Hans Pfister: How Small Hotels Can Use Repeatable Systems

Today I’m delighted to be joined by Hans Pfister, founder of Cayuga Sustainable Hospitality – a management company with six small luxury hotels in Costa Rica and Nicaragua. As I explained in my recent post – “The Power of Predictability” – I’m very interested in how repeatable systems can be used for consistency. I think this is an area where there is a strong connection between hotel marketing and operations management.

Arenas del Mar Nature Resort

>> Can you tell me a little bit about your experience with operations – and some of the systems you use at your hotels?

I’ve studied hotel management and worked in more chain-oriented hotels before — and there’s a lot more standardization there. I opened the Hampton Inn here in Costa Rica, and I worked at the Sheraton, so I’ve had exposure to that.

The hotels my company manages now are different: they’re smaller so it’s harder to standardize things. But what we’re trying to do is focus the standardization not on the guest experience, but on more on the back of the house activities. For example, we don’t want our guests to walk in the bathroom and see the same shampoo and shower as everywhere else in the world -  you don’t really know where you are that way. For our guest experience, we want things to be very unique.

But for activities such as accounting or housekeeping operations and maintenance — that’s where we want to standardize things and become much more efficient.

>> Since you’re a fairly new company, are you creating brand new operations manuals for this or do you have an operations manual you’ve used at other hotels?

We have manuals that we’ve created here for our company, but it’s a constant process of updating them. I think you’re never done writing an operations manual. They need to be very dynamic documents, because things change — especially in the last year.

Customer expectations have changed a lot, so it’s a constant updating of the procedures. But yes, we have manuals for all the different operations of the hotel.

>> How do you make these updates: do you have a ‘system for updating systems’? Do you make routinely scheduled updates… or just on an as-needed basis?

At this point in time, it’s more need-based. We probably should do it little bit more planned, but right now it’s more need-based.

>> Okay, does your management team write these documents based on their own experience and knowledge, or do you have a different approach to writing these?

If it’s a combination of experience from us, along with our experiences across hotels. I think the ability to learn from our different properties is an advantage of having a chain or collection of hotels.

And of course our front line staff that deals on a day-to-day basis with the guests tell us things, and we try to listen and include their suggestions.

>> There’s some discussion about how much managers should stick operating procedures and how much they should give their staff leeway to use their own judgment. How do you find the balance?

I’m definitely more on the side of employees using their judgment. Yet of course not employees that are on their second day and not sure what they’re doing. But employees that have been with the company for a while and that have gone through all the training and internalized the culture of the company — they should be given some freedom. In the end, no manual makes any sense if whatever is in the manual goes against customer satisfaction or making sure the customer is happy with his experience at the hotel.

So we don’t want to become bureaucratic with this at all. In my view it’s definitely something the employees should use their best judgment first, and they know the manual is there as a help.

>> How do you train new employees? Do you have a process for that?

I think it’s a combination. It’s just like you can’t only go to university and then expected to perform in a job. But at the same time, you learn things at school or university that are helpful, and that you can’t just learn with on-the-job training. So think it’s a combination of some classroom studies and reading together with some real-life experience.

Our industry — the hospitality industry — is very much hands-on, so really a lot of things are on the job training. But again, the employee can go back to the manual and read things over. If they’re not sure about something, they can find answers there.

Very good – thanks for your time, Hans.