Olivier Harnisch, MBA, MSc, CHA, currently holds the position of Vice President International Operations Germany and Switzerland at Hilton Worldwide. He began his career in 1986 as Commis de Rang at the world famous Hôtel Negresco in Nice, France, after completing an apprenticeship as a Restaurant Specialist in Briançon, France. He has worked on 4 continents since. Olivier Harnisch holds a Hotel Management Degree from the Berlin School of Hotel Administration, an MBA from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, and an MSc Degree in Organizational Behaviour from the University of London. He has also been awarded the designation of “Certified Hotel Administrator (CHA)” by the American Hotel and Lodging Association. He speaks 6 languages and lives with his family in Wiesbaden, Germany.
The Marginal Impact of Changes | Difficult trading conditions are good opportunities to reconsider basic business principles which have stood the test of time but have recently taken a backseat given the continuous emergence of new management techniques. Most hoteliers have understood that the current environment coupled with an uncertain future requires them to make appropriate decisions in orde...
Whilst the financial community has long embraced GOPPAR (GOP per Available Room) as a reliable indicator of the free cash flow generating capacity of hotels, many operators continue to focus on REVPAR (Revenue per Available Room) measures to monitor their properties’ performances. This column argues that hotel operators should use and monitor both statistics conjointly due to the complementary na...
One of the hospitality industry’s most interesting aspects is its diversity. There are many different hotels in numerous countries and the job of hotel manager varies substantially throughout the different regions of the world. A critical challenge of hotel management, especially in high labour cost areas such as Western Europe, Northern America and Japan is the simultaneous combination of produc...
