“It was love at first sight.” Hotel management through the eyes of the youngest member of the management board, Arche

Wprost.pl: How did you start your journey in the hotel industry and why this particular professional path?

Klaudia Romanowicz, Arche Group: I came to the hotel “for a while”, waiting for an internship at the hospital of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Administration. I was supposed to be a midwife, I was a student of the Medical University of Warsaw. After the wedding, I decided that I had a two-month break between classes and internships, so it was a good time to find a part-time job. I ended up at a hotel where I applied for the position of receptionist. I previously worked in sales in various places, so I thought it would be a nice break.

During the job interview, the general manager of the hotel I was applying to listened to the conversation. After the conversation, she came up to me and said: “Ms. Klaudia, I invite you to hotel sales.” I politely replied, “No, thank you, because it’s only two months and I’m going back to the hospital.” She told me then, I remember: “But girl, please come, because I feel that you have a knack for sales. You will feel the hotels. If after two months you tell me that it is not for you, I will pay you the entire commission. I will let you go without any problem. Someone will finish these events, but try.” Well, that’s basically how the story began.

You have gone through all levels, and today you are on the management board of one of the largest hotel groups in Poland. What was this road like? Did you jump straight from sales to management?

When it comes to my career, I’ve really touched every level. The reception was a reception, but as an operations manager it happened not once, not twice or ten times that I had to grab a mop.

I knew how to operate each convection oven, I dealt with human resources, I dealt with invoice turnover, I signed contracts, acquired customers, then I ran waiter services and took care of the catering. So I know most of the hotel industries tangibly, personally.

You mentioned that it was supposed to be a “temporary” job. Was it love at first sight or did you need time to “feel” the hotels?

It was definitely love at first sight. This is truly a very unique industry.

I’ve always loved sales. I have always liked contact with people. My mother and grandmother laugh that as a teenager I said: “Oh my gosh, it would be nice to have a wedding house with a hotel like this”, because those were still those days. I’ve always watched it with curiosity.

It’s a lot of adrenaline work all the time – I laugh that you have a critical path in the hotel every day before checking in.

In addition, it is work in a group of interesting characters, stories, and projects to be implemented. The hotel teams themselves are a collection of different characters and people who act with great heart. This is a huge added value, I don’t know if it’s the main one in all this.

Since you have touched almost every branch of the hotel industry, how does this experience influence your work today as a manager and board member?

I certainly don’t look at patterns. I can empathize with the fact that the value of a hotel team is not only the directors and managers. At the managerial level, it is often forgotten that a hotel will never prosper without a housekeeping lady, without housemen, without dishwashers, without the help of chefs or a technical person who takes care of faults and the image of the facility.

This is a system of communicating vessels. I think that the fact that I went through various levels and worked at the gym while I was still studying helped me a lot. Even as a hotel director, I had to step into the shoes of housekeeping more than once: when there were a lot of rooms to clean, I took off my jacket and went to clean with the team.

It gives a different perspective. But I think it’s not only experience, but also a matter of character and the fact that from the beginning I earned everything I have with my own hands. This gives me the attitude that I would never in my life treat these people “lower”, worse. I have full admiration for these people and I know how much this work costs.

You received the Hotelier of the Year award in the category under 35 years old. Are you the youngest person on the Arche management board?

Yes, definitely yes.

Can you say that you are the board’s liaison with people responsible for the daily operation of the hotels?

Yes, absolutely. We also have the director of the network, Ms. Roksana Michalczyk. Our structure is quite simple, but apart from me, there are also many great hotel directors, including a chain director with extensive experience. However, yes – I am a point connecting the management with what is happening in hotels and how hotels operate.

Does Arche’s personnel policy assume such promotions “from scratch” to the management board, or are you an exception?

It’s not like I’m some isolated case. This is demonstrated by my team at the Palace in Łochów, where I was the director. I “assembled” new managers from people in basic positions. I was the sales director in Łochów, then the general director of the facility. When I left the management board as sales manager, I left a great woman with huge potential who came to me for a student internship “for a while”. She started from scratch and now holds a managerial position. There are many such examples.

We mentioned the Hotelier of the Year award. For you, is this the culmination of a certain stage, or rather the beginning?

I feel there is still a lot I can do and give. I’m still learning, I don’t hide it. I’m learning a new role, I’m learning a powerful group that is not only in the hotel industry, but also in investments and real estate development. Now I have the pleasure of learning from great people about investment preparation, construction and architecture. I also learn from hotel directors, because they are often people with a lot of experience, older than me.

