have changed the rota. Instead, I chose to understand why it existed.
Not every compromise serves the business. Sometimes it serves the people who make the business possible.

The staff entrance may have looked like the gates of hell, but it was in keeping with the rest of the building.
We tried to brighten things up where we could, despite financial constraints and a collective labour agreement that often worked against both the hotel and its staff.
I tried to foster a sense of belonging through small gestures.
On Women’s Day, a locally celebrated occasion, we welcomed every female colleague with flowers.
During particularly hot days, we distributed bottles of water to our housekeeping colleagues while they worked on the floors.
As a team, we also encouraged everyone to spend part of their salaried working time supporting a local children’s foster home, where we organised activities and celebrations for special occasions.
These may have seemed like small gestures in hindsight, but they represented a change in tone that people noticed and helped foster a spirit of dialogue and accountability rather than autocracy.

This particular hotel taught me a lesson I have carried throughout my career.
Operational excellence cannot compensate for governance failure.

  • You can improve service
  • You can renovate rooms
  • You can increase occupancy
  • You can recruit talented people

None of it will endure if conflicts of interest remain, the organisation lacks effective compliance mechanisms, and autocracy is chosen as the governing principle.

Integrity is not a slogan.
It is the alignment between what is said and what is done.
It is a truth I have found in every story in this series.

If even one reader pauses before compromising their principles because of something they read here, these stories will have served their purpose.

Thank you, dear colleagues.

Looking back, my gratitude belongs to the many colleagues who chose to embrace change rather than resist it.

Department heads, supervisors, line staff, trade union representatives, and countless others demonstrated professionalism, resilience, and courage throughout that journey.
Whatever we achieved was never the work of one person but of a team that proved that, when people are trusted, supported, and united by a common purpose, remarkable change is possible.

I carry your trust in my heart.

Thank you for reading my story.

This story is the final story of a series—”The Banana Republic Hotel and What It Taught Me About Myself”—in which I share lessons learned throughout my professional and personal journey and how those experiences have shaped my thinking and led me to develop my own principles.

If you enjoyed reading the story and have the appetite to read another one, you are invited to visit G&A’s website, in particular its INSIGHTS page, where you can find all stories.

I hope it has provided some food for thought, encouraged curiosity, and perhaps offered a different perspective on why governance matters.

Curiosity, humility, and continuous learning remain among the most valuable tools we possess.

Terminology for non-hoteliers:

  • SOP: Standard Operating Procedure – a documented process describing how a task should be performed to ensure consistency, quality, and compliance.
  • KPIs: Key Performance Indicators – measurable indicators used to monitor performance and progress against objectives.
  • ADR: Average Daily Rate – the average room rate paid by guests.
  • RevPAR: Revenue per Available Room – a measure combining occupancy and room rate to assess hotel revenue performance.
  • Occupancy: The percentage of available rooms that are occupied.
  • DOF: Double Occupancy Factor – the average number of guests staying in each occupied room. A DOF of 1.0 means every occupied room has one guest; 2.0 means every occupied room has two guests.
  • AGC: Average Guest Check – the average amount spent by each guest in a restaurant, bar, or other food and beverage outlet.
  • CRS: Central Reservation System – the central booking system that manages a hotel’s room inventory, rates, and reservations across all sales channels.
  • PMS: Property Management System – the software used to manage reservations, guest accounts, and hotel operations.
  • OTA: Online Travel Agency – websites such as Booking.com or Expedia that sell hotel rooms on behalf of hotels.
  • GDS: Global Distribution System – a worldwide booking network used by travel agents and corporate travel departments to reserve hotel rooms, flights, and other travel services.
  • CRM: Customer Relationship Management – systems and processes used to manage guest relationships and marketing.
  • F&B: Food & Beverage Department – all restaurant, bar, banquet, room service, and catering operations within a hotel.
  • Half-Board: A hotel meal plan that includes breakfast and one additional meal each day, usually dinner. Drinks other than those specifically included are generally charged separately.
  • MICE: Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Events – the hotel business related to corporate meetings, conferences, exhibitions, and incentive travel.
  • ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning – an integrated software system that connects key business functions such as finance, procurement, inventory, human resources, sales, and reporting into a single platform.
  • USALI: Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry – the internationally recognised accounting standard used by hotels to measure and compare financial performance.
  • GOP: Gross Operating Profit – the operating profit generated by the hotel before management fees, rent, financing costs, depreciation, taxes, and other non-operating expenses.
  • EBITDA: Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortisation – a widely used measure of an organisation’s operating profitability.
  • COS: Cost of Sales – the direct cost of producing the goods sold, such as food, beverages, or merchandise, expressed as an amount or percentage of revenue.
  • FTE: Full-Time Equivalent – a standard measure of staffing that converts part-time and seasonal employees into the equivalent number of full-time employees.

About the Author

Raoul Gransier is a Senior International Adviser and owner-focused hotelier with more than 30 years of operational and advisory experience in hospitality, tourism, governance, and performance improvement.

Website

https://gransier.com

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Hospitality Taught me Humility

Hospitality Taught me Humility

This story is about how hospitality taught me humility.

Over the years, I have been part of, or supported owners and managers of, hotels, resorts, restaurants, tourism businesses, and hospitality platforms as they succeeded, struggled, recovered, and sometimes failed.

One observation has remained remarkably consistent.

Hospitality assets rarely fail for lack of capital, systems, brands, concepts, technology, or effort.
More often, they under-perform because of a lack of alignment between managers and owners about who is responsible and accountable; in other words, or more likely, the fancy language you may recognise from a poster put on the wall of the cantina: “Governance”.

Governance.
This word sounds distant when things are going well, or you may not know the full picture.
But it becomes the subject of each and every discussion when expectations are not aligned.

Much of what I know today was not learned in classrooms.
It came from years of operational exposure, difficult environments, blood, sweat, tears, mistakes, recovery, responsibility, and accountability.

Responsibility and accountability are not social media buzzwords.
They require standing up for what you believe in and taking the blame when you are wrong.
Managing operational crises, safeguarding debt service, payroll, supplier commitments, ownership transitions, business recovery, and complex stakeholder environments taught me that performance problems rarely exist in isolation.

Revenue, operations, commercial strategy, cost structures, governance, leadership, and capital allocation are interconnected.
Believe me, I have seen my share, and I have learned the hard way.
As a professional.
And as a family man.
Standing up for what is right, also when you realise the failings of the other party as well as your own, is not an easy call to make.
It requires maturity.
And over time, maturity shapes character.
Which proves my point.

Failure in one phase of your professional life, or your business, can lead to maturity in the next.
Failure becomes valuable when approached with humility, accountability, and a willingness to learn from operational reality.
The real danger begins when employees or organisations become emotionally invested in defending decisions that no longer serve the business.
That is when facts become inconvenient.
That is when reporting becomes selective.
That is when accountability becomes blurred.
That is when capital starts funding hope rather than strategy.

Over time, I have developed three core management principles that continue to shape my thinking about how to responsibly run a business.

  1. Commercial performance does not operate in isolation.
  • Revenue is not the starting point, and must not be limited to revenue management, but start by asking what is the optimal use of the property (“Highest-and-Best-Use”, or in short: HBU).
  • Revenue is the consequence of a much larger system involving governance, capital allocation, product definition, market positioning, sales execution, organisational capability, and ultimately the guest experience.
  • Equally, the outcome of commercial performance should not be measured solely through operating indicators such as Average Daily Rate (ADR), Occupancy, RevPAR, or Gross Operating Profit (GOP).
    These metrics are important, but they are not the final objective.

