Hotel Manager Interview Questions

I treat RevPAR as the summary metric and manage ADR and occupancy as the two levers that drive it. The relationship between them depends on the property and the period: in a city-centre business hotel during the week, I prioritise ADR and accept lower occupancy rather than discounting to fill rooms, because the brand and the demand curve support that. At weekends and in shoulder periods, the calculus changes and I use targeted rate promotions and direct booking incentives to protect occupancy. I work closely with the revenue manager to review pickup daily and adjust rates in real time. On ADR specifically, I focus on mix: upgrading loyalty members to higher room categories at minimal incremental cost increases ADR without discounting the rack rate. My best RevPAR result was a 14 percent year-on-year improvement by combining a rate floor strategy during peak periods with a weekend leisure package that lifted both occupancy and F&B spend.

I treat guest satisfaction data as an operational tool, not just a reporting metric. I review OTA scores, post-stay surveys, and review site comments daily, and I have a standing agenda item in the morning briefing for anything below 7 out of 10 from the previous 24 hours. When a score drops, the first question is always whether the root cause is a process issue, a staffing issue, or a one-off incident: each has a different fix. For recurring complaints, I run a root cause analysis with the relevant department head and change the process within one week. I also focus on the positive: sharing a strong guest comment in the team briefing takes 30 seconds and directly connects the team's work to the guest experience. My target is to be in the top 10 percent of the comp set on TripAdvisor and Google, and I review the comp set scores weekly to track relative performance.

F&B in a hotel has two distinct roles: it is a revenue generator in its own right, and it is a component of the guest experience that affects overall satisfaction scores. I manage both separately. On the commercial side, I review covers, average spend per cover, and gross profit percentage weekly. I work with the F&B manager to ensure the menu pricing reflects current food cost inflation without pricing the restaurant out of the local market, and I push for a target GP of at least 68 to 72 percent on food. On the experience side, I make sure the F&B team understands that their interaction with a guest at breakfast can shape a review that affects room bookings for months. I also drive internal referrals: front desk should be recommending the restaurant and bar to every arriving guest, which in my last role lifted F&B revenue per occupied room by around 18 percent.

Running a hotel means leading specialists: a housekeeping manager, a front office manager, a revenue manager, an F&B manager, and a maintenance team, each with very different skills and pressures. My approach is to set clear KPIs for each department, hold weekly one-to-ones with each head of department, and run a daily morning briefing with the whole HOD group to align on the day's priorities, VIP arrivals, and any known operational risks. I invest heavily in cross-departmental awareness: the front office team should understand the pressure housekeeping is under when there is a 400-room changeover; the revenue team should see the impact of a pricing decision on the F&B team's walk-in covers. I also have a consistent development practice: each HOD has a clear development plan and at least one stretch project per quarter that builds their skills beyond their current role.

We had a burst pipe on the third floor that flooded twelve rooms at 11pm on a Saturday when we were at 94 percent occupancy. My immediate priorities were guest safety, communication, and relocation. I activated the emergency protocol, which the team knew because we had rehearsed it: maintenance isolated the water supply, the duty manager began calling affected guests to offer immediate room moves, and I called the night manager at a partner hotel two blocks away to confirm we could walk twelve guests. We relocated all affected guests within 45 minutes, offered a complimentary rate upgrade and breakfast, and had written apologies under every door before midnight. Six of the twelve guests left positive reviews mentioning how the situation was handled. The damage took four days to repair and cost approximately £18,000, but we did not lose a single group booking and retained three corporate accounts that were staying that night.

When I joined my previous property, annualised turnover in housekeeping was 78 percent, which is high even by hospitality standards. I spent two weeks doing listening sessions with the housekeeping team before making any changes. The main issues were: no recognition for exceptional work, inconsistent shift patterns that made childcare difficult, and a perception that housekeeping was treated as invisible by the front of house. I introduced three changes. First, a monthly "Room of the Month" recognition with a meaningful reward, which cost almost nothing but changed the culture visibly. Second, a fixed-day-off pattern for staff with declared childcare needs, which required some rota creativity but was achievable. Third, I started inviting the housekeeping manager to the morning HOD briefing, which gave the department a voice in daily operations. Within 12 months, turnover had dropped to 41 percent and average room scores on our survey improved by 0.4 points.

A large corporate client who used the hotel for quarterly off-site events complained after their third booking that the AV setup in the main conference room was consistently below standard. Their event coordinator had raised it twice and felt the feedback had not been acted on. I called the coordinator directly rather than going through the sales team, acknowledged the issue clearly without making excuses, and invited them to walk the conference space with me so I could understand exactly what standard they needed. We identified three specific gaps: cable management, screen brightness, and the PA system. I committed to resolving all three before their next event, which was six weeks away. We replaced the PA and upgraded the screens within the budget I had held for a capital refresh. At the next event the coordinator sent a written note to the general manager. That account renewed for two further years. The lesson was that speed and directness matter more than a polished apology when a client is genuinely frustrated.

Revenue management is a daily discipline, not a weekly report. I expect the revenue manager to present a pickup summary each morning covering the current week and the next 30 days, with specific recommendations on rate adjustments and any event-driven demand to capture. I make final decisions on rate floors and promotional activity, but those decisions should be led by the revenue manager's analysis. On strategy, we set a monthly rate strategy at the start of each month that defines the rate floor for each segment, the discount we are prepared to offer OTAs versus direct, and the pricing for any packages. I monitor channel mix closely: OTA dependency above 60 percent of room nights is a margin and brand risk I actively work to reduce through direct booking incentives and loyalty programme push. My preferred approach is to use a demand forecast anchored in historical data and adjusted for known events, comp set rate movements, and macro demand signals.

Maintenance falls into three categories for me: reactive, preventive, and capital. Reactive maintenance should be resolved within four hours for anything that affects the guest room or public spaces, and within one hour for safety-critical issues. I track this via a maintenance ticketing system and review open tickets daily. Preventive maintenance follows a scheduled programme: HVAC servicing, lift certification, boiler inspection, and deep cleans on a rolling calendar. This prevents the costly reactive failures that disrupt operations. For capital investment, I build a five-year asset plan at the start of each year, prioritising by guest impact and condition rating. I walk every floor and all public spaces personally at least twice a week: a carpet that needs replacing in corridor twelve is something I want to catch before a guest photographs it for a review. I also involve the maintenance manager in the morning briefing so they can flag upcoming planned works that might affect specific rooms or areas.

I build the budget from the bottom up: revenue forecasts by segment and channel, then cost forecasts department by department, with payroll modelled as a percentage of revenue in each area. I involve each HOD in their department's budget so they own it, rather than having a number handed to them. I review actuals versus budget monthly in detail and weekly at a headline level. When I see a variance, I want to understand it within 48 hours: is it a timing difference, a one-off, or a structural trend? A one-off requires no action. A structural trend requires a decision, either a cost adjustment or a revenue recovery plan. I have a standing rule that any negative variance above 5 percent of budget for a department triggers an explanation and a recovery plan within the same week. I also track rolling 12-month performance alongside the current year budget, because looking at budget versus actuals alone can mask a declining trend that the original budget was too optimistic to capture.