To set the agenda for the Hotelier Middle East Great GM Debate 2015, which will take place on September 8 at Dubai’s Jumeirah Beach Hotel, Hotelier gathered a group of the region’s most influential general managers at Rixos, The Palm, for a thought-provoking discussion on the state of the hospitality industry in 2015, and the evolving role of the hotel general manager in relation to this.

Some fascinating topics were unearthed by the group of six, all of whom have brought their years of experience in a variety of markets throughout the globe, to the Middle East hotel sector. We ask them how they plan to ride out 2015’s falling rates and revenues amid overflowing hotel supply and the relentless challenges of staffing, changing consumer needs, and difficult owners.

HOTELIER: With 653 hotels under construction in the Middle East/ Africa region, staff recruitment and retention will be a key priority going forward. How do you motivate your best staff to stay at your hotel?

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Bill Keffer: The advantage we have over smaller brands is that we can offer growth potential. When it comes down to money, people jump for 100 dirhams in this market, but if you show them a future, that buys you more time from your associates.

David Allan: Money is the prime motivator, but if we can introduce an emotional element to training, it gives us the chance to hang on; it’s really helpful with retention.

Alexander Schneider: If you hire the right people, you have a slightly higher chance of keeping them with you. If they can see from the top that senior management is stable, and they stay with the brand, then you have more of a trust factor.

Stephen Gee: There’s a big difference between a big established company that’s able to cross-populate new properties with existing team members, and local brands that are growing. It’s been more difficult finding people that want to participate in growing a brand from the ground up than those people that have pre-conceived ideas of what it should be.

Alexander: I think retention will be our smallest challenge in the future; the sourcing and the build-up of talent is the biggest challenge. When you look at how fast people move through the ranks, how little training they get compared to five to 10 years ago, this will impact the quality of our hotels.

Rick Zeolla: You have a challenge with the new millennials coming in; they have a different work ethic and they’re not going to hang around unless they have connected with you emotionally.

Alexander: This is the advantage of small brands. Generation Y are much more prone to go into a start-up scenario where they can move within much broader boundaries than a company that has clear brand guidelines. Sometimes I wish my people wouldn’t be so creative!

Stephen: There’s more risk in terms of quality service. They think completely differently and you’ll find yourself in a situation where you ask, ‘did you really think that was a good idea?’ And actually it works! But you wouldn’t have let that happen.

HOTELIER: Does staff training have to be adapted for millennial staff?

Alexander: It starts with the communication; you can’t just take the hierarchical sledgehammer — you need to engage them properly. With training, you can’t just spoon feed them anymore — they expect to create the training in the training.

Bill: We hire people using Instagram to reach out to this generation. Our staff satisfaction surveys are done on different media; it has really changed the way I communicate as a leader. I’m on social media, and I think my company has taken a big leap on that.

Stefan Viard: With Vida, we maybe went a bit too crazy and faced some of the problems that have been mentioned. I was quite open to change, but my line managers had bigger problems. Suddenly they had these young kids coming in and saying to them ‘even if you’re the manager, these things are wrong’.

Rick: There’s a squeeze at the moment for your senior supervisors and your lower level managers. I think they’re being disrespected by the new generation coming in.

HOTELIER: How have you changed your management style to deal with the new challenges posed by millennial staff?

Stephen: The source information is shared a lot more freely than it ever was before. Also, constant feedback and reciprocal management is new.

Rick: These are the kids coming into the workplace who want to participate in everything they get, so they do need constant feedback. If they don’t get it, they’ll go somewhere else where they do get it.

Alexander: Innovation drivers have completely changed. These used to be your department heads, but now you had better look three levels below that. I have to say, I’m often amazed by the quality of ideas we get. It’s like crop farming — you need to take it all then you start your cherry picking process. If you’re open to it, I think you can use that new mind-set quite nicely.

HOTELIER: How do you deal with this quick evolution of generations with regards to your staff?

Alex: Who will be willing to work in hospitality 10 years from now that is smart? Through our global expansions and the amount of jobs we have to give on an annual basis, our own standards have come down, and with this, a lot of the smart people look around and think ‘is this really the sort of intellectual crowd that I identify with?’ This will become extremely tough for us.

David: But we were having the same argument 10 -15 years ago, saying nobody will come and work in hospitality because of the anti-social hours, the impact on their social life, the low pay, etc. The argument has just moved on for us to find another reason why people won’t work in hospitality.

Stefan: If we start to talk about running it as a business, you don’t really need hospitality experts. In some departments it’s not rocket science, you can easily learn.

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