The real question is whether the business is creating value:
value for guests, value for employees, value for owners, and value that can be clearly explained and demonstrated to shareholders, lenders, and other stakeholders.
Sustainable commercial performance is therefore not merely about generating revenue.
It is about strengthening the long-term value of the business, the asset, and ultimately the land upon which it stands.

  1. Portfolio growth requires differentiated strategies.

Governance frameworks can often be standardised.
Economic reality cannot.

  • What works for a luxury resort will not necessarily work for a mid-market city hotel.
  • What works for an owner-operated asset may fail completely in a multi-property platform.
  1. Organisational capability remains the critical link between strategy and execution.
  • Many performance challenges are not caused by a lack of capital, systems, brands, concepts, technology, or intent.
  • They are caused by inconsistent application, unclear accountability, and weak execution at both management and ownership level.

Strategy is rarely the problem. Execution usually is.
The compass I use to navigate these situations is governance.
Not governance as bureaucracy.
Rather, governance is the operating system of decision-making.
It creates clarity around decision rights, accountability, expectations, information flows, and risk.
Because organisations generally perform well when people understand who decides, who executes, who is accountable, and how decisions translate into action.

After more than twenty-five years in hospitality, I remain convinced that sustainable EBITDA growth is rarely the result of individual initiatives.
It is usually the result of alignment.
Alignment between ownership objectives, organisational capability, commercial strategy, operational execution, and capital allocation.
When those elements align, performance follows.
When they do not, no amount of effort can compensate indefinitely.

Thank you for reading my story.

This story is part of a series—”The Banana Republic Hotel and What It Taught Me About Myself”—in which I share lessons learned throughout my professional and personal journey and how those experiences have shaped my thinking and led me to develop my own principles.

If you enjoyed reading the story and have the appetite to read another one, you are invited to visit G&A’s website, in particular its INSIGHTS page, where you can find all stories.
Alternatively, click here to be taken to the final story.

I hope it has provided some food for thought, encouraged curiosity, and inspired you to keep learning.

Curiosity, humility, and continuous learning remain among the most valuable tools we possess.

Terminology for non-hoteliers

  • SOP: Standard Operating Procedure – a documented process describing how a task should be performed to ensure consistency, quality, and compliance.
  • KPIs: Key Performance Indicators – measurable indicators used to monitor performance and progress against objectives.
  • ADR: Average Daily Rate – the average room rate paid by guests.
  • RevPAR: Revenue per Available Room – a measure combining occupancy and room rate to assess hotel revenue performance.
  • Occupancy: The percentage of available rooms that are occupied.
  • DOF: Double Occupancy Factor – the average number of guests staying in each occupied room. A DOF of 1.0 means every occupied room has one guest; 2.0 means every occupied room has two guests.
  • AGC: Average Guest Check – the average amount spent by each guest in a restaurant, bar, or other food and beverage outlet.
  • CRS: Central Reservation System – the central booking system that manages a hotel’s room inventory, rates, and reservations across all sales channels.
  • PMS: Property Management System – the software used to manage reservations, guest accounts, and hotel operations.
  • OTA: Online Travel Agency – websites such as Booking.com or Expedia that sell hotel rooms on behalf of hotels.
  • GDS: Global Distribution System – a worldwide booking network used by travel agents and corporate travel departments to reserve hotel rooms, flights, and other travel services.
  • CRM: Customer Relationship Management – systems and processes used to manage guest relationships and marketing.
  • F&B: Food & Beverage Department – all restaurant, bar, banquet, room service, and catering operations within a hotel.
  • Half-Board: A hotel meal plan that includes breakfast and one additional meal each day, usually dinner. Drinks other than those specifically included are generally charged separately.
  • MICE: Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Events – the hotel business related to corporate meetings, conferences, exhibitions, and incentive travel.
  • ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning – an integrated software system that connects key business functions such as finance, procurement, inventory, human resources, sales, and reporting into a single platform.
  • USALI: Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry – the internationally recognised accounting standard used by hotels to measure and compare financial performance.
  • GOP: Gross Operating Profit – the operating profit generated by the hotel before management fees, rent, financing costs, depreciation, taxes, and other non-operating expenses.
  • EBITDA: Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortisation – a widely used measure of an organisation’s operating profitability.
  • COS: Cost of Sales – the direct cost of producing the goods sold, such as food, beverages, or merchandise, expressed as an amount or percentage of revenue.
  • FTE: Full-Time Equivalent – a standard measure of staffing that converts part-time and seasonal employees into the equivalent number of full-time employees.

About the Author

Raoul Gransier is a Senior International Adviser and owner-focused hotelier with more than 30 years of operational and advisory experience in hospitality, tourism, governance, and performance improvement.

Website

https://gransier.com

/by

The Hotel CEO Who Initiated a Dialogue Rather than an Instruction

The Hotel CEO Who Initiated a Dialogue Rather than an Instruction

This story is about how curiosity transforms performance management into organisational learning.

The organisation had asked for performance management.
At least that is what everyone believed.
The mandate sounded straightforward.
Improve performance. Increase profitability.
Strengthen accountability. Introduce structure. Measure outcomes.
The objectives were sensible. The implementation began.

Managers learned. Reports improved.
Discussions became more disciplined.
Departments became increasingly aligned. People started asking better questions.
At first, the questions were operational.
Then commercial. Then strategic.

Then something unexpected happened.
The questions started travelling upwards.
Department Heads wanted clarity. The General Managers wanted clarity.
The senior leadership team wanted clarity.
Eventually, the same questions began appearing repeatedly.
What are our objectives? What assumptions are they based upon?
What are we trying to become? What are we optimising for?

The questions were not rebellious. They were logical.
The organisation was learning.
And learning organisations tend to become curious.

When budgeting time arrived, the CEO was asking the organisation to improve profitability.
A reasonable request in any organisation.

The response from the management team was equally reasonable:

  • What is our Highest and Best Use?
  • What market positioning are we pursuing?
  • Which customer are we targeting?
  • What brand strategy supports that choice?
  • How much capital are we prepared to invest?
  • When will that investment occur?
  • What return are we expecting?
  • What organisational structure is required to deliver it?

The fascinating part was that nobody had instructed the organisation to ask these questions.
The organisation had taught itself.
Performance management had created curiosity.
And curiosity has a remarkable quality.
Once it takes hold, it becomes difficult to reverse.

There was no hostility in these questions.
No resistance. No politics.
Simply a request for clarity in order to plan and execute effectively.

What followed was a growing realisation that important assumptions about who the organisation was, where it wanted to go, and what it ultimately wanted to become had never been fully articulated.
Eventually, the discussion returned to management itself: Tell us what you believe we can achieve. Tell us what you need to achieve it.
What had started as a project about measurement gradually became a conversation about direction.

Many people believe performance management is about measurement.
I have gradually come to a different conclusion.
Performance management is fundamentally about setting expectations.
Measurement simply reveals whether those expectations have been achieved.

The difficult part is rarely the measurement.
The difficult part is defining the expectations first.
Once people understand how a business works, they naturally begin asking why it works the way it does.
What started as a discussion about performance eventually became a discussion about purpose, positioning, capital, structure, and strategy.
Governance begins with that clarity, because expectations define decision rights, accountability, information flows, and ultimately the basis upon which performance can be assessed.
And not merely the financial expectations.

Looking back, I believe this was the real success of the project.
Not the reports. Not the systems.
Not the numbers. Not the measurement.
The organisation had learned how to think and had begun discovering what it was and what it wanted to achieve.

Thank you for reading my story.

This story is part of a series—”The Banana Republic Hotel and What It Taught Me About Myself”—in which I share lessons learned throughout my professional and personal journey and how those experiences have shaped my thinking and led me to develop my own principles.

