Putting People First

MICHEL KOOPMAN has opened his second term as General Manager of The Leela Ambience Gurgaon with the resolve to restore the “work-life balance” of the hotel’s staff. “That’s my big objective this year,” Koopman said in the course of an interview with BW Hotelier. “We actually work 52 days extra in a year, which means we have a 54-hour working week.” His plan is to enable members of the staff, across the ranks, get compensatory offs in addition to their weekly offs. It will effectively mean that the average employee will work for five days on alternating weeks.

Besides ensuring more offs for his team of 830, who manage the 411-room hotel, including banqueting and the adjacent golf course, Koopman proposes to open a staff gym and upgrade the staff restaurant. Not only that, the hotel’s employees can now have more than the stipulated meals. And to keep employee morale high, and the team spirit in the best shape, Koopman has made sure there’s a sporting tournament every six weeks; in another similar morale-building exercise, he declared International Women’s Day (March 8) as a day of celebration for the women employees of the hotel.

Women are definitely high on Koopman’s priority list. “I am striving for a better gender balance,” he said. “Women are more nurturing, they have a better eye for detail and are great for the morale of the employees.” Equally important is the profile of the casual labour employed by the hotel. Koopman has just changed it.

A non-resident guest’s first points of contact with a hotel are either the car parking valets, or the servers at banqueting events -- both categories are recruited from ‘casuals’ provided by private agencies, which are infamous for not investing on training the ‘staff’ on their rolls and not paying them well.

Hotels, as result, get casuals who are either not happy, or not well-trained. It’s not uncommon for valets to be rough with cars under their charge and casual waiters tend to be shabby, inarticulate and ill-informed. Both are bad advertisements for a hotel. Likewise, the airport transfer car’s driver is the first human contact an incoming resident has with a hotel. No pedigreed hotel can afford to have a driver who’s neither warm and welcoming, nor very forthcoming with information.

What, then, does a hotel do to ensure that casuals do not sully its first impression? Koopman is working on a two-pronged strategy. He has put the hotel’s drivers and golf course caddies on fixed-term contracts, so although they aren’t on the rolls, they are treated on a par with full-time employees. And to get better-informed, more presentable waiters for banquets, Koopman has been dipping into the talent pools of hotel schools. Students who get selected are not only trained, but also get a stipend of Rs 500 per assignment. Great for their pocket money!

Looking ahead, Koopman said 2016-17 promises to be “another good year for business”. “We cracked Rs 200 crore again in 2015-16,” he said. “We are reporting a 48 per cent gross operating profit, which is Rs 7-8 crore higher than the previous year’s.” The hotel clocked an average occupancy of 76.3 per cent and cranked up an average room rate of Rs 9,000 -- both significantly higher than the average of 63.3 per cent and Rs 6,198 reported for Gurgaon in HVS India’s 2015 Hotels in India Trends & Opportunities report. (The Millennium City, incidentally, has 203 registered hotels across star categories.)

Koopman admitted, though, that his hotel is “slightly down on rates”. In 2016-17, he proposes to raise occupancy by 3 per cent with the help of better management of inventory, lift revenues by 5 per cent, and report a GOP growth of 8 per cent. Unsurprisingly, Koopman spends half an hour daily focusing on revenue management and uses the latest systems available in the market to crank up the numbers he needs at any given time. He’s happy with the revenues garnered from banqueting -- Rs 47 crore -- and proudly declares: “We have used every part of the hotel for banquets.”

What about new initiatives? Cutting back Heat, Light and Power (HLP) expenses tops Koopman’s agenda. Even as The Leela prepares for a complete overhaul, the mock-up rooms are being fitted with state-of-the-art lighting and energy controls, apart from offering media hubs, comfortable seating and less clutter to their future guests.

Spectra, the hotel’s multi-cuisine all-day restaurant, will soon have a new Asian specialty chef. The hotel, meanwhile, is bidding farewell to its popular executive chef, Ramon Salto, who’s being replaced by Neeraj Rawoot, his No. 2. Abhishek Gupta will be the new executive sous chef. Talking about food, Koopman said the hotel has a new restaurant reservation system -- Eat2Eat -- in place for better database management and identifying target audiences for specific marketing promotions.

In short, Koopman has made sure his second term as general manager won’t have a dull moment. Very much goal driven, he is making sure his drive and enthusiasm is so infectious that it touches even the newest inductee into the hotel.