Karine Nazaryan – Hospitality Professional / Director at Vostan Restaurant

Karine Nazaryan – Hospitality Professional

You have already a wonderful background and big experience in the hospitality industry, especially managing hotels’ restaurants. Could you please tell us several points about the nuances of hotel’s restaurant manager should strictly follow?
I have a lot of acquaintances asking me what motivated me to pursue a career in the hotel and tourism industry. They would be better off asking me to define the purpose of life or explain astrophysics because there is no clear and certain answer to that question. It all depends on what a person seeks from choosing to work in hotels.
The reasons are just about as vast as the industry and as deep as its roots in history. Historically, people traveled around and just as today the basic needs such as a warm bed and healthy meals had to be met. However, unlike ancient times, the industry has continuously evolved to its highest extents – and with future technologies and resources, promises to innovate more and more with every single client. Whether your corporation needs a 100 person conference room, you decide to go on an exotic honeymoon, or finally take time off with your family at a summer resort, working in hotels requires you – professionally – to ensure that your clients’ wants and needs are met and even exceeded; and unlike past times, they are not limited to just a warm bed or healthy meals. Whoever is involved with this industry needs to understand that keeping up with its current trends is a key success factor.
Another reason is that hospitality requires you to work in a multi-cultural environment. Working in a hotel does not mean that internationalism within the establishment stops at your clients; for the people behind the reception, in the kitchen and at the offices come from all corners of the world and they bring along with them their own language, cultural background, and ideas on how to efficiently work within the industry.
In my 10 years of experience, I had the honor to work with colleagues from Italy, Russia, Africa, France, England, America, Argentina, Brazil. All these people had taught me how to maximize my working capabilities based on their own personal experience within their home-countries; which at the end of the day not only enriched my practical skills – but my knowledge on other countries as well. A key factor in this “job description” is to be able to communicate and work with different people from different backgrounds – as one big team.
The hospitality industry allows you to develop yourself – professionally and as a person. Not only do you improve on the professional skills you already possess, but with time and commitment, you learn others due to the variety of colleagues, clients, and situations that will put you to the test. Various characteristics are required for working in a hotel. These range from soft-skills such as organization, communicating or working in a team; to more technical competencies such as serving, revenue management, accounting and facilities management.
Also, probably the most important matter is that you – literally – take care of people. This is debatable, but my experience tells me it takes empathy and commitment to put another person’s needs and desires ahead of your own – while keeping a smile on your face.
Customers come to hotels for various reasons, but in short, they want an experience. They want hotel employees and representatives to accord their time, care and attention. And just as people differ greatly, so does the care and commitment each hotelier exhibits to his/her clients. Some may settle for meeting the basics, such as checking-in a family or serving beverages at the hotel’s bar, but others will take an extra step and not just meet their client’s demands, but also exceed them.
With today’s fast-growing businesses, more and more focus is channeled towards making a profit, which is the main purpose of business in the first place; however, in hotels the products are not limited to events, meals, rooms or drinks – they extend to service and there is always a way to improve services and our service-industry skills.
Finally, the reason why I love hospitality so much is simple: it’s fun – as in enjoyable. All the dynamics, all the shifting with different responsibilities and the feeling you have when you start training and end up in a managing position, it’s more than satisfactory at the end of the day. And it does not stop with the customer-facing part of the hotel, you have the opportunity to meet and socialize with people representing a wide range of nationalities, in an even wider range of places all around the world.
In conclusion, the hotel industry is a pretty interesting and pleasant domain to get involved in. Like any other job, it has its ups and downs, and that’s the great part of it: there is always a place for innovation and there will always be innovators.