If you enjoyed reading the story and have the appetite to read another one, you are invited to visit G&A’s website, in particular its INSIGHTS page, where you can find all stories.
Alternatively, click here to be taken to the next story.

I hope it has provided some food for thought, encouraged curiosity, and inspired you to keep learning.

Curiosity, humility, and continuous learning remain among the most valuable tools we possess.

Terminology for non-hoteliers:

  • SOP: Standard Operating Procedure – a documented process describing how a task should be performed to ensure consistency, quality, and compliance.
  • KPIs: Key Performance Indicators – measurable indicators used to monitor performance and progress against objectives.
  • ADR: Average Daily Rate – the average room rate paid by guests.
  • RevPAR: Revenue per Available Room – a measure combining occupancy and room rate to assess hotel revenue performance.
  • Occupancy: The percentage of available rooms that are occupied.
  • DOF: Double Occupancy Factor – the average number of guests staying in each occupied room. A DOF of 1.0 means every occupied room has one guest; 2.0 means every occupied room has two guests.
  • AGC: Average Guest Check – the average amount spent by each guest in a restaurant, bar, or other food and beverage outlet.
  • CRS: Central Reservation System – the central booking system that manages a hotel’s room inventory, rates, and reservations across all sales channels.
  • PMS: Property Management System – the software used to manage reservations, guest accounts, and hotel operations.
  • OTA: Online Travel Agency – websites such as Booking.com or Expedia that sell hotel rooms on behalf of hotels.
  • GDS: Global Distribution System – a worldwide booking network used by travel agents and corporate travel departments to reserve hotel rooms, flights, and other travel services.
  • CRM: Customer Relationship Management – systems and processes used to manage guest relationships and marketing.
  • F&B: Food & Beverage Department – all restaurant, bar, banquet, room service, and catering operations within a hotel.
  • Half-Board: A hotel meal plan that includes breakfast and one additional meal each day, usually dinner. Drinks other than those specifically included are generally charged separately.
  • MICE: Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Events – the hotel business related to corporate meetings, conferences, exhibitions, and incentive travel.
  • ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning – an integrated software system that connects key business functions such as finance, procurement, inventory, human resources, sales, and reporting into a single platform.
  • USALI: Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry – the internationally recognised accounting standard used by hotels to measure and compare financial performance.
  • GOP: Gross Operating Profit – the operating profit generated by the hotel before management fees, rent, financing costs, depreciation, taxes, and other non-operating expenses.
  • EBITDA: Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortisation – a widely used measure of an organisation’s operating profitability.
  • COS: Cost of Sales – the direct cost of producing the goods sold, such as food, beverages, or merchandise, expressed as an amount or percentage of revenue.
  • FTE: Full-Time Equivalent – a standard measure of staffing that converts part-time and seasonal employees into the equivalent number of full-time employees.

About the Author

Raoul Gransier is a Senior International Adviser and owner-focused hotelier with more than 30 years of operational and advisory experience in hospitality, tourism, governance, and performance improvement.

Website

https://gransier.com

/by

The Hotel HR Director Who Learned to Love Numbers

The Hotel HR Director Who Learned to Love Numbers

This story is about how curiosity taught me that people and performance succeed together or fail together.

One of the most persistent misconceptions in business is that people and performance are in competition with each other.
My experience suggests the opposite.
Poorly managed organisations damage both.
Well-managed organisations support both.

The challenge is not choosing between people and performance.
The challenge is understanding that sustainable performance creates the conditions in which people can succeed.

If somebody had told me at the beginning of the project that the strongest advocate for performance management would eventually emerge from Human Resources, I would have been sceptical.
Very sceptical.
A hotel HR Director taught me that lesson.
And she taught it far more convincingly than any consultant ever could.

At the time, the HR Director represented something important within the organisation:
Culture, care, wellbeing, development, and respect.
The company genuinely cared about its people.
And she was one of the principal custodians of that culture.

Performance management worried her.
Not because she opposed improvement.
Because she feared what numbers might do.
Like many people, she saw a potential conflict.
People on one side. Performance on the other.
Compassion versus accountability. Culture versus profitability.
The concern was understandable.
Many organisations manage to create exactly that conflict.

Yet something unexpected happened.
She became curious. She asked questions.
She challenged assumptions.
And, at times, she gave me a hard time.
She wanted to understand. Not the spreadsheets.
The thinking behind them.
Slowly, patiently, and somewhat reluctantly at first, she began exploring concepts she had previously avoided.
Performance. Productivity. Profitability. Measurement. Expectations.

The more she learned, the more her perspective changed.
Not because she cared less about people. Quite the opposite.
She gradually realised that satisfied employees do not emerge from good intentions alone.
They emerge from functioning organisations:
Sales must perform. Operations must perform.
Finance must perform. Engineering must perform.
Managers must perform. Expectations must be clear.
Responsibilities must be understood. Resources must be available.
Only then can an organisation create the conditions that allow people to thrive.
That realisation changed her perspective.

She eventually understood something important.
People are not separate from capital.
They are one of the most significant investments any hotel makes.
Most organisations treat people and capital as different conversations.
One belongs to Human Resources. The other belongs to Finance.
Yet sustainable organisations depend on both working together.

She came to recognise that salaries, training, development, engagement, and leadership are not merely costs.
They are investments expected to generate outcomes, just as any other investment within the business.
Equally, she understood that capital without capable and motivated people rarely delivers its intended return.
People and performance are not competing priorities.
Nor are people and capital.
In healthy organisations, people, performance, capital and purpose are interconnected.

Strong performance creates opportunity, stability, investment, development, and career growth.
Strong people create the performance that makes those things possible.
The relationship is not adversarial. It is symbiotic.

Over time, she became one of the strongest advocates for performance management within the organisation.
Not despite her commitment to people. Because of it.
She recognised that performance management, applied within a healthy and humane culture, protects both people and capital.
Most importantly, she reached that conclusion herself.

Years later she joined the Board.
The promotion was deserved.
Not because she had mastered numbers.
Because she had learned to integrate two worlds that many people mistakenly separate: people and capital.
Humanity and performance.
She understood that neither can succeed sustainably without the other.

Looking back, one outcome gives me particular satisfaction.
The organisation no longer required external advocates for performance management.
One of its strongest advocates had emerged from within: The HR Director herself.

Thank you for reading my story.

This story is part of a series—”The Banana Republic Hotel and What It Taught Me About Myself”—in which I share lessons learned throughout my professional and personal journey and how those experiences have shaped my thinking and led me to develop my own principles.

If you enjoyed reading the story and have the appetite to read another one, you are invited to visit G&A’s website, in particular its INSIGHTS page, where you can find all stories.
Alternatively, click here to be taken to the next story.

I hope it has provided some food for thought, encouraged curiosity, and inspired you to keep learning.

Curiosity, humility, and continuous learning remain among the most valuable tools we possess.

