Brands were expected to be “reasonable” about the demands they placed on owners when reopening, focusing on cleanliness rather than strict adherence to brand standards, according to Hugh Taylor OBE CEO, Michels & Taylor.
The cost of meeting increased costs would be met by owners, although the brands were expected to help “with commercial support, with waiving fees”.
The comments were made as Michels & Taylor shared its newly-developed Hotel Re-Opening Plan, created to help support management teams when reopening hotels following the relaxation of COVID-19 restrictions. There was expected to be an announcement on the lifting of restrictions in the UK this Sunday.
The plan, created to guide the group’s 23-strong managed estate, outlined the operational and commercial checklist of issues a hotel needed to consider for reopening the business, covering everything from the new check in to check out customer journey subject to government guidance and social distancing, to the commercial and sales strategy that hotels will need to consider.
Taylor told us: “We have been in dialogue with all the agencies and hospitality groups as well as owners and there is some preempting ahead of Sunday’s announcement. We want to to be able to use this as a blue print.”
Peter Hales, MD, M&T Managed Hotels, added: “We have been asking all our GMs to lobby their MPs and we’ve been impressed by the response. We’re in the beneficial situation that we’re multi brand and so we have a lot of ideas and solutions, although it’s difficult to plan for a future that we have no date for, we must plan for when the shackles are lifted.
“There are a lot of similarities between the brands’ approaches, it’s all around cleanliness. We should be able to bring them all together. For the guest, it’s as much about reassurance as cleanliness. There’s going to be a new normal around hotel etiquette. We won’t be holding the door open for guests, we won’t be taking their cases, but we will be explaining that in advance.
“The cost impact is something that we will have to work on from property to property, with cleanliness the big driver. It’s going to have to be borne by the business as the cost of reopening. There will be PPE in the guest areas, in the rooms, extra cleaning, extra equipment, extra signage.”
Commenting on who would be paying for the extra costs, Taylor said: “There is a real danger that the hotel sector will see more costs when reopening, there is a challenge to commercially allow properties to reopen and generate enough revenue for it to make sense. The brands help with commercial support, with waiving fees, but the burden of responsibility remains with the owner. The brands will be reasonable about the demands they put on the owners, they will be flexible about the policing of the brands.”
In terms of the impact on the customer experience, he added: “The customer understands the situation. In the luxury sector, the luxury product will remain and we will do everything we can to ensure that the service remains. We’re still going to smile, but from a distance. We’re still here to look after you. Everything is there, it’s just going to be in a different form. From our perspective, our view is that you can open safely, you can look after customers, a hotel can deliver, It’s still hospitality, you can still have that warm welcome.
Hales concluded: “I’ve been in the hotel industry for 30 years and every time there is a recession there is someone who says that hospitality is dead. The truth is that customers love hotels. Owners love owning them. It will remain fun. It will remain an experience. What will not happen is the social interaction. But you will get great food and great service.”
Insight: The sector is starting to come together to create plans like these which can be used to reassure guests - and governments - that it’s OK, it’s safe, to reopen hotels and bring to a close the many conversations one hears about the untimely demise of the sector. One can’t help but imagine sitting next to a bar in a hazmat suit and think ‘but is it fun?’. This hack suspects that, when the time comes, it would count as pretty high fun just to sit in a ditch next to a bar and have a warm gin out of a bucket. So I don’t think we need worry there.
But like most fun, particularly gin buckets, it must be paid for. And in a period when even high net worth landlords are forming unions to try and defend their positions - thank you Travelodge - money is not plentiful on the ground. Extra costs must be sold to those paying them.
It has been hoped that, with companies such as Hilton and now Marriott International raising money through their loyalty programmes, some of that cash would trickle down in terms of help paying to pressure wash rooms. That seems unlikely. Instead, owners will be looking to get flexibility where they can in their franchise agreements. Expect a lively non-adherence to the tyranny of pillow menus.