The high-season profit leak: Why you’re busy but not more profitable

It’s the paradox of the industry: you have a record-breaking high season, but your profit margin is paper-thin. Why? Because you have a profit leak. In this episode, Samantha Smits challenges the glorification of being busy and shows you where your money is actually going.

What we cover:

• The 20-email thread nightmare: Why CC’ing everyone is killing your capacity.
• The Cycle of Burnout: Why working crazy hours is a financial disaster, not a badge of honour.
• Why a profitable high season is actually won in the low season.

Connect with Samantha Smits on LinkedIn or her website.

Work with me: Are you a tourism leader looking to professionalise your operations and meet international certification standards? Let’s talk about how to protect your profit and give you your time back.

You can plan a call with me here.

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The Sustainability Edge is hosted by Samantha Smits, your guide to turning sustainability into a competitive edge.

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

If you have time for that socializing, if you have time for the training, if you have time for those drinks in the low season, you also have time to improve your systems, you also have time to ensure that the next high season will not be as crazy as last. Hi, I'm Samantha Smits and welcome back to the Sustainability Edge, Your Tourism Podcast. No jargon, no fluff. We're breaking down sustainability and especially how to turn sustainability in a practical tool that gives you more profit, more time, stuff that's staying, and a business you can be proud of. Let's get started. Hello, hello, and it's great to have you back. Today I'm going to talk about something we already touched a little bit upon in the last episode. It's going to be more about efficiency and its problem of profit and how it's connected to sustainability, since I'm a sustainable tourism consultant after all, talking to you. So let's get into it to make this episode short and snappy. It's it's a paradox of the tourism industry that you have an established business by now, you've been operating for some years, and you have a crazy high season, crazier than the last one. But as if once it actually settles, then you realize that your profit margin or what is left to turn out to yourself for those staff bonuses is pretty thin. You probably have a profit leak. And let's discuss some of these holes today. So there's this gap between revenue and profit. Most in business are aware of this. At the same time, there is this issue of team burnout that comes with the high season, and just accepting that it's part of the tourism industry, that you have all this craziness in the high season, but it's all worth it because the low season is the balance. But again, you you feel this exhaustion, and this exhaustion is not only physical, it's also financial. There's so many things. Every minute that you are wasting time in long, long 20 email threads are better spent. You and with this email thread, what I see all the time is there are so many departments involved. No matter if you are an accommodation provider or tour operator, multiple people need to be involved in making it happen. So usually it comes in through sales, then someone needs to be notified of the transport that's needed, there are payments that have to be done with the money received, such as accounts, in case of accommodation kitchen has to maybe to know some dietary requirements, housekeeping and so forth. A lot of departments have to know about one kind of booking. And what I often see is that the salesperson that sold this sends out one email with everyone in CC to motivate them all at once so that that person only has to send one email. That sounds sufficient so far, right? But then all of those people start to reply all to the same email and it becomes this ridiculously long thread between different departments in one long, long, long email. And this just makes me think this can work better, right? What I see with other clients is that they have centralized everything on the Google Drive and that they have this one still this one email where they notify that there is a new client, but after that no one replies to that email. So no long 50 email thread. They then exactly know in what file they can find all the information that they need, and because they've been notified, they know they have to update their records. That sounds much more efficient, right? Rather than when you get a call in the middle of the night because a driver is not at the airport and you have no clue who was booked for that one or if they were informed or any of all of these last minute things, like a dietary requirement didn't go through, and you have to dig deep into 50 emails between different departments to find out the truth. That's an absolute nightmare and a waste of your time, but it's the reality. What is often seen. And this is one of the actual profit leaks. And you might think, how do all these emails what do they have to do with profit? Because honestly, you can also have better capacity if you are able to have less emails, which means less time spent, but at the same time, even if you have the same amount, then there will be less of a staff burnout because they don't have to go all panic mode in these last-minute changes and demands, which is a nice bridge to another profit cost, which is actually the cost of burnout, because it is glorified that you have to work bonkers absolutely crazy in the high season because the low season compensates for it, which kind of serves as an excuse that there is no proper employee care during the high season because the entire low season would serve as employee care. Mm-mm. Super wrong. They spent entire low season to recover from the burnout that they got from high season, so after that get it again, which becomes like this cycle of burnout tourism life, which is not the reason that most of us got into tourism in the first place. And staff are usually burnout because they have to do too much in too little time, and that also causes them to make human mistakes, which are not always understood on the guest receiving side, because they have no clue what is happening behind, which then bridges already into the third profit leak, and that is the cost of a bad experience. And clients can have a bad experience not because you're a bad company, not because the offer is bad, all of it, but it's so human to make mistakes, especially if you are overworked and not working efficiently. Because I think you understand that clients they usually come with the craziest