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Three Mistakes Hotels Are Making with Wi-Fi
Posted: 09/18/2023

Wi-Fi is now like the foundation for your hotel: if it’s not solid, it can jeopardize everything.
Your HSIA network has to deliver the performance and experience your guests demand; Wi-Fi has evolved from being an amenity to a necessity and key driver of guest satisfaction.
In the converged world, all your systems for business operations depend on a solid and secure Wi-Fi network. Without it, nothing else works properly—your staff and systems will struggle, and you will waste precious time, money, and resources trying to recover.
Here are three things you may be doing that put you and your Wi-Fi network at risk, and what you should do instead.

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Definitely Doug 9/15/23: Experience Matters!
Posted: 09/15/2023

Hotels are usually the first thing a traveler books within a destination. And hotels usually know that destination better than anyone else (or any website) a guest might consult. But are hotels connecting the dots?

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Definitely Doug 8/25/23: Check It Off the List!
Posted: 08/25/2023

This week I will cover software that goes under various descriptions, including quality assurance, audit, and checklist management. It includes anything that involves a standard list of things that someone needs to perform or verify. In hospitality, this is still an emerging field, but is growing very rapidly.

Between 2020-2022, traveler adoptions fluctuated drastically due to the lockdowns, the impact of the variants, and the vaccination schedule. As the pandemic is behind us and people start to travel in 2023, one question is on every practitioner’s mind: What are the traveler’s current expectations and preferences in the post-pandemic world?

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Definitely Doug 8/11/23: Charge Me Up!
Posted: 08/11/2023

Few things make travelers more anxious than a mobile phone with a low battery. For years, hotels have tried to play catch-up with evolving mobile device charging standards, and many seem to have given up. Guests can sometimes find desktop or bedside USB ports (dated but still relevant charging standard), but most hotels offer only an electrical outlet, and too many times it is in the most difficult-to-reach location possible. Others have made expensive decisions to install USB ports on bedside tables or work desks, only to find them out of date when the standards changed – or broken by frequent use.

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The Nine Circles of CapEx Spreadsheet Hell, Part 2: Finding CapEx Paradise

12/13/2017 Tagged as: Capex

by Thomas Riegelman

You wouldn’t consider using a spreadsheet to manage your contact list; manage depreciation schedules for fixed assets, or manage your guestroom inventory; you probably use software applications specifically designed for each of those functions.

Cost-effective CapEx planning and administration technologies are available as standalone systems, as part of an existing system (accounting, maintenance management, etc.), or agile integrated systems that can connect across multiple systems, organizations and levels.

Additionally, “Big Data” technology has enabled leveraging existing property level systems and process to provide a strong foundation for portfolio level CapEx planning, administration and execution. Increasingly, data can be shared across systems seamlessly, eliminating redundant data entry, and providing for greater accuracy, reliability and efficiency in CapEx planning, administration and execution.

Here are the seven steps to find CapEx Planning Paradise:

Systems Based Continuous Process

Implement an integrated CapEx planning and administration technology that supports continuous planning.

Commit to developing and maintaining a ten year forward looking CapEx plan for each of your hotel properties, and put processes in place to ensure that projects are entered and discussed on a regular basis throughout the year.

Planning Consistency

Support your continuous process with standards that help bring consistency to your planning. Define what is considered CapEx, and which non-CapEx expenditures you would also like to include in the planning process (e.g. large periodic maintenance expenses).

Develop a dictionary of project categories, areas, names, and scope descriptions that supports consistent planning from year to year and hotel to hotel. Decide how budgets should be presented, and how budget add-ons should be calculated (e.g. design, tax, freight, fees, etc.).

Data Integrity

Design your system so that data resides in the appropriate system, and is available to the CapEx planning system as needed. That is, avoid replicating fixed asset data in the CapEx system if it is available in the maintenance management system or accounting system.

Transparency

Choose a system and process that provides transparency across linked systems and parties to the process. Management staff at the property, regional and corporate office should have access to the same information as ownership, asset managers, auditors, etc.

Transparency is critical to any collaborative planning process.

Long-term View

Ensure that the system captures all large and/or recurring CapEx projects; for example renovations, fire alarms, chillers, boilers, roofs, exterior paint, etc. Scheduling these projects out ten years provides a strategic long term view of the properties capital needs, and supports effective portfolio planning by ownership.

Focused Review Process

Set up the CapEx system to support the review and approval process required by ownership, as well as providing for incremental review of individual projects, and focused review of “classes” of projects. Rooms renovations require in depth review and planning; PTAC replacements do not.

CapEx approvals and administration should mirror this focused review. Senior management needs to review the scope of every renovation, but does not need to approve every replacement PTAC.

Portfolio Planning

The CapEx system and process should support portfolio level planning by both the management company and ownership, and should allow aggregation of purchasing and contracting across the portfolio.

Summary

Having a strong CapEx planning system and process in place will help ensure that capital funds are only invested at their highest and best use, and that you will never again need to visit The Nine Circles of CapEx Spreadsheet Hell.

Take action:

• Implement integrated systems

• Adopt a continuous planning process

• Insist on data accuracy, consistency, and efficiency

• Require a transparent process

• Take the long view

• Focus CapEx review and administration

• Negotiate best value through portfolio purchasing

About The Author

Thomas Riegelman

R-A Associates LLC

Tom combines an asset owner’s perspective of hospitality real estate with over 30 years of enterprise level management of real estate assets, development, planning, construction and facilities operations. His firm’s work is focused on creating and sustaining the long term value of hospitality real estate assets through thoughtful planning and design, efficient operations and strategic use of capital funds.