Renovation closure gives time to plan
It is now two months since the terrorist attacks on the USA. We have just finished our worst ever October, but November looks a little better and, little by little, reservations are coming in again.
Gilles Humeau, director of sales for both our Paris hotels, attended the Incentive Travel & Meeting Executives trade show in Chicago as usual. He said that, although many clients were present, not many hotels attended.
Other than that, we are getting ready for the closure of the Grand hotel in mid-December. For us, this means allocating certain office space for the sales department that will work from here during the 15 months of renovations. Having them close at hand will help, especially now.
We are also consolidating the purchasing staff from both hotels and need to house them in one area. Their main computer will also be installed here, as well as the pay office.
This time of the year is also appraisal time. We plan to evaluate the performance of everybody on the management team by 30 November, which internally helps us to plan training activities for next year.
Six Continents Hotels has developed a new guide for performance management, which is excellent. Head office, in turn, will consolidate all appraisals of senior management and plan training needs accordingly.
The guide includes a personal development plan, a resource guide listing all the available training courses within the company, valuable personal tips, books and Web sites to consult, and it also explains how to complete the appraisals and the best way to set performance objectives.
Talking about objectives, we are in the midst of planning an all-day meeting for the executives later this month, where we shall be discussing our own objectives and goals for next year. Now is the time, more than ever, to look at how to improve our performance.
On this note, I am thrilled to say that we have achieved our goals this year. Employee satisfaction increased by 12%, guest satisfaction by 20% and profit is up by 17% from last year. The first two were greatly helped by us going for Investors in People. Since we shared all of the above information with the staff, I guess it gave us the punch to really go for it.
In December, we will have the final assessment - keep your fingers crossed.
DAGMARWOODWARD is general manager of the Hotel Inter-Continental Paris
Next diary from Dagmar Woodward: 20 December