demands and have no clue what you are doing behind office for them. So they only see the front, they only see the delivery, they only see the mistake. And it it is also costly to work on a repair, to compensate them or to have someone spend time into making them understand. And even worse, if they are not even reasonable to all of these things, to actually receive a bad review. All of these things are just a waste of your time and of where your money should be going to. So again, this these are not things to be normalized. I mean, yes, at the moment they are happening, but they are more symptoms of something that you can work with. And I'm not saying that high season will never be busy anymore because that's just tourism, but there are better ways because these are just calcing you financial leaks, and to protect the profit you have, you have to look at these three areas, and you might wonder what is the point about this and sustainability? Because again, when we talk about sustainability, we also talk about sustaining your business and yourself. Does also profit. A business that doesn't make money cannot afford to do more sustainable practices or to sustain their staff, and taking care of your staff is social responsibility. Again, so all these things are part of sustainability. So, what can you do with these leaks? For the email chain, I already dove into please create a central system where everyone can access the same information, that they only need a notification that it has been updated and that there is something relevant for them, but that not all departments are going to answer in the same email thread that everyone is receiving with reply all, which results in an absolute nightmare. And even with privacy data, in every privacy law, it will mention for how long you are allowed to keep certain files. So this can just be part of your standard operating procedure. Then to staff burnout. I am no burnout coach, of course, and always high season will be much more demanding than low season will be. There will always be this high and low through this, but low season is not meant to just recover your employees for high season. Even during high season, you should be there for them as much as you try to be for yourself. And if you're not there even for yourself, I cannot imagine how much you'll be there for your employees. If you are the CEO, a manager, managing director, you have to protect your staff's time. Believe me, it will pay you back so much. And it can allow them to even go home earlier if you almost see them crash inside of the office. Of course, in the high season work will continue, but if they can at least take a nap from home or spend time with their family, and they will still pick the calls in the meantime when anything comes, it will be so well received. Anything in the meantime that shows you I'm still thinking of you during the high season, I'm not only thinking of you in the low season when all the team building, the trainings and the fun happens. Try to find space for that also in the high season, not and not in the way that takes more of the time, like planning in those mandatory drinks, but in a way that saves their time. And when we talk about the third league, the cost of a bad experience, you already tackle the chance of those by looking at the staff burnout part and at inefficiency part. Because a lot of mistakes come from human mistakes, people that have been tired, that mistyped something, that asked for the wrong number, or that the right email didn't send out, or the right person couldn't find information when needed and forgot all about it. There's a lot of these mistakes that are definitely not intentional, but they just happen because it's such a nightmare to have everything organized and it's just overwhelming. So this circles again back to having a proper system where chances for such mistakes are minimal. And then it will be very minimal chance as well that such a bad experience chance comes up, even less such a review. And since F1 is romanticizing the low season that you have all the time, in that case, start using your low season to prepare for the high season. And I can hear some of you rolling their eyes like, girl, we are doing that. We're doing the sales in the low season for them to come into the high season. Yes, but also if you have time for that socializing, if you have time for the training, if you have time for those drinks in the low season, you also have time to improve your systems. You also have time to ensure that the next high season will not be regarding to management as crazy as last. I understand you want to grow, I understand you want more clients, so all good for you, have those. But be sure that the mistakes will be less. And usually when reviewing mistakes, you of course look to the person, you tell them don't do this again, you might even get the warning, but look even deeper how this how it happened that this person made this mistake. Is there a way you can help them to not make that mistake? How much trust you will build with your employees if they believe, if you show that you believe in their potential and their well intent, and that you come to them with how can I help you to not make the same mistake again, rather than tell them, hey, don't do this. It will change so much. So again, if we link this to profit, it is protected by your systems, how efficient you work, uh the less mistakes you make because it brings with more clients, and all of this comes from the system that you improve and that you work on in the low season. And yes, sustainability is included in that as it helps you to diversify and to sustain yourself. So, in short, and this I can see this episode has already become much more concise, which is absolutely my goal. A profitable high season is a result of the planning you've done in the low one. So include sustainability in that. If something in this episode has struck a chord with you, or you might even want to challenge me on some notes, but you want to speak with me one on one, please check the link in the show notes, and let's be sure that you are going to tackle some of these high season leaks. Plug those, let's plug the leaks together. Alright, short and sweet. See you in the next episode. Thank you for listening, and congratulations on investing your time today to think strategically about your future, to make sure you never miss a step to understand sustainability better, how to grow your competitive edge. Follow the podcast right now, and if this was helpful, please leave a five star rating. It will help other people like you to find these tools. I'm Samantha Smits, and I'll see you in the next episode.