At this moment you are the director of Vostan Restaurant. What difference can you mention between managing the hotel’s restaurant and an individual restaurant in general?
The economy of hotels and restaurants is intimately tied to the tourism industry, to business travel, and to conventions. In many countries, the tourism industry is a major part of the overall economy. The primary function of a restaurant is to provide food and drink to people outside the home. Types of restaurants include restaurants (which are often costly) with dining rooms and extensive serving staffs; smaller, “family-style” restaurants and cafes which often service the local community; “diners”, or restaurants where serving short-order meals at counters is the major feature; fast food restaurants, where people line up at counters to place their orders and where meals are available in a few minutes, often for taking out to eat elsewhere; and cafeterias, where people go through serving lines and make their selections from a variety of already prepared foods, which are usually displayed in cases. Many restaurants have a separate bar or lounge areas, where alcoholic beverages are served, and many larger restaurants have special banquet rooms for groups of people. Street vendors serving food from carts and stalls are common in most countries, often as part of the informal sector of the economy.
The primary function of a hotel is to provide lodging for guests. Types of hotels range from basic overnight facilities, such as inns and motels that cater to business travelers and tourists, to elaborate luxury complexes, such as resorts, spas, and convention hotels. Many hotels offer auxiliary services such as restaurants, bars, laundries, health and fitness clubs, beauty salons, barber shops, business centers, and gift shops.
Restaurants and hotels can be individually or family-owned and operated, owned by partnerships or owned by large corporate entities. Many corporations do not actually own individual restaurants or hotels in the chain but rather grant a franchise of a name and style to local owners.
The restaurant workforce can include chefs and other kitchen staff, waiters and head waiters, table busing staff, bartenders, a cashier, and coatroom personnel. Larger restaurants have staffs which can be highly specialized in their job functions.
The workforce in large hotel restaurants typically will include less workforce than a restaurant can have. Most hotel jobs are “blue collar” and require minimal language and literacy skills. Women and immigrant workers comprise the bulk of the workforce in most hotels in developed countries today. In developing countries, hotels tend to be staffed by local residents. Because hotel occupancy levels tend to be seasonal, there is usually a small group of full-time employees with a sizeable number of part-time and seasonal workers. Salaries tend to be in the middle to low-income range. As a result of these factors, employee turnover is relatively high.

Anastasiya Romanova
Expedia Group – Market Associate Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine

Anastasiya Romanova
Expedia Group – Market Associate Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine

We know that Expedia group is one of the best travel technology company and travel platform in the world. Expedia Group is present in 200+ travel booking sites in 70+ countries, covers 45% international revenue and has 24.000+ employees in more than 30 countries. Can you please tell us more about Expedia, its vision and strategy and of course about your position and responsibilities as a market specialist in Armenia, Georgia, and Ukraine?
You noted correctly that Expedia Group is not just an OTA, it is indeed a travel-platform, with the help of which the traveler can completely form his/her trip: starting from buying a ticket and booking a hotel to renting a car and buying a cruise, tickets to a concert or sightseeing tour. For the corporate segment, there is a resource Egencia that is also not limited to the offer of new properties.
The company is focused on the customer and aims to be locally relevant on a global basis, therefore, in 2019, it will continue to develop its customer products: add new points of sale, localized for different countries, add new suppliers (distributors) (including actively engaging new accommodation facilities), expanding the choice of currencies for mutual settlements of payments with both guests and partners and to achieve maximum competitiveness of the supply.
In the frameworks of this strategy, Expedia Group also actively cooperates with local authorities to advertise new tourist destinations on their websites. For example, last year with the support of GNTA, an ad campaign called “Visit Georgia” was held on the website of Expedia, and before this, the capital of Ukraine was actively advertised on the initiative of the Kyiv Tourism Department.
As a marketing specialist, I work with a portfolio of hotels in Armenia, Georgia, and Ukraine. My main purpose is to help partners cooperate with the Expedia Group as efficiently as possible. Every market is very different: each has its own specifics, seasonality and its own advantages. So, in my work there are no one-size-fits-all solutions, I always act from the needs of a particular region. This means that in one period of time I can focus on conducting webinars and training events for partners, in another period I can actively engage in finding new properties or help hoteliers maximize their income during the high season.
Within one region, the needs of hoteliers are not identical as well: with someone, we are purposefully working to increase the share of non-refundable bookings, and with someone, we focus on preserving the leading positions in the rating.