Terminology for non-hoteliers:

  • SOP: Standard Operating Procedure – a documented process describing how a task should be performed to ensure consistency, quality, and compliance.
  • KPIs: Key Performance Indicators – measurable indicators used to monitor performance and progress against objectives.
  • ADR: Average Daily Rate – the average room rate paid by guests.
  • RevPAR: Revenue per Available Room – a measure combining occupancy and room rate to assess hotel revenue performance.
  • Occupancy: The percentage of available rooms that are occupied.
  • DOF: Double Occupancy Factor – the average number of guests staying in each occupied room. A DOF of 1.0 means every occupied room has one guest; 2.0 means every occupied room has two guests.
  • AGC: Average Guest Check – the average amount spent by each guest in a restaurant, bar, or other food and beverage outlet.
  • CRS: Central Reservation System – the central booking system that manages a hotel’s room inventory, rates, and reservations across all sales channels.
  • PMS: Property Management System – the software used to manage reservations, guest accounts, and hotel operations.
  • OTA: Online Travel Agency – websites such as Booking.com or Expedia that sell hotel rooms on behalf of hotels.
  • GDS: Global Distribution System – a worldwide booking network used by travel agents and corporate travel departments to reserve hotel rooms, flights, and other travel services.
  • CRM: Customer Relationship Management – systems and processes used to manage guest relationships and marketing.
  • F&B: Food & Beverage Department – all restaurant, bar, banquet, room service, and catering operations within a hotel.
  • Half-Board: A hotel meal plan that includes breakfast and one additional meal each day, usually dinner. Drinks other than those specifically included are generally charged separately.
  • MICE: Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Events – the hotel business related to corporate meetings, conferences, exhibitions, and incentive travel.
  • ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning – an integrated software system that connects key business functions such as finance, procurement, inventory, human resources, sales, and reporting into a single platform.
  • USALI: Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry – the internationally recognised accounting standard used by hotels to measure and compare financial performance.
  • GOP: Gross Operating Profit – the operating profit generated by the hotel before management fees, rent, financing costs, depreciation, taxes, and other non-operating expenses.
  • EBITDA: Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortisation – a widely used measure of an organisation’s operating profitability.
  • COS: Cost of Sales – the direct cost of producing the goods sold, such as food, beverages, or merchandise, expressed as an amount or percentage of revenue.
  • FTE: Full-Time Equivalent – a standard measure of staffing that converts part-time and seasonal employees into the equivalent number of full-time employees.

About the Author

Raoul Gransier is a Senior International Adviser and owner-focused hotelier with more than 30 years of operational and advisory experience in hospitality, tourism, governance, and performance improvement.

Website

https://gransier.com

/by

The Empty Castle

The Empty Castle

This is another story about the “Highest-and-Best-Use” (HBU) for hotels.

When people imagine hotel consulting, they usually picture boardrooms, PowerPoint presentations, and strategy workshops.

Interim management represents another, far more practical side of hotel consulting.
It is often the solution hotel owners turn to when an organisation needs experienced leadership without permanently changing its management.
The owner remains in control while bringing in an independent executive to stabilise the business, implement change, and get the job done—free from the politics that can sometimes accompany an internal appointment.

Let me tell you about the Empty Castle – an interim hotel management project.

It was a bitterly cold winter night.
My first evening at a hidden castle in the countryside of a Central European country, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, I started an interim management assignment.

There were no guests.
No restaurant. No reception.
By early evening, the few remaining staff wished me goodnight, locked the front door behind them, and drove home.

I was alone.
Completely alone. In a castle.
Outside, the wind swept across the plains. Inside, old wooden floors creaked beneath centuries-old ceilings.
Doors seemed to settle of their own accord.
Every corridor appeared to amplify the sound of the wind.
Like many people, I had seen “The Shining“.

Before going to bed, I quietly placed a chair beneath the bedroom door handle.
Just in case.
Nothing happened, of course.

The following morning, daylight transformed the castle into exactly what it really was: one of the most beautiful hospitality properties I had ever seen.
But it also revealed something else.

The castle wasn’t haunted.
The business was.
Not by ghosts, but by history.

This particular castle had never really needed to function as a commercial enterprise.
It had served as a private retreat, entertaining family, friends, and invited guests through hunting weekends, gourmet experiences, and country-house hospitality.
It was magnificent.
But it had never been designed to compete in the marketplace.

When commercial self-sufficiency became necessary, the symptoms were obvious.

  • Weak cash flow
  • Inconsistent occupancy
  • An organisation built around tradition rather than demand
  • A product that appealed to everyone in theory, but to nobody in particular

It would have been easy to focus on the hotel.
Instead, I asked a different question.
The same question I had first learned to ask years earlier while managing “the gourmet restaurant that happened to have rooms“—a story for another time.

What business should this castle actually be in?
Or, applying real-estate terminology applied to hotels: What is its ideal Highest-and-Best-Use?

The long – cold – winter evenings left plenty of time to think.
Not about how to improve the hotel, but about what business the castle should actually be in.
The answer wasn’t accommodation.
It was experience.

We got to work!
Together with a remarkably committed local team of chefs and service staff, reception and housekeeping team, and estate maintenance team, we created a dedicated MICE proposition, and I spent my days knocking on doors in nearby cities, introducing the castle directly to companies that had never considered holding meetings there.

For readers unfamiliar with hotel terminology, MICE stands for Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, and Events.
Despite the name, no castle mice were ever considered a culinary speciality.
Our chef would never have forgiven me.

Weekends became something entirely different.
The castle already hosted beautiful weddings.
Instead of selling guestrooms, meeting rooms, and restaurant meals separately, we stopped selling components altogether.

We began selling the entire estate.

“Rent a Castle”

For one weekend, the bride and groom didn’t simply reserve a venue.
They became the prince and princess of their own castle.
Their families occupied the estate.
The chapel. The gardens.
The dining rooms. Everything.

Commercially, it changed almost everything.
Bundling the experience improved pricing, simplified operations, concentrated labour, reduced energy consumption and transformed the economics of running such a large historic estate.

Behind the scenes, we rebuilt the management systems as well:

  • USALI
  • Cash-flow management
  • ERP
  • Business intelligence
  • Food and beverage; not just marketing context, but cooking and service flow, purchasing, storage, wastage, pilferage, FTE, COS – all of it
  • Sales representation in the key feeder markets
  • Marketing cooperation with the estate’s winery

Slowly, almost quietly, the castle began to stand on its own feet.

Eventually, I handed the operation over to a professional General Manager who successfully continued the repositioning and further developed the business.
A wonderful gentleman, professional and courteous, and principled; one of the few hotel managers on my list I will call for help.

Looking back, I sometimes smile at that first night.

The chair under the door was protecting me from imaginary dangers.
The real challenge wasn’t hidden in dark corridors.
It was hidden inside the business model.

Over the years, I’ve discovered that this is true of many organisations.

The problems that keep leaders awake at night are rarely the ones that threaten the future of the enterprise.

The real challenge is usually something much quieter.

Understanding what business the organisation is truly in.
Only then can you begin to build something strong enough to last.

Thank you for reading my story.

This story is part of a series—”The Banana Republic Hotel and What It Taught Me About Myself”—in which I share lessons learned throughout my professional and personal journey and how those experiences have shaped my thinking and led me to develop my own principles.

If you enjoyed reading the story and have the appetite to read another one, you are invited to visit G&A’s website, in particular its INSIGHTS page, where you can find all stories.
Alternatively, click here to be taken to the next story of this series.

I hope it has provided some food for thought, encouraged curiosity, and inspired you to keep learning.

Curiosity, humility, and continuous learning remain among the most valuable tools we possess.

