Facility management is getting increasingly difficult with all the changes in the labor market and new technologies emerging year after year. After all, reports reveal that nearly 80% of workplaces in the U.S. use a combination of an open office and private, individual offices or a solely open office environment.
In order to keep a facility running smoothly, managers need to embrace a brand new mindset and look for alternative ways to improve services. This is exactly where travel experiences might play a major role because the hospitality industry can teach facility managers a lot of fresh tricks and customer service tactics.
In this article, we will make a brief overview of traditional facility management and show you eight things you can learn from hospitality industry professionals. Let’s take a look!

Facility Management: Definition, Duties, Skills

Traditional facility management is a multifaceted business concept that requires a broad scope of skills. By definition, facility management is a profession that encompasses multiple disciplines to ensure functionality, comfort, safety, and efficiency of the built environment by integrating people, place, process, and technology.
If this sounds complicated, that’s because it is. A typical facility manager has to take care of all sorts of details to keep the residents satisfied:

• Monitor the facility to identify problems and schedule repairs.
• Keep an eye on renovation projects to make sure everything goes as planned.
• Plan and execute waste reduction activities.
• Take care of security issues and conduct safety inspections.
• Negotiate with suppliers and vendors to find the best bid for repairs and other works.
• Control and evaluate maintenance employees, groundskeepers, and staff.

It’s a wide range of activities that demand a very special set of skills and practical abilities.
Jake Gardner, a member of the top resume writing services who wrote the boom essays review, says facility managers have to highly analytical: “They are the ones who analyze maintenance-related data and make decisions based on analytical insights. Besides that, facility managers need to be detail-oriented and prove leadership skills by keeping their employees agile and motivated around the clock.”
This is the main reason why a typical facility manager can expect to earn approximately $65 thousand annually, while the best niche professionals can earn nearly $100 thousand a year.

8 Things Facility Managers Can Learn from the Hospitality Industry

We’ve covered the basic features of classical facility management, but what about new trends and skills? There are lots of things you can learn from professionals in other businesses, including hospitality managers. Here are eight important lessons that the hospitality industry can teach you.

1. Shift your focus to people

If you’ve ever witnessed a hotel manager in action, you’ve probably figured out his/her attention to people and user experiences. Namely, their goal is to make guests feel welcome and appreciated – detail facility managers should really pay attention to in their work.
Jason Jacobsen, the author of the essay writing service UK reviews at Australian assignment help, believes facility managers should stop concentrating solely on building premises: “Instead, you should start seeing things from the perspective of tenants and begin making improvements that will make people feel better in your facility.”

2. Ensure maximum satisfaction with minimum efforts

Another thing hospitality professionals are trying to do is to ensure maximum satisfaction with minimum efforts. What does it really mean? Well, it means they want to make guests feel comfortable and free from taking any unnecessary action. For example, a typical guest feels much better when he/she doesn’t need to carry a room key around, which is why so many hotels now provide visitors with keyless entries.

3. Effortless communication

Contemporary businesses are all about customers’ experiences. In such circumstances, the way you communicate with clients will play a huge role in the overall consumer journey. Hospitality managers understand this fact very well, which is why they exercise communication skills and handle conversations with their guests seamlessly and effortlessly.
You should do the same thing – try and embrace a brand new communication model that makes inmates feel good and happy to meet you once again.

4. Provide users with glitch-free equipment

Another thing you should worry about is how to provide users with glitch-free equipment. It is the attention to detail that makes the hospitality industry so difficult and demanding, but this is exactly where the best providers distinguish themselves from their less diligent competitors. Needless to say, this is also how you should behave and make sure to keep the facility equipment perfectly functional.

5. Rely on cutting-edge technologies

The year is 2020 and there is no reason for anyone to neglect cutting-edge technologies. The hospitality industry is known for a wide range of digital platforms in charge of automation, hotel reservations, billing management, planning, scheduling, and many more.
The same goes for facility management as you can apply state of the art tools to boost productivity. According to the report, almost 60% of surveyed FM companies intend to introduce mobile apps to their workforce to improve connectivity and navigation. This trend is not to be neglected, so do your best to discover facility management software that can give your organization a fresh boost.

6. Staff supervision

Hotels and other hospitality businesses employ all sorts of workers, from high-level executives to room service workers. This forces managers to supervise staff constantly and keep an eye on employee performance long-term.
Although the same principle applies to facility management, professionals from the hospitality industry can teach you to be detail-oriented and to monitor workers’ activities non-stop as it is the only way to achieve superior performance.

7. Always take the extra step

In an attempt to indulge their guests, hotel managers and other hospitality professionals will always take the extra step and fulfill even the most peculiar demands of their visitors. To put it simply, the entire hospitality industry is trying to work as promised and even over-deliver if needed to boost customer loyalty. And if you know that acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer, then you know that you should also do whatever it takes to fulfill your clients’ requests.

8. Anticipate trends and needs

The last lesson on our list is to learn how hospitality is eager to identify the growing trends and anticipate customers’ new needs. Some facility management professionals understand it already, which is why they use predictive analytics to improve services. This is a great approach as studies prove that predictive analytics yields a tenfold return on investment and results in a savings of 30% to 40%.

The Bottom Line

Facility management is a quickly-evolving industry that keeps changing according to the needs and requests of modern businesses. If you want to maintain the highest level of professionalism, you have to embrace the state of the art business models and keep learning 365 days a year.
In this post, we discussed eight practical lessons facility managers can learn from the hospitality industry. Do you think these tricks can make you a better facility manager? Which tactic do you believe to be the most interesting?
Make sure to share your questions and ideas in the comments – we would love to see what you think about the impact of hospitality practitioners on facility management.