Running an hotel is a lot of work with unsociable hours . forget your evenings and week ends .
52 rooms is not massive and you would not need a lot of staff to clean them, a chambermaid can clean 4 rooms an hour easy . a good chef is compulsory , deosnt have to be michelin star to be successful but nice and simple will always be a hit .
Disagree with both parts there. Been brought up in the business all my life, have worked for a leading hospitality company for 16 years and currently run a 64 bedroom, 250 cover bar/restaurant with seating outside for about 110.
What you need to be first and foremost is a great leader. You need to create a vision for your place with simple objectives, strategies and tactics to achieving your goals. You then need to make sure you have a great team around you who will work for those goals. If they dont want to then there's 100,000's people unemployed who would.
location although vital is not the bee all and end all. Was it successful in the past? if so, how and what for?. Whats the reputation like? Reputation accounts for alot and is a great form of sales by yuor customers. Your hotel! Has it got a sales person promoting external sales? Are you signed up to outside agencies like bookings.com, laterooms etc. Although they will take a % per room sold, its worth it long run. Labour wise your hotel will run at alot less than your restaurant. For rooms, if your running say 55% occ, then look for about 20-25 mins per room cleaned with high standards in place and your head housekeeper aware of these ( and incentified on in house audits). Your reception team should also be doing sales, lapsed users, top 10 companies, new companies. See who is your competition and get phone numbers of vans/lorries in their car park and invite for a showround to try and steal business ( offer free B&B for booker etc). Restaurant wise, make sure A/ team are good, you have standards in place and are adhered to. B/ food and drink is top quality and consistent. If you have meeting rooms how could you use these. Try morning network meetings where businesses come to your place to network with each other. Great time to meet other businesses and sell yours. Host wedding fayres/celebration nights etc. INcentify local businesses to help you out ( i.e. Local card shops, when birthday cards/wedding cards etc are bought they hand over flyers about your place as an idea to host the event. Everytime someone books using this flyer you give the shop £25 - £50/free B&B etc).
This sounds like alot of work and it is, but i for instance never really work more than 3 nights a week, i have 95% time off that i want ( sundays for biking, all races etc), so as long as you have the correct team in place and your leading properly then it doesn't need to rule your life.
Mainly though, you need to have a passion for the industry and want to work. 99% of customers are fantastic people who just want talked to, the odd few are knobs but you learn how to deal with them. Oh, and legislation nowadays is a pain in the butthole .I need files for files etc.
HTH
