Operations

Representative Engagements Follow

Hotel and resort operations is a highly-varied business discipline.  Hotels can be designed, financed, and built, but in the final analysis they must be professionally operated towards the profit goal.  The complexity of large hospitality properties is reflective of the “little cities” they become.  A hotel by design requires that guest rooms be marketed for nightly occupancy.  A 500-room hotel seeking a 65% occupancy, where guests on average stay 2.2 nights, implies a need to make 53,920 individual sales each year.  This is a very substantial undertaking.  A 500-room 4-star hotel with typical food and beverage outlets and meeting and recreational space, might require 350-employees, each of whom has to be hired, trained, groomed, and supervised.  The organizational structure behind this is challenging.  Large hotels might have twenty departments, complete with operating manuals, flow charts, policies and procedures, and the like. The 375,000 square foot building represented by a typical 500-room property must be maintained and continually renovated and updated with fresh concepts.  Efficiencies must be balanced against service standards.  The profit goal of the owner must be a focus, while simultaneously operating the hotel to meet guest expectations and brand maintenance obligations. 

Straightline recognizes the benefit of both using best practices and working with the best people.  There are practice areas within the hospitality industry where other parties provide a balance to Straightline's capabilities.  These include the area of hotel operations.  We frequently work together in this area with our business partners at Apertor Hospitality LLC.  In addition to its strengths in hotel operations, Apertor is deeply knowledgeable in asset management & operational auditing, creditor advisory, transaction due diligence, turnarounds & restructuring, and related disciplines.  Straightline and Apertor can work together as a team or separately, as may be in the best interests of the client.

For more information about Apertor, visit www.apertorhospitality.com  

Some of Straightline's Operations Engagements follow...

• Netherlands Antilles:  Rework of the timesharing program for a $440 million destination resort. Responsibility for problem resolution in all aspects of the program, including product definition, pricing, operations, and sales & marketing. Defacto Project Director.

• Ocean Liner:  Expert witness in case of Breach of Fiduciary Duty complaint for executives managing an ocean liner that had been converted into a hotel.

• California:  Developed market sourcing strategies for a wine country inn.
  
  
• California: Engaged as an expert concerning standard of care in a general negligence claim involving a near drowning at a gay resort in the Palm Springs market.
  
  
• Tennessee: Determined Standard of Care for Maintenance and operation of guestroom window locks in an aging franchised hotel.

• California:  Engaged to opine upon operating standards in a breakfast room accident involving a coffee spill with resultant severe burns upon a child.

• Hawaii: Engaged to determine adequacy of warning signage to surfers at three nationally-branded hotels along a popular, but dangerous, beach.
  
  
• Mexico: Insufficiency of warning signs at a Pacific Ocean hotel where guest was
  slammed to beach by errant wave.
  
  
• Missouri: Standard of Care in monitoring minors in a hotel lobby in the early A.M. hours
  in a case involving a rape.
  
  
• Rhode Island: Standard of Care concerning warning signs and general monitoring of
  guests at a maintained pond in a case involving a guest diving into said pond, a neck
  injury, and resultant partial quadriplegia.
  
  
• Arizona Resort: Engaged to determine no breach of industry standard practices for Retention of Evidence and Incident Reporting in a snake bite case.
  
  
• Iowa: Retained to evaluate performance of front desk clerk in his failure to call for medical help for guest at time of registration shortly before said guest died in his guestroom.
  
  
• Las Vegas:  Engaged by attorneys representing a major hotel gaming company to address hotel operating standards of care in a mass shooting case.
  
  
• California Family Restaurant and Bar: Personal injury case involving bartender assault upon patron.