Know Your Owner. Tell Them the Bad News First.

I once took over a hotel that had been open for only a few months and had already been through several general managers. I knew much of the story before I arrived. More than one person had warned me, “Don’t go there.” Looking at the condition of the place, I could see why. It felt more like a pre-opening than an operating hotel.

It was a large hotel. Hundreds of rooms had officially been released for sale under pressure to open, but we were selling only a few dozen. Many of the supposedly available rooms were unfinished.

The owner wanted to know why occupancy was so low. Fair question. He had been told he had hundreds of rooms to sell.

When I explained the problem, he initially did not believe me. I asked whether he had inspected the rooms. He had not seen them since construction. I was new and had not seen some of them either, so there was an opportunity for him to show me around. He was proud of the quality of his project. He could show me all the splendour.

The first room we inspected had no bathtub. Another had no shower. Then one had a shower but no enclosure. Another had no toilet, no telephone, and so it went. I was batting a thousand.

Eventually, he got fed up and suggested we go downstairs for coffee. We had not even made it downstairs before he called his son, who was responsible for construction. He was livid.

His son received a very public and not particularly polite dressing-down. That was the point when I thought I might just survive this assignment. He was prepared to hold his own family accountable. It looked like an autocratic meritocracy. Over time, I found that he was a bit of a perfectionist, but performance was well rewarded.

I had no reason to enjoy the shouting. What mattered for the hotel was that he acted. He put someone else in charge of construction, gave authority to import materials and use air freight if required, and provided extra workers for my engineering team to supervise.

We put a proper punch-list system in place and worked through the unfinished rooms. As I recall, we had well over a hundred rooms ready to sell within a month. It took several months to get the outstanding work resolved.

I had known the owner as a good customer at a previous hotel. That helped, although serving someone as a guest and managing his investment are rather different relationships. Seeing the rooms hurt his pride. He had expected to show me a quality project.

There were also reasons why he had become suspicious of the management company. By the time I arrived, its representatives had been banned from the property. I had to work hard at undoing that.

One example concerned a completed public area. As I understood it, the work had been done according to local code. Then a brand requirement to install sprinklers was raised, which meant tearing into finished work.

I heard both sides. From his point of view, representatives had been visiting throughout construction. Why was he hearing about the requirement only after the work was finished? The management company’s position was that it was in the brand’s Technical Services Manual, so the owner was expected to comply.

I had not been part of all those discussions, so I could not say exactly what had been communicated earlier. Meeting local code did not necessarily mean meeting the brand’s requirements. Even so, I could see why he was frustrated about having to redo work he believed had been completed properly.

He should have heard about the unfinished rooms before he had to ask about occupancy. The sprinkler requirement should have been clear before the work was finished. By the time I arrived, I was dealing with the cost of those gaps in understanding, as well as the building.

Getting the management company back into the hotel took more than pointing to the management contract. By then, I had built up some credit in the emotional bank. He remained cautious about them, but he trusted me.

I started with specific problems where I needed help from the management company’s corporate team, usually involving finance or staffing. I would explain what I needed and who could help, then communicate directly with the corporate team or my boss.

Much of the work could begin remotely. Members of the corporate team could contact their counterparts in the hotel and start resolving things before anyone travelled. I kept the owner updated on the easy wins and made sure the team received the credit. By the time someone came for a day, enough was already under way for the visit to be visibly productive.

We would usually recap over a meal. I briefed the visitors about his love of food, and the conversation would find its way back to that. Those meals gradually became a chance for people to get to know each other.

He was polite enough not to reopen the old dispute at the table—at least, as I saw it, to give me face. That gave everyone room to get acquainted while there was useful work to discuss.

Most of these problems could have been avoided. That is the frustrating part.

I cannot honestly say I would have refused to open if I had been there at the time. I know what pressure around an opening can be like. But I would have wanted to give the owner a picture closer to reality. If hundreds of rooms were being released with work still outstanding, he needed to know what that meant for the hotel.

He had money committed to a business that was not delivering what he expected. Some of what he believed was wrong. Some of his complaints were reasonable. I had to be prepared to deal with both.

We worked together for several years and parted on good terms. The relationship continued afterwards.

At one point, one of his sons asked me to tell his father that something needed to be done for the hotel. I asked why he did not tell him himself. He was his father, after all.

“It's better if it comes from you.”