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Mui Ne Sunrise Sand Dunes

Sunday 21 August 2016

PRIORITY 101

Wow, it's been awhile since the last time I logged in here.  Welcome back Ms. Salome aka MicMic!   

Now, let me ask you a question. Do you ever understand the person sleeping next to you?  It’s a question that always boggles me.   

One day I woke up and realized, “OMG, I don’t have anyone except career!” That was the day I remembered what my boss told me, “I am throwing you in the water and let you swim by yourself. It’s up to you to survive.”

If I can’t make personal life better, I might as well take care of the opportunity that my boss led me.  I wouldn’t be a hotel general manager if he didn’t open the door for me.  But here’s the twist, people think a general manager does nothing but “just give orders”.

 Well, let me share to you my experience.  As a general manager, I must relate well to people not only to guests but to employees as well. The HR function is as important as sales and marketing.  It’s the life blood of operations. I am handling different types of people, so it’s quite a challenge to be level-headed sometimes.

My bachelor’s degree in Commerce helps me to have a solid financial background enough to balance the cost against operations. Also, my management experience in sales and marketing and food and beverage give me insights on how I can analyze operations through numbers and constant visibility on the floor.   These skills are very important for locally owned properties.

If you dream of becoming a Hotel General Manager then forget about your eight hours work mentality.  I tried developing one Filipino manager once and when my boss reassigned me, I was surprised to learn he insisted working from 6AM-2PM and won’t even volunteer staying few minutes unless a senior manager would ask him to stay a little bit.  I hope his experience with us taught him to be committed to his job now.

 A general manager for locally owned hotel is on call 24 hours a day. This is on top of the daily tasks studying daily management report, occupancy reports, operations meeting, executive meetings, going over room assignments, staff assignments, food and beverage plans and programs, chasing guest complaints, and getting a call wee hour in the morning with graveyard shift staff asking help to solve guest complaints that sometimes turned out to be simple issues of language barrier.

If I have to name it all, 24 hours are not even enough.   Plain and simple, this is a job that requires total commitment and dedication.  I love my work, my owners and my boss definitely, that I am not comfortable sleeping outside of the hotel anymore. I get so jealous of employees not showing their loyalty to the property and it’s becoming a habit for me to install 4G on my phone even I’m on holiday. 

If you ask me what’s my typical day like, have a glimpse of this:

6:30AM – visit the kitchen and check if dining areas are ready for breakfast
7AM – walk around the properties 
9AM – browse emails, study daily management reports and occupancy reports
10AM- operations briefing
11AM to 3PM- Administrative tasks
4PM to 9PM – Visibility on the floor

Those schedules are not static though.  On top of this, a hotel general manager must think of promoting the property outside. 
But what is really the most crucial task of a General Manager?  I may mention a lot of things that molds a GM’s personal life but really there’s only one thing all GMs care about, it’s the GOP.  I may have very nice owners and COO who offered me an opportunity to grow with them but at the end of the day, the expectation is high GOP turnover. It’s business after all.         

On a personal side, you may think I have this title and yet posting irresponsible crazy stuff in FACEBOOK.  Facebook is one form of Social Media that is built to trigger people’s interests through social interaction, isn’t it? It’s like gossip that interests people’s attention.  

Don’t you enjoy it when you are getting the attention you don’t normally get? You may describe it as attention seeker but well, what can I do? It makes me laugh amidst of my heavy responsibilities at work. It’s actually a nice break from all those seriousness in life.  

Well dear! Forget about me being serious in Facebook, okay? Nothing can boggle my mind now except messages from my owners and my boss! Let’s put it this way, if you are in front of me and you hear a sound of Viber message on my phone, my apologies but please forget I ever thought you exist. They're my priority.      


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