All posts tagged Balanced Scorecard

How To Manage The Operations Of Hotels Bsc

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Implementation process of Balanced Scorecard is followed by its maintenance. Just developing a set of key performance indicators and introducing Balanced Scorecard to the company is not enough. The entire personnel must learn to live with Balanced Scorecard and use this effective performance evaluation and strategic management system in routine everyday work. This concerns all industries and business types, including hotel business. It should be mentioned that hotel industry is particularly competitive, and thus, control of adopted strategy is extremely important since any mistakes and dedications may result in loss of competitive advantage and consequently in monetary losses. In theory, Balanced Scorecard looks great. If you read reviews and works by creators of this tool, Norton and Kaplan, you will learn that BSC is created to communicate operational and strategic management. Very often, strategies remain on paper and never transform into real actions. This is a very common problem in many businesses
. One of the greatest mistakes in implementation of Balanced Scorecard is inability to maintain and control the system. In this article, well talk about hotel Balanced Scorecard, its components and operations to control the system.

As known, Balanced Scorecard starts with development of a strategy. This is the first age that many top managers fail. What is a strategy for hotel? Making a lot of money is a good goal but strategy is something different. One has to identify mission and values for the hotel. Top managers should answer simple questions where will we be in several years or how will we satisfy needs of our customers? A strategy is a global plan that implies future vision. It also contains methods of achieving and controlling strategy implementation.

Choice of key performance indicators is a subsequent stage that also requires much attention. The most typical hotel KPIs are room occupancy, percentage of international guests, house keeping costs per overall expenses, average revenue per room, average revenue per customer, percentage of customer complains per total number of customers and others. It is important to select the right indicators that represent critical success factors. It is never late to introduce amendments to hotel Balanced Scorecard and substitute indicators if the wrong choice was initially made. Key performance indicators offer top managers real time information on how well the strategy is being implemented at the moment. Moreover, some indicators, namely leading KPIs, can tell much about what is going to happen in the nearest future. For example, improvements in customer satisfaction imply that satisfied customers will come back to the particular hotel which means growth of revenue.

Finally, it needs mentioning that the most important stage is maintenance of Balanced Scorecard. It is possible to develop strategy and key performance indicators within several days. It is possible to present a Balanced Scorecard to the personnel and explain why the company needs to use this system. However if top management and ordinary personnel is reluctant to use Balanced Scorecard all have an entirely wrong concept of this system, BSC will most certainly fail as it will only complicate management process.

How To Measure Hotel Security Performance

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Hotel industry is a very competitive one. One high season comes hotel owners begin real wars to win loyalty of customers. Indeed, there is a wide choice of hotels in any country. Customers are free to choose hotels according to their preferences and budgets. Sure, everyone wants to get the most value for his or her money. Every minor detail matters in the hotel. Security measures are of exceptional importance since when visitors miss their personal things they will never come to that hotel again. Moreover, if such a theft becomes public the hotel reputation will most certainly suffer. For this reason, evaluation of security measures in the hotel is as importance as measurement of its business performance. Top security is an inseparable part of the hotel top rate service. These days, hotel owners and managers use the most popular performance evaluation tool which is known as Balanced Scorecard. Having developed strategic goals and chosen a set of key performance indicators, hotel managers can evalua
te current performance as well as locate problems.

Hotel security is provided through various services, from surveillance and installment of cameras to regular checkups of corridors, lobbies and other rooms and areas. Without proper evaluation it is very difficult to say whether or not hotel security measures are efficient. Of course, one can use statistic information such as theft or incidents rates. However, these figures information on what has already happened. It is impossible to plan ahead without having figures on current performance of Security Service.

Thus, in order to get such information as set of relevant key performance indicators has to be developed. To begin with, it needs mentioning that key performance indicators are not just numbers. KPIs represent critical success factors for various aspects of running business, hotel security in our case. Thus, top managers and those responsible for implementation of Balanced Scorecard in a hotel should consider the most important factors that directly influence top performance of a hotel in terms of security. At that, the hotel should take care of safety of both visitors, own personnel, and protection of hotel property.

Key performance indicators used to measure security performance have to be understood for ordinary security officers. If security guards do not understand the purpose of using Balanced Scorecard and key performance indicators they are likely to offer fake figures just to fulfill the tasks. Key performance indicators have to be measurable. For example it is reasonable to measure such indicator as percentage of time corridors and lobbies are not checked by security guards. Logically, the more often security officers checked up rooms and lobbies, the less probable incidents are. Two other relevant key performance indicators for hotel security we can refer number of checkups performed outside, percentage of time that security guards are not working or unable to prevent accidents, number of security officers per storey etc.