Relocation

James- my trusty DORM mentor

Today was very similar to the Mondays I've experienced in the past, except the Sheraton Kauai was having a crisis. They are renovating their hotel and a number of their rooms are taking longer than expected to complete. Lacking quite a few rooms has caused the hotel to have more guests than rooms and therefore be "oversold." Since the hotel is "oversold" their director of revenue management (DORM) has to try and do everything possible to relocate their guests. Ideally, a hotel would like to pass on their "oversold" guests to sister properties and keep the business under the same company. Also, if they had to move them to a different company they would have to negotiate a rate and then achieve higher relocation expenses. It sounds like this is a common occurrence among hotels in the summer, but the problem is that most hotels are very busy in the summer and can't always take extra guests.

For example, we're close to being sold out and only able to hold a certain number of rooms for Sheraton. The relocation puts a lot of stress on our staff trying to deal with other hotels' disgruntled guests while also trying to keep our current guests happy. Princeville has to give up outside business to accommodate Sheraton's rooms and in turn Princeville is losing opportunities for greater revenue elsewhere! Oy! A DORM's worst nightmare :)! As with all things though, there is a fine line between meeting our goals and helping our counterparts out. Kind of like, I scratch your back and you scratch mine mentality. James says its always wise to help out your fellow DORMs when you can, because one day you could be in the same predicament.

Other than that we worked on forecasting July and preparing for August and September. As with most things in life, you gotta always be lookin a couple steps ahead :)