Adina Apartment Hotel Brisbane General Manager, Briana Hill, is kept busy managing one of the biggest Adina properties in the TFE Hotels network.
This week, Briana took some time out of her busy schedule to have a chat to Travel Monitor about her role in this week’s Talking Travel. This is what she had to say.
What does your job involve?
I’m responsible for overseeing the daily operations of one of the biggest Adina Apartment Hotels in our network – the 220 key Adina Apartment Hotel Brisbane. My job is to ultimately guarantee that guests have an outstanding experience when staying with us… and how can they not when our hotel offers a real point of difference in Brisbane with its heritage features, and contemporary and comfortable apartments, many with full views of the Brisbane River.
On the team side, I provide leadership and strategic planning advice across all departments covering Administration, Human Resources, Accommodation, Food & Beverage, Finance and Engineering. I’m there daily to support and deliver standards of service, lead the way with service culture and implement new ways to enhance our guest’s experience and increase our overall guest satisfaction, whilst effectively maximising our operation and yielding the business to leverage the highest profitability for our owners.
How have you tackled the difficulties caused by COVID-19?
Covid hit our industry so very hard. Thankfully, Adina Brisbane never ceased trading, so I’ve managed to stay very hands on throughout the entire pandemic. Whilst business levels diminished during Covid, we remained busy – just in a very different sense to what busy ‘normally’ looks like for us.
Whilst our in-house guests thinned out from all the cancellations, we dived straight into looking at ways we could market our rooms differently and how we could re-purpose our rooms to generate revenue beyond our usual guests and booking channels.
With that, much time was spent on developing new operational protocols and writing new strategic plans just to ensure we could survive the pandemic and maintain financial stability for the operation and the owners.
Throughout it all, I’ve remained positive but realistic when talking to the team.
What do you enjoy most about your profession?
I love…
- working in an industry where no day is ever the same.
- working in an industry that’s success comes from such a diverse workforce
- working in an industry with a core focus on succession planning and keeping talent in the pipeline.
What are the biggest challenges for you in your profession (outside of COVID-19)?
Talent Acquisition/Retention is the big focus for all hoteliers right now as we know these skills shortages can literally bring us to our knees. It is tough, as a passionate hotelier, to work on retaining and attracting talent when so many other industries often pay more than the Hospitality Awards – it’s a challenge.
I firmly believe that having a talent strategy and understanding our talent capacities is essential to maintaining our operation in line with constantly fluctuating demands.
What do you think are the biggest challenges the industry faces?
The biggest challenge and most important thing our industry needs to focus on right now is gaining the trust factor back from the consumer. And, I think we have a body of work to do to meet the heightened customer expectations when they stay.
What do you think will be the biggest game-changer in the travel industry in the next 12 months?
I think now that hybrid/remote working is becoming the new normal, this will change the landscape of the industry as we know it! Travel used to be just that, you had time off work to visit another destination and have a holiday.
Now, the travel industry can benefit directly from so many other industries that have shifted to remote working business models, which affords employees to work and travel at the same time. The acceptance of remote working across so many industries – coupled with increased flexibility, tech advancements and an increase in consumer appetite to try new experiences – will ultimately see the travel industry blend with business.
