This document discusses the structure and staffing of hotels. It explains that hotels require many employees to operate and provide services to guests. The document outlines 6 major departments - rooms, food and beverages, engineering, sales, personnel, and stores/concessions. It explains that these department heads make up the top management team, working under the general manager to implement policies set by ownership. Each department plays an important role in hotel operations and providing good customer service.

1. HOTEL
STRUCTURE
AND STAFF

2. Regardless of whether a hotel is a simple rooming
house or encompasses within its 4 walls all the
facilities of a small city,it is truly a “people”business-
not only in that it exist to serve people,but in that it
requires the services of people to exist.All hotel rent
rooms,and most also offer food and beverages for
sale.The succesful one add an extra ingredient,good
service.This is the only product that cannot be
purchased.Fine furniture,gourment food,and vintage
wines are available in many hotels,but service in it
depends entirely on its staff.Human behavior in a free
society cannot be standardized;it can only be guided,a
process that requires constant
supervision,attention,and training.

3. Hotels vary not only in size but in
character,in type of clientele,and in scope
of activities.Every function exist,but
priorities differ from hotel to hotel.The
management of each must determine
the departments,and the number of
employees in each,needed for its own
operation.Our assigning an individual to
each function is done merely to highlight
it,thereby making function easier to
describe and to understand.

4. HOTEL POLICY
Although the general manager has the responsibility
of running the hotel and is usually held accountable
for its financial success or failure,he or she does not
always have the authority to establish the overall
policy for its operation.This function is a
prerogative of the owner or owners.The more
successful groups have learned, sometimes
through a costly experience,that such
standardization is not always possible.State and
local laws and
regulation,customs,unions,availability of qualified
personnel,and even environmental

5. Considerations may mandate modification and
sometimes complete reversals of certain policies.
LABOR-The initial staffing of a new hotel requires a
top management decisions.Once the hotel is
operating,the permanent staff must also be
set,subject to changes necessitated by the volume of
business.Fringe benefits,hospitalization,major
medical,insurance,pensions,saving plans,and the like
for the eligible employees are normally uniform
throughout the chain and therefore subject to overall
corporate policy.

6. RATE STRUCTURE-In a new hotel,the original
room-rate schedule is set up before the
opening.In a sense,it is predetermined by the
owner in the initial planning stage of the
building,since the style and type of hotel to be
built,the appointments and facilities to be
provided,and the class of guest to be serviced
all affect the rates that can and should be
charged.Subsequent changes are normally
made by the general manager with the
knowledge and consent of the home-office
supervisor.

7. PURCHASING-Beverages are subject to different regulations
and licensing requirements in each state.Most states require
direct shipment by the distributor or wholesaler to the
licensee.The home office will establish the brand of liquior
that is to be used in the bars when the guess does not specify
a brand when ordering.There are two principal reasons for
centralizing the purchasing of all but the small items needed
for the operation.The first,and possibly the most important,is
financial.Bulk buying usually lower cost,either directly or
through quantity discounts.The second reason is quality
control.The executive office can determine which
merchandise to standardize in which hotels and retains the
option to raise or lower the quality as conditions warrant.

8. INSURANCE-Insurance like other merchandise,is cheaper to
purchase and easier to standardize and control through
centralization.Coverage of the type and in the amount
detrmined by the home-office executive is purchased for each
hotel,and premium can be reduced through negotiation with
different companies.
ADVERTISING-Hilton,Sheraton,Loews,Holidy Inns,Ramada
Inns,Howard Jhonson’s and the other major chains have one
thing in common:The bulk of their advertising is directed
toward popularizing their name.

9. The theory is that most travelers will stay,or stop to eat,at a
hotel with a familiar name.Rooms,food and beverages are no
different from any nationally advertised product.The cost of
this type of advertising would be prohibitive for a single
hotel,whether owned or franchised by one of the chains.The
home-office executive in charged of operation will probably
have to approve the dollar amount,the central advertising
director,the copy,and the media to be used.All
advertising,national or local,seeks to project an image;in this
case,the hotel’s.Add a working knowledge of and familiarity
with regional customs,and the general manager is in a
position to initiate,recommend,supervised,and assume the
full responsibility for placing and following through on all local
advertising and publlicity.

