In July 2024, AlphaTalks, an interview series from Alphadroid, published a ten-minute conversation with Vaishakh Surendran, then General Manager of Ramada Chennai. He answered four questions every hotel owner meets sooner or later: how to treat guests, how to keep staff, what keeping them costs, and what the next generation of general managers needs to know. This page summarises what he said. The full video is below.
The video loads from YouTube only when you click, and YouTube may then set cookies. See our cookie notice. Watch on YouTube. Source: AlphaTalks Ep. 3, Alphadroid, YouTube, 19 July 2024 (10 min 21 s).
Your staffing budget is part of the guest promise. Before asking only whether payroll can fall, ask what work must be done, when it occurs and whether the team can deliver it competently. Equally, a request for additional staff should explain the service need and alternatives. An owner review should connect workload, supervision and employment support with the hotel’s actual operating requirements.
Vaishakh Surendran set out his own version of this test in a ten-minute AlphaTalks interview recorded in July 2024, when he was General Manager of Ramada Chennai. Asked how the hotel handles high-profile guests differently from everyone else, his answer was that it shouldn’t:
"I believe that every guest, irrespective of who they are or where they come from, should be a VIP. ...nowadays it’s all about value for money — what you paid for against what you’re getting for it. If I make any discrimination in terms of the service I offer, that will not be great."
That is the service-definition discipline this section asks for: a standard stated plainly enough that a supervisor can apply it on a difficult shift, not a slogan.
Translate guest focus into observable commitments: response, room readiness, accuracy and the handling of problems appropriate to your hotel. Identify recurring failures and the department responsible for correction. A slogan cannot tell a supervisor what to do during a difficult shift. Consistency does not mean every guest needs identical treatment, but the hotel should understand and deliver the offer it has accepted payment for.
Ask for role-level vacancies, departures and available reasons rather than a broad explanation about the industry’s labour problem. On the AlphaTalks interview, Vaishakh traced the post-Covid attrition problem to people finding alternative income and becoming entrepreneurs, and described the response as “going back to basics — making sure we offer the right pay, we offer right working conditions, we have a work-life balance.” He also gave a concrete figure for what that costs in practice: at a previous property in a remote industrial location, accommodation and transport for staff — including dedicated housing for women on the team and four to five cars running pickup and drop from early morning to late evening — ran well above a normal payroll-to-revenue ratio.
"I think in those cases it’s not good to be penny-pinching — you have to be magnanimous in terms of what you do, and end of the day that will really pay back."
Do not infer that one benefit or training programme caused a change in retention without adequate evidence. The aim is to understand your property’s problem well enough to choose a proportionate response — and, as this example shows, to see where that cost actually sits (housing and transport, not just the pay line) before deciding whether to cut it.
Where accommodation, transport, meals or other employment support is necessary, make the arrangements and costs visible. Examine utilisation, alternatives and the consequences of changing them. A reduction may or may not improve the owner’s position once recruitment and operating implications are considered; investigate rather than assume. Ask whether the proposed staffing budget is feasible in the property’s location and whether managers can actually recruit to it.
Departmental expertise does not automatically prepare someone to manage cash, engineering, people and commercial trade-offs. Asked what he’d tell an aspiring GM, Vaishakh’s advice was direct: “Be a jack of all trades — don’t restrict yourself to just one department. You should know finance, you should know engineering, you should know HR, you should know technology.” Identify the practical knowledge managers need and create opportunities to develop it with accountability. Record essential processes so the hotel is not dependent on one employee’s memory. Succession and handover are owner concerns because service continuity and control should survive leave or a departure.
If the team proposes a new tool, ask which process it improves, who checks its output, what information it needs and what continuing cost it creates. In the same interview, Vaishakh described taking a short course on using AI tools inside everyday software — PowerPoint, Canva, ChatGPT — and framed the attitude owners should want from their GM: “Instead of being afraid of it and running away, I think you should embrace it.” Do not assume technology eliminates the staffing problem or that every manual task should remain unchanged. Trial a bounded use where appropriate and review accuracy, workload and guest impact. The owner should approve a clear operating case rather than a fashionable label.
A staffing total can conceal whether the right roles are available at the right time. Ask department heads where work accumulates, who supervises it and what happens during leave or absence. Review a real difficult period rather than debating an abstract staffing ratio. The owner needs an operating case that connects the proposed resource with a defined task. Additional people, better scheduling or a corrected process may each be appropriate, depending on what the evidence shows.
A completed course or attendance sheet does not establish that an employee can handle the required task. Vaishakh described running an open-door policy specifically with trainees — encouraging them to ask questions, observe and take notes rather than treating them, in his words, “like labour.” Ask supervisors how competence is checked in practice and how errors lead to coaching. The owner should review material training needs without designing every session. A practical development plan names the capability, the responsible supervisor and the evidence that will show whether the gap has narrowed.
Staff feedback can reveal issues that management records miss, but it is not automatically a complete diagnosis. Examine recurring themes, verify conditions and explain what the hotel can change. Avoid collecting feedback without responding, or making informal promises beyond the approved budget. The owner and GM should agree who communicates decisions and follows through. A clear explanation of a constraint can be more credible than a vague assurance that everything will improve soon.
Imagine guest response times worsen after a staffing reduction. Before reversing the entire decision, inspect the workload, shift coverage, process and supervision. The issue may require additional capacity, a different schedule or a corrected procedure. This hypothetical example is not evidence that all reductions damage service. It shows why the owner should ask what task is failing and what resource it needs. A defensible decision connects staffing with the service promise, includes realistic employment conditions and sets a way to check whether the chosen response actually improves delivery.
Request the staffing plan, role-level vacancy and departure records, service failure log, employment-support costs and management development plan. Use a defined review period and make sure the GM and finance team agree which version is current. Where the information is missing, record that limitation rather than filling the gap with an estimate presented as fact. Keep the main review short, with supporting detail available for questions. The purpose is not to create paperwork for its own sake: it is to give the owner enough evidence to approve a decision, understand the exposure and hold the responsible manager accountable for completion.
Start with these questions: What work is not being delivered? Why are people leaving? Which proposed change addresses the cause rather than the symptom? Ask management to distinguish an observed result, its explanation and the proposed response. They are not the same thing. Where the answer involves judgement, identify the assumption and what evidence could change it. Agree which decisions belong to the GM within the approved plan and which need owner approval. Avoid taking over routine execution; require clarity about responsibility, timing and the next update instead. The central risk to guard against is cutting visible payroll while leaving the hotel unable to deliver its advertised service.
For the next review cycle, review one recurring guest problem together with the staffing, process and supervision conditions behind it. Give the task a named lead and a completion date appropriate to your hotel. Check whether it was completed and what changed, rather than simply carrying the same instruction forward each month. Record any financial commitment separately from a discussion or recommendation. If the evidence does not support the original response, revise it openly. The owner-side objective is a better operating decision with a clear basis, not a more optimistic presentation or a promise that cannot be verified.