I’m happy that I can see different perspectives on the industry – the one they have and the one I have – and combine it somewhere. I think this is really just the beginning.

Arche Group – investments and development

You mentioned investments. What projects do you consider the most promising in the group today?

Now we are working on opening Muszyna. This is our project and an entry into a space where we have never been before – we have never been to the mountains before. This is our debut when it comes to these spaces.

Beautiful projects are ahead of us: another opening of Białystok is about to take place, new investments are starting and new construction sites will be launched, which will be unique. Work is underway on Bytom, the Royal Paper Mill in Konstancin, Szczecin, and Szklarska Poręba ahead of us. I could go on for a long time, because there are fourteen such investments underway, so there is a lot. And this is not our last word either.

What innovations in hotel management have you implemented in recent years?

We are at a stage of strong development when it comes to hotel systems, we facilitate access to reservations. Now we are working to make it even easier to communicate offers.

We also have a new approach to the very concept of “marketing”. For us, sales are based on relationships. Just like marketing, which we have somehow eliminated as a word. We have a relations, communication and marketing department, because “marketing” itself had bad connotations.

In terms of operations, we are opening hotels in a new way. During the project in Muszyna, we managed to create the first pre-opening group, where I invited specialists from our other hotels from every necessary area. We have a great chef at Cukrownia Żnin, we have people in charge of operations – this part is run by the chain’s operations director, Roksana Michalczyk. We have a “guardian angel” for housekeeping in the form of the head of housekeeping from Żnin. When it comes to F&B, we also have support.

We will be able to develop an interesting, intense opening model. Everything that is happening now – a new model of opening hotels and working on the strength of the group – is preparation for a very intense period. With three openings and fourteen constructions, the next years herald nothing less than the opening of several hotels a year. This is a very big undertaking.

Relationships instead of “dry marketing”

How does a new approach to relationships and communication translate into business efficiency and guest comfort?

I think this shows Arche’s heart. We rely on honest relationships, for us the guest is the most important and this is our greatest investment. We prefer to invest in the guest rather than in dry marketing.

For us, it is important that the guest has the best possible opinion, that he does not feel “at home” with us, because some people use such a slogan. I say: we should feel much better in a hotel than at home – at home we clean, we have responsibilities; we are supposed to feel special in the hotel. And we try to do it.

Hotels are not just about a comfortable room and a spa. This is taking care of relationships. This is a place where you can sit, talk over good regional food, and learn about the culture of the region, which is disappearing somewhere. We often don’t have space to show children what it used to look like and what a given region represented.

We also show that internally we create a well-coordinated team. The people in all our advertising materials are not employed models, but our employees. Often not associated with the marketing department on a daily basis, but involved in how we want to present our group. We are starting to work hard to show the values ​​that exist in the group, and maybe not everyone has heard or seen them yet.

Hotel industry: five minutes of Poland and hard costs

Let’s look at the industry on a macro scale. How do you assess the current condition of the hotel market in Poland?

I believe that the hotel market in Poland is on the eve of a very important point. Tourism itself in Europe is changing and this is starting to have a positive impact on Polish tourism. This is the moment when the Polish hotel industry has its five minutes – in a moment it will have it even more and is already starting to have it.

Foreigners are more and more willing to visit us and we are very happy that Poland is starting to become a place like Italy and Spain used to be. We offer something unique. We have unique natural conditions, but at the same time high quality of service.

We are not a behemoth that focuses on buffets and all-inclusive. The guest can feel taken care of. The quality is disproportionately high compared to what is happening in Europe. Another issue is regionalism – it is something unique and inimitable.

We are in a very good place, but now the trick is to use it well. So as not to be “tied” into the framework of the mass hotel industry. We have something unique in Poland and now it is up to hoteliers to show the greatness of our cordiality and hospitality. Poland has always been a hospitable country, we cared about holidays and how we celebrated various occasions. Now it needs to be shown in a different context.

On the one hand, we have a great opportunity, but on the other hand, we have problems: rising labor and energy costs, personnel issues. How does this impact the industry?

Of course it affects. This is something that managers, directors and we deal with on a daily basis. The costs are rising and getting bigger. On the other hand, I think that eventually there has to be some slowing down. I’m counting on it very much.

It is a huge challenge to combine: maintaining quality, taking care of the facilities, and at the same time working for everything that must be met – fees related to running the hotel, remuneration, investments. This is a balance we learn every day.