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Help! Mateship needed in time of close contacts
By Grantlee Kieza, Industry Reporter
The industry has been devastated by COVID and there has never been a more important time for accommodation managers to help a friend in need. The buddy system has been crucial to keeping many businesses open when managers and staff have either contracted the virus or had to isolate because they became close contacts of those who tested positive. Dougal Hollis, the General Manager of Tourism Accommodation Australia (Vic), said in his State a member survey conducted in December 2021 showed that many Victorian hotels were operating at about 40 percent down on optimum staffing levels. This challenge was initially intensified by a requirement for workers to complete a 7-day home quarantine period, if deemed close contacts of infected co-workers. The “close contact” definition has now been tightened to only include household contacts, easing the squeeze on hospitality businesses, with co-workers now able to remain at work, unless COVID positive. Mr Hollis said unsurprisingly, hoteliers were adopting an “all hands-on deck” approach to staffing, with owners and senior managers assisting in a range of operational capacities, to enable hotels to remain open and trading. “Accentuating the positives,’” he said, “hoteliers have had to be very ResortNews | March 2022
resourceful, through necessity. Employees with management potential have been entrusted with greater responsibility, fast tracking career development.” The isolation requirements through COVID, though, have been particularly tough on smaller businesses in remote areas, who do not have the luxury of a large staff. Trevor Rawnsley, the CEO of ARAMA, recounts a manager on a Queensland island property whose wife and daughter contracted COVID. “The manager didn’t have COVID but as a close contact had to isolate for seven days. All his cleaners had COVID and were in isolation, too,” Mr Rawnsley said. “He couldn’t get a relief manager to come in and run the business for him, so he had to close his apartments, shut down for a week and call his guests to say they’d have to go elsewhere for their Christmas holidays. “He should have gone out to buy a lottery ticket because he was bound to have some good luck, eventually. “I put that manager in touch with A-MAP, which is ARAMA’S Mental Assistance Program because they can always help in that sort of crisis.” Mr Rawnsley said there had never been a more important time for the management rights and hotel industries to look after their own. “As part of their COVID-safe plan which ARAMA helped to design a couple of years ago, a
lot of managers have adopted as best practise a ‘locum’,” he said. “That is another management couple down the road who can step in and help when a manager has to take a break.
principles of support from within the industry remained the same.
“It's not just COVID that crops up. A manager might break a leg or get measles or mumps or anything else, so it's good to have someone that you can ring and say, ‘can you come in and look after my property for a few days, or a week while I sleep it off?’
“It's best practise to have a backup support team with relief management, no matter the situation.”
“Likewise, that manager can provide cover for the building down the road, when there’s a problem there. “Many of these people I don't hear from with COVID concerns, because they have been able to self-manage it by using this cooperative locum basis.” Mr Rawnsley speaks from experience. “I had a building at Nobbys Beach, on the Gold Coast, once, and there were eight of us who got together and decided we would help look after each other’s properties,” he said. “I remember going up to look after Magic Mountain a couple of times while the managers were away. They’d keep an eye on my place when I wasn’t available. “The complication with COVID is that everybody is frightened of a secondary infection, and they might not want to go into that office and work where someone has had COVID recently.” Mr Rawnsley said while COVID was “a whole different beast”, the
MANAGEMENT
“People got sick before COVID and they will get sick after it’s gone,” he said.
Chris Fozard, the Melbournebased operations manager of Budget Motels, said the majority of the group’s 100-plus properties were mostly in regional areas so they had been safeguarded from the high traffic in cities. He said some of his property managers faced with the COVID crisis, though, had set up noninteraction reception areas. “They have a doorbell which is clearly signed,” Mr Fozard said. “The guest presses the button and then the key is passed through a little slot so it totally limits interaction.” Mr Hollis said it had become common for Victorian hoteliers not to sell their full inventory of accommodation during COVID, “given particular challenges in securing housekeeping staff to clean rooms and widespread linen shortages”. But he said another positive from the situation was that senior managers and hotel owners had been able to build stronger bonds with their teams, and better understand and address any operational challenges staff may face, when working closely with them.
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