5 tips to optimize your company's micro closures

Many hotels are currently facing micro-closures as mobility policies change. In some cases, this unforeseen cessation of activity leads to high losses. Those responsible for Fort Grazalema a rural hotel in the Sierra de Grazalema Natural Park (Cádiz), describe themselves as “experts in micro-closures”.

According to its director Immaculate Medinilla, “In our case, we are very used to this type of operation, especially in the low season when we only open at weekends and we have to do constant openings and closings. Over the years we have managed to develop various protocols that help us to maximally optimize resources and avoid unnecessary expenses.”

Based on this experience and its own protocols, Inmaculada Medinilla offers the following advice.

Make the most of perishable goods

“In our case, we match perishable food purchases to the percentage of reserves that we confirm. We always have a little more and as the deadline approaches we use what’s left over to go ahead with the preparation of creams and sauces that, once prepared, we freeze for later consumption.” For this reason, he assures, “we use up 95 % of all perishable food we purchase and optimize its consumption to the maximum”.

Create an effective cleaning and maintenance schedule

“Our micro-closure protocol provides for a comprehensive cleaning and maintenance plan that includes the sanitization and disinfection of all facilities prior to closure, the preparation of spaces known to be occupied when it next opens, and the identification of potential incidents by the maintenance team during of closing days repaired”. In this way, he continues, “everything goes very quickly on the opening day and it is only necessary to check the common areas and the terraces of the rooms already prepared, as well as to welcome the rooms of the new reservations that have been included in the system during of shutdown.

Rely on the versatility of your employees

“Fuerte Grazalema is a small hotel with 77 rooms, so we have a small staff. However, the secret to executing an excellent opening and closing plan is having a multi-skilled workforce dividing tasks according to need.”

control energy consumption

The hotel “has a strong sustainable management policy, which of course also applies to these micro-shutters. What we do to optimize resources is to turn off or stop everything that is not required for the hotel to operate, such as: B. Lighting, heating, elevators and refrigerators, among other equipment and systems; and we keep the boilers at 60º as health requires, but we use what is produced every day by the circuit of solar panels that we have”. In the case of the groceries we store, he says, “we pack everything into a single cold store to minimize energy use.”

Centralize reservations

“In the case of calls and reservations made during the closure of the hotel, we are lucky not to lose them, since these days we belong to Fuerte Group Hotels https://www.fuerte-group.com/ We redirected the phones and email to the chain’s central reservations call center.”