Scaling your best manager: how AI can help hospitality managers do more

Every hospitality business has them: the General Manager who consistently delivers strong performance, who knows exactly how to schedule the team, and who creates the experience that guests love. Successful businesses rely on these individuals who can drive business success, seamlessly fixing issues before they even become a problem, motivating teams, and keeping everything running smoothly.

Hospitality relies on the knowledge, intuition, and experience of the highest-performing general managers. But, as businesses grow, that approach becomes increasingly difficult to scale, and it can be very impactful if those team members decide to move on – and those innate insights go with them. The question then is, how can operators ensure every site has the same level of operational success, not by replacing general managers, but by helping them perform at their best.

Hidden knowledge

Top-performing general managers often develop an instinct for scheduling, spotting early signs of inefficiencies, or understanding patterns in demand. Balancing these factors means team morale is protected whilst guest experience is kept best-in-class and commercial performance is delivered.

These skills appear to come naturally to the best general managers but often come from experience in the role. These decisions that drive business success aren’t written in a handbook and often stay locked inside the heads of these individuals. As businesses grow, operational consistency can become harder to maintain, especially when there are different general managers across sites with varying levels of experience.

The solution to this has usually been training programmes, handbooks, or mentoring. It is true that these are important and valuable avenues to ensure consistent operations, but technological advancements present a new opportunity to add an additional layer of support.

Learning from the best

Agentic AI tools have the ability to identify patterns across large quantities of data, which can be invaluable to businesses. Instead of relying on anecdotal evidence, operators can analyse what their highest-performing sites are doing and how to apply it across the estate. Of course, every venue has its own unique characteristics, challenges, and customer base. A one-size-fits-all isn’t the desired goal – it is to help operators understand which behaviours contribute to success and make that expertise available to every general manager.

From reporting to recommendation

Hospitality has never lacked data, and general managers already spend hours of their time reviewing sales reports, staffing schedules, and operational performance indicators. The issue is turning all of this into valuable, actionable insight.

Instead of reviewing multiple disjointed reports, with AI systems, managers can have visibility over things such as scheduling conflicts, trading pattern changes, and areas that require immediate attention – supporting them to make the next best decision.

AI doesn’t remove human judgement from the equation but can save time and drive efficiencies so that managers can focus their attention where they can have the greatest impact. These recommendations act as guidance, helping less experienced managers benefit immediately from previous learnings.

Getting time back

The opportunity that AI offers is not just in improved decision-making, but in creating time. Operators are consistently looking for ways to get general managers to spend less time in the back office and more time with their teams and guests, doing what they do best.

Although administrative tasks are crucial to the running of businesses, they take managers away from where they bring the greatest value.

A helping hand

The reality of the sector is that great hospitality will always rely on great people. AI and developments in technology can instead help more general managers benefit from intel, behaviours, and patterns that drive operational excellence across an entire business. This means consistency across a business, no matter the size or how they grow.

Platforms such as Sona can help operators move in this direction by bringing information to the surface that helps every manager make better-informed decisions and spend more time providing fantastic customer experiences.

In our next blog, we will look at one of the most discussed industry topics: how operators can build trust in AI and drive adoption across teams without creating additional complexities or strain.

Written by Paul Watson, VP of Hospitality at Sona. Find out more on how Sona can help save your team's time here: www.sona.ai/