How many properties (hotels, hostels, guesthouses, and homes) Expedia group represents in Armenia?
Currently, Expedia Group has more than three hundred direct contracts with various accommodation facilities in Armenia. Most of these are classic hotels, however, among the total number, there are hostels, guest houses or apartment clusters that correspond to certain requirements. These are the exact places that can be found on Expedia, Hotels.com, Travelocity, Wotif and on other websites.
But, since Expedia Group includes several brands, there is an opportunity to differentiate our offer for a guest and combine all alternative means of accommodation (for example, single apartments, cottages or villas) on our other resources – HomeAway and VRBO that are adapted to the search “ vacation rentals “.
From your experience working with Armenian market can you please tell us what problems or issues you face starting from the registration of the property to managing them in Expedia’s platform? What are the points that you see there is a need to improve?
I would note two major challenges that hoteliers make. They can appear at any stage of cooperation with Expedia: both at the very beginning, and after several years of work.
Firstly, hoteliers often forget that working with OTA is a continuous process. There is a misconception that you can simply create room types, set rates, and upload photos, and then wait for bookings. But the market is dynamic, it is necessary to use various promotion tools, update rates, advertise additional hotel services, work with reviews, analyze the demand and the behavior of competitors.
Expedia Group offers a wide range of analytical tools that are available to all our partners in their Extranet including through the mobile application. Therefore, the hotelier can analyze the situation at any time and make changes, for example, in his pricing policy.
I always draw a parallel between the online booking site and the supermarket. In order for a consumer to buy your product, first, it is necessary that he finds it in a huge store, distinguish among others and choose to purchase. In 2019 it is no longer enough just to place a price tag on the packaging of goods, it is necessary to put efforts on its promotion.
In other words, it is important to invest your knowledge and time in working with online resources, and then they will bring the desired income.
Secondly, the lack of understanding of the market situation is often interfering hoteliers and, as a result, the incorrect positioning of the hotel. When we talk with hoteliers about their competitors, our partners name 2-3 properties nearby. Perhaps this is relevant for a business traveler who chooses between several hotels in close proximity to the office of the hotel to the office, the availability of breakfast and the price.
But if you think outside the box and talk about the leisure-segment, then the hotelier must remember that competition is also created by an alternative accommodations – the same apartments that we have already mentioned. Moreover, a competitor can be located not only in Yerevan and even in Armenia, but, for example, a hotel from neighboring Georgia.
Therefore, we always urge to consider your hotel inseparably from global trends: follow how hotels in other countries (especially where potential guests from feeder markets go) position themselves, follow the launches of hotel chains and the arrival of new airlines, communicate with colleagues, alternative resources and the media, to participate in industry events. The comprehension of the market situation is the key to the correct positioning and promotion of the hotel, and not only through online channels.
In my practice, there were cases when the hotel created the demand for a specific destination. People wanted to come to this or that place that they had never heard of before in order to stay at a particular hotel, and the interest for the region contributed to the opening of new accommodation facilities. I wish there were more stories like this.

Hayk Sahakyan – Director of Sales and Marketing at The Alexander, A Luxury Collection Hotel, Yerevan

Hayk Sahakyan – Director of Sales and Marketing at The Alexander, A Luxury Collection Hotel, Yerevan

In the Armenian market, we can see that there is not a straight and right segmentation of hotels as products and nowadays there are hotels which consider themselves as luxury ones. How would you describe the real meaning of a luxury hotel?
Each hotel aims to be considered as the best one, it is the obvious desire. The luxury segment is the new-born definition in Armenia in general and in the hospitality industry in particular. As the first and only international luxury hotel in the country, we represent standards, approach, and vision that the luxury hotels are to have. In my opinion, luxury is the best, limited, sophisticated and meaningful attitude to the regular services and goods, similar to the reason to separate classical music from the rest. Numerous stories behind each detail, exceeding and anticipating the needs and feelings of our guests, highest standards of quality and service combined with exceptional design, location and features make the hotel luxury. The hospitality in Armenia has been developing for more than two decades. Travelers exploring our country represent various segments and there is no need to aim every each of them. Because of the low volume of the market, properties are trying to adapt and make the best out of acting as affordable, MICE, family, business, group and luxury hotels at the same time. Which in return damages country image, destabilizes competition, destroys segmentation. I believe there is room for each segment in the hospitality industry. We just need to clearly understand which one do we represent, who do we target and which properties do we compete with.
During the low season, we can see that some hotels are going into price damping. What do you think about it? Why is it happening?
I would think of three main, simple reasons. First, from November to February the market suffers from the lack of business in every segment, properties need to operate, pay salaries, costs and fees. That is why they target everything they are able to get some business. Second, is that properties are not confident of what to expect in terms of economic, political and social development of the country. In these conditions, business always aims at a short-term income strategy. Finally, some strategy decision makers of the hotels do not always realize the structure of the market and drop the rates lower than their below-tier colleagues. It brings to the domino-effect rate drops, Armenia presents its product in a tender with the daily price difference of 10-25 USD between 3 and 5-star hotels. You may guess the perception of the country as the tourism destination yourself. Moreover, it creates issues with future pricing strategy as you may have hard times explaining to your partners why increased the rate twice in May or September. Consolidated market strategy, a clear understanding of the segments, respect towards each other and hospitality community creation will bring us to much better results, I believe.
What advice would you give to the young generation who are going to work in the hotel and hospitality industry? What are the main criteria someone should follow?
There is no precise criteria, nor key for success. I have one advice for the people who have decided to join the hospitality. You need to love what you are doing, love to make people happy, to make their special day unforgettable. You simply need to love to host guests in your apartment. Each of you represents our country and only after the place you work. If it is all about you, welcome aboard! When you are aboard, the hard work time will come. Every single day you will need to learn something new, to become better and to pass your expertise to the team you are working with. I truly hope to see a proper hospitality school in Armenia in the nearest future, where young people would become professionals supported by the restaurant, hotel and tour business specialists for the better hospitality in Armenia.