I recently was at a major US airport, and the airport security screening line had a stated wait time of 20 minutes for standard and 40 minutes for Pre-Check. Long lines are, unfortunately, the norm at this particular airport, so I was less concerned about the existence of the wait than something else: what is their forecasting process for staff allocation, and how many lines of each type of screening are open? Clearly Pre-check should be shorter than the standard line, right?
I immediately began to ponder, with all our preponderance of data, this wasn’t an operations issue; this was a forecasting issue. They just didn’t allocate the right balance of lanes between pre-check and regular.
The world’s best operations are well forecasted. This is important to your people, just ask those officers dealing with irritated Pre-Check customers waiting longer than regular. This is important to your process design and crucial to your results. Just think about the impact on value perceptions of those who pay for Pre-Check when that line is longer.
Many think forecasts aren’t an operations issue. They are a planning and analysis function, or a numbers-people function. To the world’s best operations thrive or fail on if they have accurate forecasts.
Forecasts Are About People
I believe that everyone at their core desires to do a good job. They enjoy delivering quality in whatever they do. Housekeepers typically want to be proud of how clean the rooms are, and front desk agents want to be proud of their customer interactions. Leadership is about metaphorically setting the table so that people can thrive in their role. This takes many forms, but one of the most important is to have the right people in the right place at the right time.
How can a housekeeper focus on quality when their board is 50% longer than they can reasonably clean in a day? How can a front desk agent focus on great guest interactions when they are alone for a shift that needs two people? They can’t.
Some of these might be staffing, which is a whole different topic, but often it’s not that the operation didn’t have the people, it is that they didn’t accurately forecast their business levels and put the right people in the right shifts.
This is a three-step process. First, each role requires a proper productivity driver to understand what makes sense to staff based on volume. Think of arrivals + departures for generating front desk labor, or departures + stayovers generating housekeeping labor.
Then once you have those drivers, the world’s best hotels have iron-clad business forecasts that show what is needed by shift in a meaningful way. The third step is just as important. Once we know that information, we schedule it.
When we do this well, we create environments where our team members can thrive.
Forecasts Are About Process Efficiency
Efficiency doesn’t mean making do with less. When we force a system to produce the same result with fewer resources (exactly what we do when we understaff to the forecast), we increase our defect rate. Defects aren’t just the enemy of excellence; they are kryptonite to efficiency, mainly because we must rework things we didn’t do right the first time. Think of something as simple as a defective check-in. When we don’t schedule our front desk with the right number of agents for the anticipated check-ins, it might seem more efficient on the surface. However, it is not.
Imagine an overstressed front desk agent frantically trying to serve the line. He makes keys but types the wrong room number. That guest goes to the room and the key doesn’t work, having to then return to the front desk upset, and the agent needs to re-do the key.
This defect made the check-in process less efficient rather than more efficient. Processes operate at their maximum efficiency when we have the right number of people for the process at hand.
Forecasts Are Serious Business at Luxe Pricing
At Luxe Pricing, we believe we are partners for our operators. We all come from hospitality operations, and we understand how important forecasts are for all the reasons explored here.
The forecast feature in HouseCount was developed to generate a detailed forecast including arrivals, departures, and occupied rooms.
By allowing our operators to create well-crafted operational plans that avoid the adverse impacts on people and efficiency that poor forecasting causes.
In other words, this is yet another way we are radically focused on making your hotel operationally superior.