Terminology for non-hoteliers:

  • SOP: Standard Operating Procedure – a documented process describing how a task should be performed to ensure consistency, quality, and compliance.
  • KPIs: Key Performance Indicators – measurable indicators used to monitor performance and progress against objectives.
  • ADR: Average Daily Rate – the average room rate paid by guests.
  • RevPAR: Revenue per Available Room – a measure combining occupancy and room rate to assess hotel revenue performance.
  • Occupancy: The percentage of available rooms that are occupied.
  • DOF: Double Occupancy Factor – the average number of guests staying in each occupied room. A DOF of 1.0 means every occupied room has one guest; 2.0 means every occupied room has two guests.
  • AGC: Average Guest Check – the average amount spent by each guest in a restaurant, bar, or other food and beverage outlet.
  • CRS: Central Reservation System – the central booking system that manages a hotel’s room inventory, rates, and reservations across all sales channels.
  • PMS: Property Management System – the software used to manage reservations, guest accounts, and hotel operations.
  • OTA: Online Travel Agency – websites such as Booking.com or Expedia that sell hotel rooms on behalf of hotels.
  • GDS: Global Distribution System – a worldwide booking network used by travel agents and corporate travel departments to reserve hotel rooms, flights, and other travel services.
  • CRM: Customer Relationship Management – systems and processes used to manage guest relationships and marketing.
  • F&B: Food & Beverage Department – all restaurant, bar, banquet, room service, and catering operations within a hotel.
  • Half-Board: A hotel meal plan that includes breakfast and one additional meal each day, usually dinner. Drinks other than those specifically included are generally charged separately.
  • MICE: Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Events – the hotel business related to corporate meetings, conferences, exhibitions, and incentive travel.
  • ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning – an integrated software system that connects key business functions such as finance, procurement, inventory, human resources, sales, and reporting into a single platform.
  • USALI: Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry – the internationally recognised accounting standard used by hotels to measure and compare financial performance.
  • GOP: Gross Operating Profit – the operating profit generated by the hotel before management fees, rent, financing costs, depreciation, taxes, and other non-operating expenses.
  • EBITDA: Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortisation – a widely used measure of an organisation’s operating profitability.
  • COS: Cost of Sales – the direct cost of producing the goods sold, such as food, beverages, or merchandise, expressed as an amount or percentage of revenue.
  • FTE: Full-Time Equivalent – a standard measure of staffing that converts part-time and seasonal employees into the equivalent number of full-time employees.

About the Author

Raoul Gransier is a Senior International Adviser and owner-focused hotelier with more than 30 years of operational and advisory experience in hospitality, tourism, governance, and performance improvement.

Website

https://gransier.com

/by

The Gourmet Restaurant That Happened to Have Rooms

The Gourmet Restaurant That Happened to Have Rooms

This story is about the “Highest-and-Best-Use” (HBU) for hotels.

Forget about “location, location, and location” and possibly licensed branding.
It’s all about market positioning, and you really do not need a licensed brand for this.

The hotel was a little gem just outside the city center and a member of the Small Luxury Hotels of the World.
And while it appeared lovely, it was bleeding from every pore.

The hotel was incurring losses.
It served the wholesale market rather than the high-net-worth individuals it should have served.
Every month was a struggle to meet debt service, payroll, and suppliers, which invited a series of opinions.

By the time I became the hotel’s General Manager, I thought I understood commercial hotel management.
Revenue management had become one of my passions.
I could read a profit and loss statement with confidence and knew how occupancy, ADR, and RevPAR worked together.
To me, commercial success meant improving the rooms department’s performance.

Ownership appointed an external consultant to supervise the hotel.
He held no formal position within the hotel, yet he exercised considerable influence over its direction.
We could hardly have been more different.
His style was demanding, confrontational, and uncompromising.
We challenged each other constantly.

Despite our differences, he possessed an extraordinary commercial instinct.
One day, he proposed something I considered almost reckless.
“We are no longer going to run a hotel with a restaurant,” he said.
“We are going to create a gourmet restaurant that happens to have rooms.”

I disagreed completely.
The destination was becoming increasingly competitive.
In my mind, the obvious answer was better revenue management, stronger pricing, and higher occupancy.
Why would we deliberately invest in a restaurant that might never generate a meaningful profit?

Rather than trying to convince me in a meeting room, he took me into the city.
For several days, we visited the city’s finest restaurants.
We observed how they welcomed guests.
We studied their menus.
We watched how people lingered long after dinner had finished.

During those visits, he quietly recruited several of the city’s best chefs to join our hotel.
When they arrived, I looked at the payroll in disbelief.
It felt as though we had more chefs than cooking stations.
Salary costs exploded.
Food costs increased sharply.

Many nights, I wondered whether this experiment would end my career.
Yet once the decision had been made, I accepted that my responsibility as GM was no longer to debate the strategy.
My responsibility was to make it succeed.

Together with the team, we transformed the guest experience.
We introduced evenings built around music and local social life.
At the end of lunch, every lady received the rose that had stood on her table as a farewell gift.
It was a small gesture, but guests remembered it and talked about it.

One evening, we introduced something we called the “Chef Catwalk.”
The entire kitchen brigade walked proudly through the restaurant carrying their signature dishes as though they were models on a fashion runway.
It was unexpected. It was theatrical.
People loved it.

Local residents began to visit not simply for dinner but because they wanted to be part of what was happening.
Television crews interviewed well-known personalities in the restaurant.
The hotel developed an identity that reached far beyond accommodation.
For the first time, I understood that people were no longer buying a room.
They were buying a story they wanted to become part of.

The restaurant itself never became a major profit centre.
In fact, after all the investment, it only just managed to break even.
Ironically, that was never its real purpose.

The restaurant changed the perception of the entire property.
Our rooms’ guest mix improved. Booking patterns changed.
Guests no longer chose us simply because we had available rooms.
They chose us because they wanted to belong to something distinctive.

The stronger accommodation performance that followed improved the hotel’s annual gross operating profit by 382% within two years.

Looking back, I realised my thinking had been incomplete.
I believed the rooms were the business because they generated a higher profit margin than the restaurant.
They weren’t.
Revenue management remained essential, but only after we had answered a more fundamental question: what was the highest and best use of this particular property?

The business was creating a destination that people actively wanted to experience.
The rooms simply became part of that experience.

I cannot claim the original idea as my own.
It wasn’t.
I can claim to have learned one of the most important lessons of my career.
Sometimes the greatest contribution a leader can make is not to have the best idea.
It is to recognise a better one, make it their own, and execute it with complete conviction.

This project taught me that numbers optimise performance.
They do not define purpose.
Before improving a hotel’s KPIs, you first have to understand what business the hotel is truly in.
Only then do the numbers tell you whether your strategy is working.

Thank you for reading my story.

This story is part of a series—”The Banana Republic Hotel and What It Taught Me About Myself”—in which I share lessons learned throughout my professional and personal journey and how those experiences have shaped my thinking and led me to develop my own principles.

If you enjoyed reading the story and have the appetite to read another one, you are invited to visit G&A’s website, in particular its INSIGHTS page, where you can find all stories.
Alternatively, click here to be taken to the next story.

I hope it has provided some food for thought, encouraged curiosity, and inspired you to keep learning.

Curiosity, humility, and continuous learning remain among the most valuable tools we possess.

