It’s been a long but refreshing Christmas –New Year break from the blog and I would like to welcome you back to https://ghhospitality.net/ with the above image of EXCELLENCE (under a magnifying glass) and which you may have guessed (and correctly so), will set the tone for 2022!
You can’t imagine how elated I was, reading about the 5th National Awards of the Ghana Hotels Association which occurred about a couple of weeks ago, just when I was beginning to feel quite jittery about the ‘deafening silence’ of the industry!
In relation to the National Awards night, the ‘most resilient hotels of the year’ were acknowledged in their different categories. Considering the deadly blows suffered by businesses across the globe from the covid-19 virus, I call for a standing ovation!
I doff my hat to all award winners. I recognize that these new categories of awards are in line with my desire to see excellence in an industry I am passionate about; the hospitality and tourism industry.
Hotels are open to the public; a large number of people are often present at any one particular time making them vulnerable to security threats. Hotel environments are also designed to make it easy for visitors to flow in and out (come and go), making security quite complicated. Certainly, the level of our alertness in all aspects of security in our hotels need to be built up. I applaud the creation of this category! Outstanding though, is first aid skills for all hotel personnel; under Health and Safety.
Most digitalized hotels…a leap forward; knowing that most of our hotels are not more than 25 rooms and digitalization is a huge investment!
Generally, I am of the ‘old school’. Here, we are able to manually track (monitor, chart and control) guests’ transactions from check-in to check-out. From the viewpoint of accountability and control, there is no equal to a hotel’s enormous volume of small transactions taking place so rapidly and at so many different points of sale. It is through this environment of handling large volumes of paperwork and communications that enhanced my understanding of hotel operational systems.
However, I also remember my nightmare experiences of carrying out night auditing in a 150- bedroom hotel using a semi-automated system in my student days! I didn’t last long in that job!
Looks like I’m being carried away by the 5th National Awards of the Ghana Hotels Association! CONGRATULATIONS to you!
My New Year message:
It is true these are hard times… but they are good times for creative minds and they are the most challenging times for those resisting change.
These are extraordinary times. Covid-19 is changing our ways of working and schooling.
What is happening to forecasting by hotels? “Topsy-turvy”, one would say. Just about when plans to ‘house’ a conference or an event are concluded, Omicron, another SARS-CoV-2 variant is identified, reservations are cancelled and/or some directives are given resulting in lower revenues.
Despite the times and seasons, we find ourselves in, we can still deliberate on and pursue EXCELLENCE. So this is my motivation on the blog this year.
Whenever I begin a series, it is a habit to ensure I establish a common understanding with my readers.
Allow me to seize this opportunity to acknowledge all of you. In 2021, I got to meet a number of GHATOF members for the first time. I will be ‘knocking on your doors’ again.
On EXCELLENCE, therefore, I share the quote of Martin Luther King Jr. and the two posters below.
“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.’” ― Martin Luther King Jr.
I trust you will come along with me in this pursuit of ‘EXCELLENCE’ on this blog.