With low margins in the hospitality industry, you need every advantage you can get. You’ve probably seen a lot of articles on how to spot bad employees. But what about the warning signs that your own performance is lagging? Here’s a list of mistakes to avoid that will help you get the most out of your employees and your hospitality business, be it restaurant, banquet, hotel, or casino.

You don’t have an annual plan. This is miserable programming that all companies have to do. Hospitality is a seasonal industry – scheduling maintenance and overhaul during off-peak hours will help keep things running smoothly. This does not mean that you have to stick to plan when the inevitable complications arise, but above all your foresight should keep everything running smoothly.

Do not request inspections. Whether it’s a fire code or a health code, periodic “friendly” inspections will help you identify problems and fix them before they turn into accidents that result in a “hostile” inspection. It also brightens your halo in the eyes of your insurance company.

Don’t waste time in the trenches. Time and time again, the most successful hospitality managers show up on the event floor or in the dining room from time to time and collaborate for a shift. It helps communication between you and your staff, who have the opportunity to point out what needs to be fixed instead of trying to write you a memo. Boost morale at lower levels of staff – Their respect for you skyrockets when they see you’re not a big shot to get your hands dirty. And of course, nothing puts your staff in their best work ethic like having the boss work side by side with them.

Ignore the calendar. Is New Years Eve coming up? Well, we’ll be busy anyway. Summer here? Well, let’s see how people on vacation treat us. Instead of sitting there and letting the holidays and seasons roll by, you could have planned a special event or aggressive marketing campaign ahead of time to make sure you make the most of the good times. Making the most of the fat times helps you survive the tough times.

Ignore your competition. Nothing is more directly competitive than the hotel industry; three restaurants on each corner, a chain of hotels on each street. You must constantly think about what you can offer your customers that your competitors cannot.

Micromanagement of staff. The other side of the coin of being in the trenches should be the confidence to lead with authority by delegating responsibility efficiently. If you feel like you have to keep track of every detail and make decisions every minute, your staff will feel like you are not confident in your abilities. You should be able to give an order and have employees rush to carry it out, informing you only if there are problems. Micromanaging is also a sign of a hard-working boss-holic, and those aren’t always the most successful.

Expect the business to run on its own. Avoiding micromanaging doesn’t just mean you can spend the whole week at home and check the phone twice a week. No one cares about your business as much as you do, and if you’re not there, things are likely to deviate further from the way you originally designed them.

Don’t innovate. What could be creative in our business? After all, it is only providing the service of the basic necessities of life. That’s when companies fail; when they continue to do what others do. Innovation is when you offer a new service feature that no one else offers, create a new menu item and promote it in advertising, and a new luxury for your hotel property. Every time you innovate, you are temporarily in a market for one until your competitors copy you.

Ignore computers. A hidden drain on the hospitality industry is the high cost of the software. Maybe LucasFilm needs that $ 950 copy of Photoshop, but you might as well make your advertising brochures in the free Gimp. You don’t really need Windows office software when the free PC systems out there like Linux can run Open Office for free, and a spreadsheet looks the same on both. Your guest registration system will work just as well on a free Unix system. And so. Hospitality companies are an industry that is constantly overspending on business software. Your needs are not so extravagant; Any program that can open, edit, and save a text file will do that. And why pay for antivirus software when a system like BSD or Linux doesn’t have viruses in the first place? All programs you run must be free, and therefore you can run a hospitality business with “outdated” hardware, at least for a small-scale business.

Ignore the Internet. Why should a hotel have a website? So guests can get directions to the venue and make reservations online. Why should a pizzeria have a website? So that customers can order online. Why have wireless internet access in the lobby? Because business travelers bring laptops and want to stay online while there. Web space these days costs as low as $ 5 per month, and building a website on it will be a one-time $ 100 expense for any random online freelancer. Pay more than this to advertise in newspapers, but the internet can reach millions more customers!