Terminology for non-hoteliers:

  • SOP: Standard Operating Procedure – a documented process describing how a task should be performed to ensure consistency, quality, and compliance.
  • KPIs: Key Performance Indicators – measurable indicators used to monitor performance and progress against objectives.
  • ADR: Average Daily Rate – the average room rate paid by guests.
  • RevPAR: Revenue per Available Room – a measure combining occupancy and room rate to assess hotel revenue performance.
  • Occupancy: The percentage of available rooms that are occupied.
  • DOF: Double Occupancy Factor – the average number of guests staying in each occupied room. A DOF of 1.0 means every occupied room has one guest; 2.0 means every occupied room has two guests.
  • AGC: Average Guest Check – the average amount spent by each guest in a restaurant, bar, or other food and beverage outlet.
  • CRS: Central Reservation System – the central booking system that manages a hotel’s room inventory, rates, and reservations across all sales channels.
  • PMS: Property Management System – the software used to manage reservations, guest accounts, and hotel operations.
  • OTA: Online Travel Agency – websites such as Booking.com or Expedia that sell hotel rooms on behalf of hotels.
  • GDS: Global Distribution System – a worldwide booking network used by travel agents and corporate travel departments to reserve hotel rooms, flights, and other travel services.
  • CRM: Customer Relationship Management – systems and processes used to manage guest relationships and marketing.
  • F&B: Food & Beverage Department – all restaurant, bar, banquet, room service, and catering operations within a hotel.
  • Half-Board: A hotel meal plan that includes breakfast and one additional meal each day, usually dinner. Drinks other than those specifically included are generally charged separately.
  • MICE: Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Events – the hotel business related to corporate meetings, conferences, exhibitions, and incentive travel.
  • ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning – an integrated software system that connects key business functions such as finance, procurement, inventory, human resources, sales, and reporting into a single platform.
  • USALI: Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry – the internationally recognised accounting standard used by hotels to measure and compare financial performance.
  • GOP: Gross Operating Profit – the operating profit generated by the hotel before management fees, rent, financing costs, depreciation, taxes, and other non-operating expenses.
  • EBITDA: Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortisation – a widely used measure of an organisation’s operating profitability.
  • COS: Cost of Sales – the direct cost of producing the goods sold, such as food, beverages, or merchandise, expressed as an amount or percentage of revenue.
  • FTE: Full-Time Equivalent – a standard measure of staffing that converts part-time and seasonal employees into the equivalent number of full-time employees.

About the Author

Raoul Gransier is a Senior International Adviser and owner-focused hotelier with more than 30 years of operational and advisory experience in hospitality, tourism, governance, and performance improvement.

Website

https://gransier.com

/by

The Credit Policy

The Credit Policy

This story is about how systems and processes taught me that sustainable improvement is measured by what remains after you leave.

Another country. Another hotel. Another culture.
In that particular environment, petty theft and corruption at scale were part of daily life.
At the time, people would sometimes say, “If you don’t steal from your company, you steal from your family.”

I spent much of my time firefighting.
Cash disappeared. Controls were weak.
Responsibilities were unclear. Departments blamed one another.
There was confusion everywhere.

What fascinated me was not the theft itself.
It was how easily accountability disappeared once money started moving between departments.

I decided to approach the problem differently.
Not by punishing theft.
But by preventing it.

I did so by first following the flow:

  • How cash entered the business
  • Who touched it
  • How accountability was transferred
  • Where controls broke down

Slowly, patterns started to emerge.
Over many months, I developed a credit policy and control framework.
Not because I enjoyed writing procedures.
But because I wanted accountability to become visible.

Years later, I visited another hotel.
The Front Office Manager, whom I had trained while working in another hotel, welcomed me warmly.
Proudly, he showed me what he described as the best cash-control manual he had ever encountered.
He had discovered it in a previous hotel.
Not one where I had worked.

The document had travelled.
People had copied it. Adapted it. Used it.
Across multiple organisations.
My initials were still visible on the cover page.

The lesson was not about authorship.
The lesson was about systems and processes.
Good systems and processes survive the people who create them.
The best systems become part of the organisation itself.
Long after their creators have moved on.

Thank you for reading my story.

This story is part of a series—”The Banana Republic Hotel and What It Taught Me About Myself”—in which I share lessons learned throughout my professional and personal journey and how those experiences have shaped my thinking and led me to develop my own principles.

If you enjoyed reading the story and have the appetite to read another one, you are invited to visit G&A’s website, in particular its INSIGHTS page, where you can find all stories.
Alternatively, click here to be taken to the next story of this series.

I hope it has provided some food for thought, encouraged curiosity, and inspired you to keep learning.

Curiosity, humility, and continuous learning remain among the most valuable tools we possess.

Terminology for non-hoteliers:

  • SOP: Standard Operating Procedure – a documented process describing how a task should be performed to ensure consistency, quality, and compliance.
  • KPIs: Key Performance Indicators – measurable indicators used to monitor performance and progress against objectives.
  • ADR: Average Daily Rate – the average room rate paid by guests.
  • RevPAR: Revenue per Available Room – a measure combining occupancy and room rate to assess hotel revenue performance.
  • Occupancy: The percentage of available rooms that are occupied.
  • DOF: Double Occupancy Factor – the average number of guests staying in each occupied room. A DOF of 1.0 means every occupied room has one guest; 2.0 means every occupied room has two guests.
  • AGC: Average Guest Check – the average amount spent by each guest in a restaurant, bar, or other food and beverage outlet.
  • CRS: Central Reservation System – the central booking system that manages a hotel’s room inventory, rates, and reservations across all sales channels.
  • PMS: Property Management System – the software used to manage reservations, guest accounts, and hotel operations.
  • OTA: Online Travel Agency – websites such as Booking.com or Expedia that sell hotel rooms on behalf of hotels.
  • GDS: Global Distribution System – a worldwide booking network used by travel agents and corporate travel departments to reserve hotel rooms, flights, and other travel services.
  • CRM: Customer Relationship Management – systems and processes used to manage guest relationships and marketing.
  • F&B: Food & Beverage Department – all restaurant, bar, banquet, room service, and catering operations within a hotel.
  • Half-Board: A hotel meal plan that includes breakfast and one additional meal each day, usually dinner. Drinks other than those specifically included are generally charged separately.
  • MICE: Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Events – the hotel business related to corporate meetings, conferences, exhibitions, and incentive travel.
  • ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning – an integrated software system that connects key business functions such as finance, procurement, inventory, human resources, sales, and reporting into a single platform.
  • USALI: Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry – the internationally recognised accounting standard used by hotels to measure and compare financial performance.
  • GOP: Gross Operating Profit – the operating profit generated by the hotel before management fees, rent, financing costs, depreciation, taxes, and other non-operating expenses.
  • EBITDA: Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortisation – a widely used measure of an organisation’s operating profitability.
  • COS: Cost of Sales – the direct cost of producing the goods sold, such as food, beverages, or merchandise, expressed as an amount or percentage of revenue.
  • FTE: Full-Time Equivalent – a standard measure of staffing that converts part-time and seasonal employees into the equivalent number of full-time employees.

About the Author

Raoul Gransier is a Senior International Adviser and owner-focused hotelier with more than 30 years of operational and advisory experience in hospitality, tourism, governance, and performance improvement.

Website

https://gransier.com

/by

The Revenue Experiment

The Revenue Experiment

This story is about how curiosity taught me to look beyond the obvious.

While serving as Front Office Manager at a large hotel catering predominantly to leisure groups, I became fascinated by distribution.

At the time, revenue management – both in terms of systems and culture – was still emerging.
Convincing management and ownership to invest in dedicated systems and specialised staff often required as much selling as the rooms themselves.

Most business was negotiated with wholesalers and tour operators at fixed prices.

Something about the booking and distribution methodology fascinated me.
I wanted to understand how it actually worked.
Not the theory. The mechanism. The chain.
How did guests find us?
Why did some channels perform better than others?
Why did some market segments behave differently from others?

I became absorbed by questions such as:

  • Global Distribution Systems and Online Travel Agents
  • Distribution costs, commissions, mark-ups, kick-backs
  • Market segments and sources of business
  • Pricing, net or inclusive of VAT and city tax
  • Demand, pickup, cancellations, booking pace, and double-occupancy density
  • Room categories and benefits, addressing leisure, Meetings & Conference, and business needs
  • Yield management
  • Reputation management

I experimented relentlessly.
Without specialised software. Without automated tools.
This was long before today’s user-friendly property management systems and apps.
All I had were spreadsheets, observation, curiosity, and adjustment.

