From the Kitchen to Management: Understanding a Hotel Before Running It
Before managing a hotel, Ing. Jan Vlasák, MBA, CEO and General Manager of the Bonfanti Design Hotel, washed dishes, waited tables, worked in maintenance, carried luggage and managed Food & Beverage operations.
It is an unconventional career path, described in an interview published by Refresher, which took him from Slovakia to Italy, with experiences in England and Germany along the way, before eventually leading him to the management of the Bonfanti Design Hotel in South Tyrol.
But there is one aspect of his story that is particularly interesting for anyone involved in hotel management: before coordinating departments, Vlasák experienced them first-hand.
Seeing the hotel from different perspectives
When Vlasák first arrived in South Tyrol, he spoke neither Italian nor German. He started as an all-rounder and, over the years, took on very different roles, from the kitchen and restaurant service to maintenance.
His professional experience continued abroad and, during his time in England, he went on to become a Food & Beverage Manager.
In the interview, he explains that these early experiences became one of the most important foundations of his professional journey.
Having first-hand knowledge of the work carried out by different departments changes the way a hotel is viewed. It means understanding what it actually takes to prepare a service, clean a room, handle a request or deal with an unexpected situation.
This knowledge becomes particularly important when moving from performing an activity to being responsible for organising it.
A hotel built starting from its processes
Vlasák’s path to the management of the Bonfanti Design Hotel was also unconventional.
He did not simply take over the management of an already established hotel. He took part in the transformation of a former three-star, 30-room hotel into a 90-room property, following the development of the project for approximately two years alongside the owners and architects.
Once the property was completed, the work continued on an organisational level.
Housekeeping, Food & Beverage and the other departments had to be structured and coordinated so that the hotel could operate as a single system.
This is an important point because it shows how hotel management depends on much more than what the guest sees. Behind every service is a sequence of activities, responsibilities and decisions that must work effectively every day.
When one request involves more than one department
In the interview, Vlasák uses the image of a chain to describe how a hotel operates.
Guest expectations continue to rise, and a single request may require the coordinated involvement of several people. If a dish arrives late at the table, for example, the problem does not necessarily concern the kitchen alone. It may depend on the entire service process.
The same principle applies to a room, a special request or any other activity involving multiple departments.
For the guest, there is only one experience. The organisational boundaries between reception, housekeeping, the kitchen, maintenance and administration belong to the hotel.
This is why coordination becomes an essential component of service quality: each department performs different activities, but the final result depends on how effectively those activities connect with one another.
Covid and a different question: how can we work better?
It was during the pandemic that Vlasák’s story reached one of the stages most directly connected to the later development of ESC.
With the hotel affected by the consequences of Covid, Vlasák explains that he began focusing systematically on the hotel’s costs and processes.
The result was an extensive analysis: approximately 1,200 pages dedicated to identifying potential improvements in the hotel’s processes.
That work later developed into a technology project in which, according to the interview, approximately one million euros were invested.
The origins of the project also reveal a great deal about how hotel optimisation can be approached.
Technology comes after observing operations.
First come the daily activities, the difficulties encountered by different departments, the costs that need to be understood and the processes that can be improved. Only then does it become possible to ask which tools could help manage them more effectively.
Understand before optimising
The journey described by Refresher begins with a professional career and leads to a much broader topic.
To improve a hotel, you first need to understand how it actually works.
Not only through financial results or final performance indicators, but by observing what happens within departments, how activities are carried out and where difficulties arise during everyday operations.
This is also the principle behind ESC Agency’s approach: first understand the hotel, then identify where and how to intervene.
Because every process we want to improve, before being analysed through data or managed through software, is an activity carried out by someone every day.
Refresher tells the professional story of Ing. Jan Vlasák, MBA, CEO and General Manager of the Bonfanti Design Hotel, from Slovakia to the management of the hotel and the creation of the optimisation project developed during the Covid period.
Read the full interview on Refresher.