When an ownership group chooses a hotel management company, they are not only handing over the keys to a property, but also control of their largest expenses and making a bet on who will drive the greatest returns for them.

Hotel Equities has spent more than 30 years building an operational platform to answer that exact question. The management company now operates 70-plus franchise brands across the U.S., Canada, the Caribbean, and Latin America, including a curated collection of independent hotels and outdoor hospitality destinations. 

Five years ago, we were a different company. We have assets ranging from 500 rooms to 30 rooms. You can’t operate them the same way.

Peter Tziahanas, President of Hotel Equities’ Destination Collection.

Split into three specialized divisions (Destination Collection, Essential Group, and Springboard Hospitality, its lifestyle division), Hotel Equities uses “technology-forward execution” as one of its core pillars to scale expertise, support, and results across each of its unique assets.

Tech-Forward Labor Management

Labor management is where that pillar has gotten its most recent test. It’s the largest controllable expense for operators, but one under significant pressure from increasing wages, rising associate turnover, and market conditions that have made forecasting and budgeting a complex equation.

To create standards that could be applied and customized across its diverse portfolio, Hotel Equities developed three sets of labor staffing models and productivity guidelines based on asset class, and has enabled GMs to customize those to their individual properties. The technology powering the models is Hotel Effectiveness, Actabl’s labor management software deployed almost a year ago.

Getting hundreds of GMs to use new technology is never easy, but something Hotel Equities has a clear plan for. 

“Anytime you have a new tool, there’s always a small amount of skepticism,” says Tziahanas, who’s spent his career in hospitality, starting in F&B, serving as a general manager for more than 10 years, and then moving into above-property leadership. The first step, he says, is having initial calls with the team to explain the long-term benefits of the new tool and to create buy-in. 

Hotel Equities built a training library and embedded Hotel Effectiveness into its GM onboarding checklist. They identified additional leaders who had used the platform before and put them in front of skeptics to make the case peer-to-peer. 

Almost a year in, a working group of strong adopters now runs ongoing training sessions throughout the year, and usage has increased across the portfolio.

5 Minutes That Matter on Property

For general managers, it starts with five minutes.

Each morning by 9 a.m., every general manager has a Daily Labor Check-In from Hotel Effectiveness that provides an overview of the day prior and the week-to-date performance across the hotel: what was scheduled, what was worked, where, and any variance. 

It’s super simple for leaders to use and allows them to make quick decisions as needed. They can adjust schedules, react to overtime that may be coming, and evaluate how they did previously. Five minutes is valuable, I get it. But this is five minutes well spent.

Peter Tziahanas, President of Hotel Equities’ Destination Collection.

The five-minute window doesn’t stay behind the screen, either. Tziahanas says it becomes the basis for their daily walks and provides a chance for the GM to provide positive feedback and direction to department heads.

From Roll-Out to Results

Those five minutes are quickly adding up.

Hotel Equities has achieved approximately 150 basis points of labor cost savings year over year since deploying Hotel Effectiveness. With annual wages increasing 2% to 3%, the savings are not coming from cutting compensation. They are coming from eliminating waste in how hours are planned, deployed, and adjusted.

On the housekeeping side, room attendants are completing their work 4 minutes faster per occupied room on average across the portfolio. Four minutes may sound modest, but across hundreds of properties and hundreds of thousands of occupied rooms, the compounding effect is significant.

Hotel Equities has reduced overtime by roughly 10% year over year, not by restricting hours after the fact, but by giving general managers a forward-looking view early enough in the week to do something about it.

The approaching overtime scenario that Hotel Effectiveness provides is critical for us. By Tuesday, we’re looking at the end of the week and asking, ‘OK, how and where are we adjusting now?’ With a view of hours worked plus future hours scheduled, it allows us to react to overtime or approaching overtime and reduce it.

Peter Tziahanas, President of Hotel Equities’ Destination Collection.

Impact That Goes Beyond the Bottom Line

Tziahanas meets monthly with his vice presidents of operations to review productivity results and percent savings versus budget, but those aren’t the only results that matter to Hotel Equities.

“It’s one thing to drive fiscal results for our owners; it’s why they hire us. But it’s not only financial metrics driving that, it’s metrics of guest satisfaction, associate satisfaction, turnover, and retention,” Tziahanas explains. “Retention and turnover cost money, and most owners today are concerned about that as we face these headwinds of wage pressure and everything that comes with it.”

As someone who’s worked on property, Tziahanas knows turnover costs more than just money. It’s why technology-forward execution and making work easier for associates is critical to Hotel Equities’ success.

The guest experience — not only for the external guests who come to visit us, but our internal guests working — is also driven by retention and turnover. As you build a team that has worked together for a longer period of time, they tend to create better relationships. Those better relationships drive service performance and service execution.

Peter Tziahanas, President of Hotel Equities’ Destination Collection.