I changed one thing. Observed the result. Changed another.
Observed again. Slowly, patterns started to emerge.
The result was not merely better occupancy.
The result was a different business model. New market segments emerged.
Dependence on low-yield wholesale business decreased.
The hotel began attracting guests who had previously never considered it.

What had been considered an out-of-town wholesale hotel gradually became one of the city’s strongest online performers.

Looking back, the lesson was not revenue management.
The lesson was curiosity.
Understanding the mechanism often creates opportunities that remain invisible to others.

Thank you for reading my story.

This story is part of a series—”The Banana Republic Hotel and What It Taught Me About Myself”—in which I share lessons learned throughout my professional and personal journey and how those experiences have shaped my thinking and led me to develop my own principles.

If you enjoyed reading the story and have the appetite to read another one, you are invited to visit G&A’s website, in particular its INSIGHTS page, where you can find all stories.
Alternatively, click here to be taken to the next story.

I hope it has provided some food for thought, encouraged curiosity, and inspired you to keep learning.

Curiosity, humility, and continuous learning remain among the most valuable tools we possess.

Terminology for non-hoteliers:

  • SOP: Standard Operating Procedure – a documented process describing how a task should be performed to ensure consistency, quality, and compliance.
  • KPIs: Key Performance Indicators – measurable indicators used to monitor performance and progress against objectives.
  • ADR: Average Daily Rate – the average room rate paid by guests.
  • RevPAR: Revenue per Available Room – a measure combining occupancy and room rate to assess hotel revenue performance.
  • Occupancy: The percentage of available rooms that are occupied.
  • DOF: Double Occupancy Factor – the average number of guests staying in each occupied room. A DOF of 1.0 means every occupied room has one guest; 2.0 means every occupied room has two guests.
  • AGC: Average Guest Check – the average amount spent by each guest in a restaurant, bar, or other food and beverage outlet.
  • CRS: Central Reservation System – the central booking system that manages a hotel’s room inventory, rates, and reservations across all sales channels.
  • PMS: Property Management System – the software used to manage reservations, guest accounts, and hotel operations.
  • OTA: Online Travel Agency – websites such as Booking.com or Expedia that sell hotel rooms on behalf of hotels.
  • GDS: Global Distribution System – a worldwide booking network used by travel agents and corporate travel departments to reserve hotel rooms, flights, and other travel services.
  • CRM: Customer Relationship Management – systems and processes used to manage guest relationships and marketing.
  • F&B: Food & Beverage Department – all restaurant, bar, banquet, room service, and catering operations within a hotel.
  • Half-Board: A hotel meal plan that includes breakfast and one additional meal each day, usually dinner. Drinks other than those specifically included are generally charged separately.
  • MICE: Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Events – the hotel business related to corporate meetings, conferences, exhibitions, and incentive travel.
  • ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning – an integrated software system that connects key business functions such as finance, procurement, inventory, human resources, sales, and reporting into a single platform.
  • USALI: Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry – the internationally recognised accounting standard used by hotels to measure and compare financial performance.
  • GOP: Gross Operating Profit – the operating profit generated by the hotel before management fees, rent, financing costs, depreciation, taxes, and other non-operating expenses.
  • EBITDA: Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortisation – a widely used measure of an organisation’s operating profitability.
  • COS: Cost of Sales – the direct cost of producing the goods sold, such as food, beverages, or merchandise, expressed as an amount or percentage of revenue.
  • FTE: Full-Time Equivalent – a standard measure of staffing that converts part-time and seasonal employees into the equivalent number of full-time employees.

About the Author

Raoul Gransier is a Senior International Adviser and owner-focused hotelier with more than 30 years of operational and advisory experience in hospitality, tourism, governance, and performance improvement.

Website

https://gransier.com

/by

The Flooded Hotel

The Flooded Hotel

This story is about how uncertainty taught me leadership.

Another country. Another hotel. Another lesson.
I was Night Manager of a high-profile hotel frequented by celebrities, heads of state, and captains of industry.

A Sales Manager had approved the use of fireworks in a ballroom.
The sprinkler system activated. The hotel began to flood.
Nobody knew how to stop it.
No one on the hotel team knew how. That included me.

Water poured from the building’s entrance onto the street and down into the basements.
The situation deteriorated rapidly, and the basement where the kitchens and stores were located was beginning to flood.
Cooks started building dikes out of towels, aprons, and bed sheets to contain the water.

The fire brigade eventually arrived.
They located the switch. The water stopped.
But the crisis was far from over. Night cleaning teams from across the city were mobilised.
The clean-up continued into the early morning, with me sweeping the floors.

The hotel survived.

Looking back, the event taught me something important.
Systems matter. Training matters.
Preparation matters.
But reality has a habit of introducing situations nobody anticipated.

No manual had prepared us for that night.
No training session had covered it.
No procedure explained what to do next.

Leadership often begins where procedures end.
One thing I have learned about myself is that I do not need to know everything before acting.
Sometimes leadership is not about having answers.
It is about helping people keep moving until answers appear.

When I eventually arrived home, mentally and physically exhausted, I switched on the television to watch a movie on a 24/7 cable channel.
The irony could not have been greater.
The running film was “Towering Inferno”.
A classic disaster movie involving exactly the kind of problem I had just spent the night dealing with.

For the first time after battling my way through the night and into the morning, I laughed.

Thank you for reading my story.

This story is part of a series—”The Banana Republic Hotel and What It Taught Me About Myself”—in which I share lessons learned throughout my professional and personal journey and how those experiences have shaped my thinking and led me to develop my own principles.

If you enjoyed reading the story and have the appetite to read another one, you are invited to visit G&A’s website, in particular its INSIGHTS page, where you can find all stories.
Alternatively, click here to be taken to the next story.

I hope it has provided some food for thought, encouraged curiosity, and inspired you to keep learning.

Curiosity, humility, and continuous learning remain among the most valuable tools we possess.

Terminology for non-hoteliers:

  • SOP: Standard Operating Procedure – a documented process describing how a task should be performed to ensure consistency, quality, and compliance.
  • KPIs: Key Performance Indicators – measurable indicators used to monitor performance and progress against objectives.
  • ADR: Average Daily Rate – the average room rate paid by guests.
  • RevPAR: Revenue per Available Room – a measure combining occupancy and room rate to assess hotel revenue performance.
  • Occupancy: The percentage of available rooms that are occupied.
  • DOF: Double Occupancy Factor – the average number of guests staying in each occupied room. A DOF of 1.0 means every occupied room has one guest; 2.0 means every occupied room has two guests.
  • AGC: Average Guest Check – the average amount spent by each guest in a restaurant, bar, or other food and beverage outlet.
  • CRS: Central Reservation System – the central booking system that manages a hotel’s room inventory, rates, and reservations across all sales channels.
  • PMS: Property Management System – the software used to manage reservations, guest accounts, and hotel operations.
  • OTA: Online Travel Agency – websites such as Booking.com or Expedia that sell hotel rooms on behalf of hotels.
  • GDS: Global Distribution System – a worldwide booking network used by travel agents and corporate travel departments to reserve hotel rooms, flights, and other travel services.
  • CRM: Customer Relationship Management – systems and processes used to manage guest relationships and marketing.
  • F&B: Food & Beverage Department – all restaurant, bar, banquet, room service, and catering operations within a hotel.
  • Half-Board: A hotel meal plan that includes breakfast and one additional meal each day, usually dinner. Drinks other than those specifically included are generally charged separately.
  • MICE: Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Events – the hotel business related to corporate meetings, conferences, exhibitions, and incentive travel.
  • ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning – an integrated software system that connects key business functions such as finance, procurement, inventory, human resources, sales, and reporting into a single platform.
  • USALI: Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry – the internationally recognised accounting standard used by hotels to measure and compare financial performance.
  • GOP: Gross Operating Profit – the operating profit generated by the hotel before management fees, rent, financing costs, depreciation, taxes, and other non-operating expenses.
  • EBITDA: Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortisation – a widely used measure of an organisation’s operating profitability.
  • COS: Cost of Sales – the direct cost of producing the goods sold, such as food, beverages, or merchandise, expressed as an amount or percentage of revenue.
  • FTE: Full-Time Equivalent – a standard measure of staffing that converts part-time and seasonal employees into the equivalent number of full-time employees.

