Interactive workshop with Cultural Triangle Hoteliers’ Association

SKAL club of Sri Lanka conducted a Hotel Management Workshop at Amaara Forest Hotel, Sigiriya on 11 th of May, 2018. It was conducted by Mr. Nirmala Nagendra, a member of the executive committee of the SKAL club, is a veteran hotelier with more than 34 years of experience in Finance and Operations in the Middle East, Caribbean, USA, Singapore and Russia. This workshop was organized by CTHA with SKAL, Sri Lanka, which was the second workshop by SKAL club after Kandy. He is currently a Senior Consultant in Hotel Advisory at KPMG, Colombo. The workshop was attended by General Managers, F&B Personnel, HR Managers, Finance Personnel, Executive House Keepers and Chief Engineers from Cultural Triangle Hotels, in Sri Lanka. The contents covered were:

• Budgets and Re-forecast.
• Working as a team in falling revenues to safeguard the bottom-line. ( Talk to all your senior management colleagues and department heads how to reduce the cost )
• Fixed cost of your hotel per day / Rooms to be sold to cover this fixed cost.
• Average room rate and Revenue per available room / the importance of yield rather than average room rate.
• The importance of daily bank reconciliation and finalizing monthly accounts within four days of the following month.
• The importance of the training to keep the competitive edge over your competition.
• To keep inventory at minimum to maintain efficient cash flow management.
• Look after and rectify all guests’ complaints if any before they leave the hotel.
• Average food check / How do we compare with competition.
• Food and Beverage cost / Revenue allocation to the chef.
• Accounts receivable and provision for bad debts. (A sale is not a sale unless it is banked).
• Revenue leakages.

The important take away from the workshop was for all hotelier’s to work as a team, maintain full-board and half-board rates at reasonable level and not to allow tour operators / travel agents and search engines to dilute their room rates. (Unity is strength). Big conglomerates owns hotels, transport companies and travel agencies who do not mind loosing on room rates and gaining on the other two. Do not drop room rate on short term and loose on your long term marketing strategy. Know all your costs and do not reduce on training and look after the guests before they leave your premises.