A spotlight on staffing

F&B Manager

Marco Aveta has also been at the property since the pre-opening stages, having joined in September 2005.

Aveta says that for him, the draw of joining Radisson was its modern take on hospitality.

"I like the approach Radisson has to the hotel business: it's modern, it's young, it's a very contemporary approach, which maybe other companies do not have," he says.

 

The property has several different F&B options for its guests, continues Aveta.

We have two restaurants, our Italian restaurant Certo and the Chef's House in our second tower, which is all-day dining; then we have bars, which were very popular when we opened in Media City as we were the first licensed outlet.

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There's the Library Lounge, the Media Lounge, the Dusk Terrace, our roof-top bar Tamanya Terrace which is always busy, and Icon Bar, which has been labeled a sort of posh sports bar."

Business is booming now, but according to Aveta this was not always the case. "It was always pretty easy to get business at lunchtime; you just had to open the doors and people came in.

But dinner time was more of a struggle," he admits. "In fact it took us some time, but I guess we must have done something right, as now we're doing really well!

The key factor in increasing evening business, says Aveta, was creating good word-of-mouth publicity. "We made sure we were doing a great job serving the people who were coming in at lunch time, really focusing on our day-time service.

Then gradually we saw an increase in the people coming back in the evenings with their friends and families," he says. "Then we would also invite people to promotional evenings at the bars and show them what we had to offer.

"But essentially we had quality food and quality service at a reasonable price, and I think that's a formula that can't fail."

One major challenge facing the F&B industry is retaining staff, Aveta says.

"This is particularly hard in this region, where new hotels are popping up every day," he notes. "Of course the problem there is that these new hotels need to recruit a lot of new staff, and what better place to recruit than just next door - hotels which have already spent time training their staff.

"So they might come in and make what at first glance looks like a better offer, but not all employers offer the same kinds of benefits or the same level of treatment. That's why it is important to create a good day-to-day working environment for the employees, so they are happy in their jobs.

There is certainly a lot to keep the Radisson SAS's F&B staff busy this year. The property is planning to expand the Icon Bar, due in part to its popularity and in part to the recent smoking ban.

"This is the only outlet where we permit smoking now, the rest are smoke-free," says Aveta. "So we are upgrading Icon and enclosing it entirely from other areas. The expansion will also offer extra space, of course.

It will be about 40% larger than it is now, which we will achieve by shifting the adjacent gym to another location. We aim to finish all the work by October.

And these are not the only development plans in the pipeline.

"In the future I would also like to find some flexible solution to allow us to use Tamanya, the roof-top bar, during the summer months," says Aveta. "So we will be keeping ourselves busy this year!"