About the Author

Raoul Gransier is a Senior International Adviser and owner-focused hotelier with more than 30 years of operational and advisory experience in hospitality, tourism, governance, and performance improvement.

Website

https://gransier.com

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The Overbooked Hotel

The Overbooked Hotel

This story is about how a crisis taught me to be calm.

I had built an early career in luxury hotels where discretion was valued above publicity and where guests occasionally reminded you that the world was larger than the building itself.

Being young and, arguably, naively stupid, I became increasingly fascinated by a completely different side of hospitality: scale.
Large groups, airports, convention hotels, and the logistics behind them fascinated me.
I wanted to know how it worked.

The saying is “be careful what you wish for,” and this story somewhat demonstrates that I landed the jackpot.

I joined one of the largest hotels in town as its front desk manager.
Shortly after being hired, I found myself managing a situation in which the hotel had somehow sold every room twice, an issue that remained unresolved until the day of arrival.
The problem did not start that day. It had been created weeks earlier.
An ambitious sales team, accustomed to significant wash-down and operating in an unstable market, had taken a gamble.
This time, the gamble failed.

The hotel had 400 rooms. More than 800 guests arrived. Simultaneously.
The front office team froze in horror.
Management panicked. Guests demanded answers.
Panic was not going to solve the problem. Reality would.
One thing I have learned about myself over the years is that the more panic there is around me, the calmer and quieter I get.

I am not a particularly extroverted person.
Nor would most people identify me as the loudest person in the room.
I may not have caused the problem.
Yet when a crisis emerges, I have a tendency to quietly assume ownership.
Not because of a title. Because somebody has to.

Over the years, I have learned that responsibility and accountability are not always the same thing.
Sometimes the person who solves the problem is not the person who created it.
But the guests do not care whose fault it is.
They simply need somebody to take charge.

The bookings were for single occupancy. The rooms were doubles.
So we started with the facts. I spoke openly with the group leaders.
I explained the situation honestly. No excuses. No attempts to hide the problem.
In exchange for compensation, many agreed to share rooms.
Additional reception teams searched the city for available accommodation.
Guests who preferred not to accept the proposed solution were relocated.
Hotel-chartered buses transported guests where necessary.

Slowly, the pressure began to ease. The problem was solved. What remained was another lesson.
Clarity becomes most valuable when everyone else loses theirs.
People often believe leadership is about having the right answers.
In my experience, leadership during a crisis is often about accepting reality quickly, staying calm, and helping others focus on solutions rather than emotions.

To understand the situation, it is important to realise the context.

This was an upcoming Central European destination in the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The city was changing at extraordinary speed. Tourism was booming, international investment was arriving, and demand often seemed limitless.
It felt at times as if an entirely new hospitality market was being invented in real time.

New hotels were opening, reservation systems were far less sophisticated than today, and market demand often exceeded available supply.
Some hotels could only be booked by joining a waiting list — something that may be difficult to imagine today.
Occupancy levels that would be considered exceptional today were normal.

Our 400-key hotel operated at approximately 92% annual occupancy.
In such an environment, substantial overbookings on the day of arrival were not unusual.

It was a commercial risk many hotels accepted, based on historical cancellation patterns and expected no-shows.

Most of the time the calculations worked.
Occasionally they did not.

What struck me afterwards was how quickly established procedures became irrelevant.
The reservation system could not solve the problem.
The manuals could not solve the problem. Escalating the issue could not solve the problem.
Only people could solve the problem.
The solution emerged through judgement, communication, improvisation, and a willingness to accept responsibility for difficult decisions.
It reminded me that systems and processes are valuable, but they are tools.
Their purpose is to support decision-making, not replace it.
Perhaps that is why I remain cautious whenever a process becomes more important than the judgement it was designed to support.

For me, however, the lasting lesson was different.
Crisis does not create character. Crisis reveals it.
And sometimes it reveals qualities in ourselves that we did not know were there.

Thank you for reading my story.

This story is part of a series—”The Banana Republic Hotel and What It Taught Me About Myself”—in which I share lessons learned throughout my professional and personal journey and how those experiences have shaped my thinking and led me to develop my own principles.

If you enjoyed reading the story and have the appetite to read another one, you are invited to visit G&A’s website, in particular its INSIGHTS page, where you can find all stories.
Alternatively, click here to be taken to the next story.

I hope it has provided some food for thought, encouraged curiosity, and inspired you to keep learning.

Curiosity, humility, and continuous learning remain among the most valuable tools we possess.

Terminology for non-hoteliers:

  • SOP: Standard Operating Procedure – a documented process describing how a task should be performed to ensure consistency, quality, and compliance.
  • KPIs: Key Performance Indicators – measurable indicators used to monitor performance and progress against objectives.
  • ADR: Average Daily Rate – the average room rate paid by guests.
  • RevPAR: Revenue per Available Room – a measure combining occupancy and room rate to assess hotel revenue performance.
  • Occupancy: The percentage of available rooms that are occupied.
  • DOF: Double Occupancy Factor – the average number of guests staying in each occupied room. A DOF of 1.0 means every occupied room has one guest; 2.0 means every occupied room has two guests.
  • AGC: Average Guest Check – the average amount spent by each guest in a restaurant, bar, or other food and beverage outlet.
  • CRS: Central Reservation System – the central booking system that manages a hotel’s room inventory, rates, and reservations across all sales channels.
  • PMS: Property Management System – the software used to manage reservations, guest accounts, and hotel operations.
  • OTA: Online Travel Agency – websites such as Booking.com or Expedia that sell hotel rooms on behalf of hotels.
  • GDS: Global Distribution System – a worldwide booking network used by travel agents and corporate travel departments to reserve hotel rooms, flights, and other travel services.
  • CRM: Customer Relationship Management – systems and processes used to manage guest relationships and marketing.
  • F&B: Food & Beverage Department – all restaurant, bar, banquet, room service, and catering operations within a hotel.
  • Half-Board: A hotel meal plan that includes breakfast and one additional meal each day, usually dinner. Drinks other than those specifically included are generally charged separately.
  • MICE: Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Events – the hotel business related to corporate meetings, conferences, exhibitions, and incentive travel.
  • ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning – an integrated software system that connects key business functions such as finance, procurement, inventory, human resources, sales, and reporting into a single platform.
  • USALI: Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry – the internationally recognised accounting standard used by hotels to measure and compare financial performance.
  • GOP: Gross Operating Profit – the operating profit generated by the hotel before management fees, rent, financing costs, depreciation, taxes, and other non-operating expenses.
  • EBITDA: Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortisation – a widely used measure of an organisation’s operating profitability.
  • COS: Cost of Sales – the direct cost of producing the goods sold, such as food, beverages, or merchandise, expressed as an amount or percentage of revenue.
  • FTE: Full-Time Equivalent – a standard measure of staffing that converts part-time and seasonal employees into the equivalent number of full-time employees.

About the Author

Raoul Gransier is a Senior International Adviser and owner-focused hotelier with more than 30 years of operational and advisory experience in hospitality, tourism, governance, and performance improvement.

Website

https://gransier.com

/by

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