10. CREDIT-Most major chains have an overall
credit policy.Except in one area,acceptance of
national credit cards,this policy should be
flexible enough to conform to local custom.All
hotels in the group are usually required to
honor certain credit cards,principally for
financial reasons:The discount rate charged by
the national credit-card companies and banks
depends to a great extent on the volume of
business generated by their clients.The timing
and number of mailings is negotiatable and is
usually established at the original signing of
agreement.

11. MISCELLANEOUS-It would be almost
impossible to list all the function capable of
being centralized in any one chain of
hotels.Aside from the fact that it would be
financially prohibitive to maintain a separate
legal department in each hotel,the executive
offices need attorneys in their conduct of the
corporate business and in the acquisition or
sale of properties.Finally,the list would
probably include a construction or engineering
department,to supervise the building or
acquisition of new hotwls and to direct and be
responsible for any major improvements or
alterations in the existing properties.

12. Finally,the list would probably include a
construction or an engeneering department,to
supervise the building or acquisition of new
hotels and to direct and be responsible for any
major improvements or aleterations in the
existing properties.

13. THE GENERAL MANAGER

14. The General Manager is
the person responsible
for defining and
interpreting the policies
established by top
management.

15. THE STAFF:MAJOR
DEPARTMENT
A hotel,except a very small one,is like any
other business enterprise in that is
physically impossible for one person to
personally supervise all the different phases
of the operation.For the purpose of this
discussion,the staff is grouped into four
main categories:
 The management policy-making and
implementing team-the general manager
and his her primary department heads

16.  Subdepartment Heads
 Assistant Department Heads
 General Staff and Operating personnel

17. ROOMS
The primary responsibility for the well-being
of the guests is delegated to the head of the
rooms department,known as the resident
manager.He or she heads the numerically
largest department in the hotel,many of
whose members come into direct contact
with guest.The resident manager carries out
what may be the most important
responsibility of the general manager-the
day-to-day operation of the guest rooms.

18. FOOD AND BEVERAGES
The food and beverages manager heads a
department that also involves guest relation.The
service staff in the restaurants,coffee
shop,bars,and banquet rooms come into direct
contact not only with the resident guests but with
members of the general public who use the hotel
facilities other than its sleeping rooms-equally
important in the overall position.This is the
department that perhaps most clearly demonstrate
the old hotel keeper’s famous saying,”Service is our
most important product”.

19. ENGINEERING
The chief engineer is
concerned with the
apperance and physical
condition of the building.This
is one small example of the
teamwork needed to
succesfully operate a hotel.

20. SALES
The large hotels,those with
the convention nad
banquet facilities,coukd not
exist without the business
generated by their sales
and convention staffs.

21. PERSONNEL
The corporate responsibility serves as
a definite aid in the performance of a
controller’s duties.Despite the many
elements that are taken into
consideration in assembling the
figures,a budget is ultimately only an
estimate,and educated guess,of the
income and expenses for a given
period in the future.

22. SUMMARY
These six department have been highlighted
because the men and women who head
them make up the top-management
team.The head of a very successful hotel
chain always welcomed new members of
the management team with words to these
effect.”Give all your reasons,and any facts
or figures you have to back them up,but
never let me hear the words”

23. SENSITIVE STAFF FUNCTION

24. SALES
The sales department has been called the
lifeblood of the organization.Hotels-
indeed,cities-compete fiercely to attract
large groups,companies,or
organization.Sales personnel theorized that
local organizations,companies and groups
that hold annual or more frequent functions
will not return if they are driven to use
another hotel and find it equally or more
desirable.

25. LABOR
Labor relation are oftenly the
responsibility of the personnel
manager,who usually handles
the many problems and minor
disputes with and among the
employees that occur in the
daily operation of the hotel.

26. STORES AND CONCESSIONS
Although the hotel owner or owners will
established certain rental guidelines,the
actual negotiations,particularly on renewal
of leases,are handled by the general
manager or a designated
representative.The store
operators,concessionaries,and their staff
are associated by the general public with
the hotel,and in some cases even
considered employees.

27. ENTERTAINMENT
Many hotels offer dinner music in their
restaurants or some form of entertainment
in the bar or cocktail lounge,and many have
nightclubs.The hiring of the musicians and
entertainers would normally be the
responsibility of the food and beverage
manager or,in multple operations,of a
central-office executive assigned to this
function.