Skimping on your staff? In this business, it’s just not an option

In premium hospitality, quality does not begin with marble in the lobby or designer lighting. It begins with people. With whether the receptionist looks the guest in the eye, whether the waiter adjusts the plate before the guest even notices, whether the chef spends two extra minutes perfecting the sauce. As Andrzej Bartkowski, President of MCC Mazurkas Conference Centre & Hotel **** in Ożarów Mazowiecki, emphasizes, a hotel is not just a place to sleep. It is a space of experience. And that experience is built by the team.

The hospitality industry is currently facing one of its most challenging moments in decades. Rising operating costs, an oversupply of properties, and pricing pressure are making profitability increasingly difficult to maintain.

– The worst thing right now is that prices are stagnant while costs keep rising. Twenty-five years ago, a double room cost 300–350 PLN. Today it costs practically the same, while energy, food, wages, and taxes have increased many times over. Prices cannot be raised – because if I raise them, the customer will simply go elsewhere – says Andrzej Bartkowski, President of MCC Mazurkas Conference Centre & Hotel.

The situation is further complicated by an excess of hotels and low occupancy rates. In Warsaw, the average occupancy of accommodation facilities fluctuates around 45–50%, which means operating on the edge of profitability. In the conference segment, competition is even greater – clients send inquiries to a dozen or more venues at once and choose the cheapest offer. Additional pressure comes from geopolitical changes, which discourage foreign clients. In this difficult reality, the key question is: where to look for savings?

In a hotel, there are no redundant positions

In this situation, many entrepreneurs are looking for cost savings. A natural business instinct would be to reduce personnel costs. However, operational reality looks different. According to Andrzej Bartkowski, there is one boundary that must not be crossed – people and service quality.

– It takes just one missing employee at a critical point for quality to drop immediately. This is particularly visible in gastronomy and catering. During large events – banquets for 2–3 thousand people – the kitchen resembles a precisely functioning organism. A “swarm of people”, yet everyone knows what they are doing, no one wastes a second. This is not accidental. It is the result of experience, coordination, and years of working together – emphasizes Andrzej Bartkowski. – It is the team that today constitutes the most important asset of the facility – he adds.

A machine will not replace a human

It is estimated that up to around 80% of hotel chains worldwide already use or plan to use AI in areas such as personalization, recommendations, and data analysis. However, these are primarily tools supporting decision-making and marketing processes, not solutions that fully replace staff. Artificial intelligence helps managers analyze information faster and optimize revenue, improving operational efficiency, but it does not yet represent a full transformation of the guest experience.

– In Japan, a robot at the reception desk no longer surprises anyone, in Poland it would still be an attraction. Here, artificial intelligence still works more in the background – organizing data, optimizing prices, supporting decisions – rather than entering into direct interaction with the guest. And perhaps that is not a weakness at all. In my opinion, in a premium hotel the most important elements are micro-gestures: addressing the guest by name, a subtle bow from the waiter, adjusting the table setting without drawing attention, a natural, unforced smile from the receptionist, or a discreet “can I help you with anything?”. It is the human factor that determines the guest experience. This is a hospitality business, a business built on human presence – emphasizes Andrzej Bartkowski.

How to build quality?

Quality is not only the result of standards or procedures, but above all a consequence of the experience and motivation of the team. An engaged employee works with greater care, responsibility, and awareness of the impact of their actions on the whole organization. In a hotel serving business clients, where precision, speed, and perfect coordination are key, the team’s many years of experience becomes a real competitive advantage. That is why staff loyalty and stability are not just an image issue, but the foundation of quality – something that cannot be recreated quickly or “rebuilt” after workforce reductions.

– We treat ourselves as a community, not just a team. And it pays off. More than three-quarters of our employees have been with us for at least ten years, and several have been here from the very beginning. During the pandemic, we considered layoffs. From a business perspective, it would have been the best solution. But we decided it would simply be inhumane. If someone is loyal to the company, we should be loyal to them as well – says Andrzej Bartkowski. – Experienced employees have that intuition that allows them to handle demanding guests or situations requiring quick reactions. This cannot be learned from a textbook. A team that has worked together for ten or twenty years understands each other without words and operates like a well-oiled machine. The guest can feel that – he emphasizes.

Numbers are not everything

In times of rising costs and strong pricing pressure, the natural instinct of many companies is to look for savings where numbers are most visible. In hospitality, this usually means personnel costs. The problem is that in this industry, people are not an addition to the product. They are its essence. Service quality, atmosphere, the feeling of being cared for – these are not elements that can be replaced with a cheaper solution. That is why staffing decisions in a premium hotel carry more weight than short-term financial results.

– You can save on many things. You can postpone an investment, negotiate prices, change suppliers. But you cannot save on people. Because they create the hotel. If we start cutting where relationships with guests are built, we will very quickly see it in the quality. And in this industry, quality is everything. Business is done with numbers, that’s true. But it is run with people. And we must not forget that – concludes Andrzej Bartkowski.