If there is one thing hotels love, it is a good meeting.  Hotels have a meeting for everything, a daily brief, a forecast meeting, an executive committee meeting, a meeting to plan meetings!  The problem with meetings in the hotel world is that hotels do not stop for meetings.  Every minute you take a manager off of the floor is a minute that he or she cannot spend interacting with guests.  The Wall Street Journal had a great solution that has been making the rounds in the last few months, The Stand-Up Meeting.  From reporter Rachel Emma Silverman:

“Stand-up meetings are part of a fast-moving tech culture in which sitting has become synonymous with sloth. The object is to eliminate long-winded confabs where participants pontificate, play Angry Birds on their cellphones or tune out.”

“Holding meetings before lunch also speeds things up. Mark Tonkelowitz, an engineering manager for Facebook Inc.’s News Feed feature, holds 15-minute stand-ups at noon, sharp. The proximity to lunch serves “as motivation to keep updates short,” he says”

The tech world has really taken to these stand-up meetings in order to increase productivity.  Hoteliers should surely take note.  We have all been in long, drawn-out meetings where two departments are trying to figure out the logistics of an upcoming event while 9 other managers in the room are tuning out because it does not involve them at all.  Take away the food and the chairs, people will truly get down to business.  Then we can all get back to taking care of the guest!

Source:  Wall Street Journal Article