Sylvain Chauvet

sylvain@chauvet.info

40 years old
French
Married - Two children

Tel: + 240 22 22 33 33 4

Historical

Before my arrival, the hotel has been managed by 4 different General Managers in 2 years and 90% of the permanent staffs have been working for more than 20 years in the company.

The consequences of these 2 points were:

• No real strategy of management for the last 2 years
• The staff was taking advantage of the lack of management

During the first 6 months I have mostly emphasized on operations and controls.

I quickly realized that the F&B staffs were stealing more than 30.000 Euro per month that I stopped by introducing a cashless policy in the hotel outlets.

The hotel was also overstaffed, and I reduced them by 15%, mainly with retirements, catching people stealing on the spot or managing to terminate some "bad" people by legally declaring them not trustable for the company. After that I employed a HR manager (The company did not have one for more than one year) to start new HR policy.

I had to re-think the complete control in the finance department (1.000.000 € debtors, no balance sheet...).

And the most difficult, I had to get the trust of all the remaining "honest" staff.

After these 6 months, I mainly emphasized on service. The activity is seasonal and starts current October. It was important after getting back the hotel to normal finance and management to think about customers. With the help of the owner we invested in some new equipments, new decoration, new services (F&B) to make the clients (a lot are repeaters) to feel the difference.

On 9th October 2007, Corinthia Atlantic Hotel has been awarded Gambia's leading Hotel by the World Travel Awards.

In 2001 the occupation went up from 55% to 85% over the year. The owners faced a new situation:

• increasing of client insatisfactions
• increasing of general costs in a non proportional way
• The image of the hotel started to become bad
• The maintenance state of the hotel was poor

• After a quick audit I realised that the previous GM was managing the hotel by himself in all departments. If it was nearly impossible with 55% occupancy over the year, it was simply impossible with 85%.

My first step was de recruit (internal and external) department managers, to train them in my way of managing.

It was easyer after to train the staff and assist them to ameliorate the client satisfaction

• I realised also that there were parallel sales in the hotel. Clients paying cash at the bars, boutiques, restaurants, massages, etc.., or staff saling excursions and also staffs stealing food and beverages. All was organized by few staffs employed since the opening of the hotel.

This second step was a little bit longer to solve because it was important not to face a strong reaction from this people. I first started to identify this people, afterwards, I isolated them in different departments to finally put them out one by one in a period of 1 year

Doing this second step was more successfull than I thought because most of others employees were scared of the old "mafia" staff . So afterwards not only the cost was really doing better but the quality of the service with new employees was excellent.

• The previous manager to reduce the cost that was incrasing a lot, completly cancel any maintenance job in the hotel. The consequence after one year was a disaster and increase the insatisfaction of the clients and in the same time distroy the state of the hotel.

I put back the maintenance in a good stage with a new manager and a weekly and monthly maintenance program.

• 97% of the clients are happy of the hotel
• Costs decrease of more than 20% compare to 2002. Cost per bednight passing from $33 to $26
• All rooms are renovated once a year
• Number of employees passed from 190 to 160

On the 20th of September 2006, Karafuu Hotel has been awarded:

"Africa leading resort" & "Tanzania's leading hotel"

by the World Travel Awards

Press release

at the office

• to manage a team of 140 people
• to organise drivers, guides and cars timetables (car fleet of 30 cars)
• to negotiate contracts with supplyers
• to book all safaris

• to deal with the logistic (drivers, guides, cars, campsite, supply,...)
• to accompany clients during their safari (groups between 50 to 100 people)
• to accompany Travel Agencies on survey to sale the safari to their client

Tented camps

During these 4 years I had managed 3 tented camps including the opening of 2 of them. They are based in:

• Serengeti
• Ngorongoro
• Tarangire

Over a 4 years period we dealt with more than 15 000 customers.