The GM of 2013 faces a delicate balancing act: they must master new technology, embrace nationalisation, drive revenue and deliver great service.
The GM in the Middle East must embrace and understand new technologies while trying to develop a passion for hospitality within the nationals of the countries they work in. It’s a unique task and one they have to master while still running their hotels to the high expectations of owners and guests alike
Welcome to the findings of the Hotelier Middle East GM Survey 2013, which very much picks up from where we left it last year.
The Arab Spring is still impacting hoteliers, both positively and negatively, but increasingly, as was demonstrated last year, the focus is very much centred on competition — both existing and upcoming.
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What has become apparent this year is that third party websites are making a large impact on sales from e-distribution channels and hoteliers are still struggling with attracting and employing nationals.
But before we delve deeper, let’s take a look at the wonderful general managers who took part in this year’s survey.
A worthy 63 GMs responded, 44.4% from city hotels and 3.2% from budget hotels. Nearly half (47.6%) work in five-star properties and another 11.1% head three-star hotels, while the remainder work in four-star hotels which once again shows the weighting towards upper-scale properties in the region.
More than half (58.8% to be exact) of respondents look after between 200 and 400 rooms and 50.8% manage between 100 and 300 staff.
Three quarters of the GMs work in the UAE, but we have respondents from Sudan, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Lebanon, Jordan, Qatar and Bahrain.
Thirty six of the respondents have worked in F&B and 40.4% have worked in front office roles on their way to becoming a general manger. However, only one person had worked in security, one in financial control and one in recreation revealing that there is still a very obvious path to follow for anyone who wants to become a general manger.
Sadly, we only had one female respondent this year compared to the two we had in 2012. Having said this, one general manager put the letter “C” as their response. It could have been a typo while trying to hit F for female on their keyboard or we may have discovered a new gender?
The average age of our general managers is a little over 47, with the youngest being 36 and our eldest 60. However, one of the survey-takers claims to have become a general manager at the age of 20 – quite the responsibility for someone so young.
Moving on to hotel performance, last year general managers predominantly wanted to be judged on RevPAR (Revenue Per Available Room), but this year more would like to be assessed on their RGI (Revenue Generated Index), although GopPAR (Gross Operating Profit Per Available Room) was still popular, with 24.1% of GMs saying this was the best measure of a property’s performance.
And as for the most important responsibility of the GM, there was a varied response. “Growth of business through quality delivery”, one suggested; “keep RGI at the top” added another.
One GM said “ensuring owner’s profitability” was their top priority, while HR managers will rejoice at “retention of human resources”.
We particularly liked the response “leading my team in delighting guests” and felt that “keeping up with trends in an ever-changing, fast-paced environment to meet business demands” summarised neatly the challenges a GM faces.
Interestingly, when asked to choose between the happiness of their employees, their guests, their owners and their suppliers, one of our highest paid GMs stated that employee satisfaction was the least important factor – showing that it’s a hard world when you’re at the top.
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