On your first day starting as a new hotel manager, when you walk along the corridor and pass reception, you see curiosity and a bit of unease in every employee’s eyes. You too may be full of mixed emotions in a similar way—excitement, responsibility, uncertainty. This is exactly the moment that’s a common starting point experienced by many young managers working in the sector. The first 90 days are not just an adaptation period; they’re actually a critical time frame in which the leadership foundation you build, your relationship with your team, and your operational success are determined.
Having started in hospitality is a wonderful opportunity to unlock your own and your team’s potential. But this opportunity, without the right strategy, often brings unexpected difficulties along with it. Customer expectations, operational complexities, human-resources dynamics—all of these can sweep you away at once. But don’t worry, in this guide I’ll show you the way to overcome these difficulties and evaluate the first 90 days in the most effective way.
Learn to Listen in the First Week
Most young managers, at the beginning, want to make changes right away, apply their own ideas, and leave their mark. This is a completely natural impulse, but your best strategy for the first week is the opposite: listening. Yes, just listening.
Everyone from the receptionist to the kitchen chef, from the tour guide to the housekeeping team, has something to say. When you listen to them, you don’t just learn about hotel operations; you also discover the team’s dynamic, the real source of problems, and beyond that, which people will support you. These connections will be invaluable in later stages.
Visit all departments. Stop by on the morning shift, the evening shift, and even the night shift. Have one-on-one meetings with each department manager. Ask questions—open-ended questions. Like “What’s the biggest difficulty here?”, “If you had full authority at this hotel, what would you change first?”, “Which areas are going well?” These questions offer you not just an operational map but also reveal the team’s expectations of you.
Understanding the Previous Manager’s Legacy
Whoever the manager before you was, their decisions, operational systems, and the relationships they built with the team are still alive and active. Instead of trying to fight this legacy, try to understand it. Maybe there are very strict rules, maybe a very loose environment has formed. Behind every situation there’s a reason.
When you learn why the previous systems formed this way, you can more wisely determine which changes you can make. Also, if the team recently lost a leader, radical changes can trigger them. Keeping the transition calm and empathetic strengthens your position. Over time, instilling your own vision in the team will be much easier.
Experience the Customer Experience in the Role of an Attentive Observer
In the second and third weeks of the first 90 days, experience the hotel services as a customer. Stay a night at your own hotel. Check in at reception, go to the restaurant, use room services. The aim here is not to evaluate service quality—although this is important too—but to see the customer experience through your team’s eyes.
How good a job is being done in room cleaning? Is there a warm welcome at reception? Which small details in the rooms are observed or not observed? Once again, these observations show you problem areas while also highlighting where the team is successful. Record this experience in a notebook by the end of the second week—but don’t tell anyone yet.
Build Individual Connections with Your Team
By the end of your first month, besides the department managers, you should have gotten to know the key figures from each section. In hospitality, the most experienced staff member at reception, the 15-year employee in accounting, the person doing accounting in the front office—these are your shadow advisors. Know them, get to know them, and value them.
Personally having a coffee with them or having lunch together can work wonders in building connection. When people feel seen and important, they can do much more for you. These connections will be your strongest allies later, when solving a crisis or trying to apply a big change.
Identify Operational Gaps, Don’t Change Them Yet
By the time you enter the sixth week, you’ve now come to the point of being able to see the big picture of hotel operations. Are there gaps in procedures? Are there inter-departmental communication deficiencies? Are some tasks still being done manually? Is there a pattern in customer complaints? Note all of these.
But—and this is very important—don’t change them yet. Yes, you want to solve the problems you see, I know. But making changes at this stage can wear the team out before they get to know you better. Instead, document these findings. Get the views of the most trusted people from inside (or, if you’ve newly hired, external consultants). Instead of fast and radical changes, make well-planned improvements.
Catching Small Wins in the First Two Months
In the middle of the observation period, start winning small victories together with the team. Maybe a customer-service procedure should now be made clearer, or the wait time at reception can be reduced. Include the team in these improvements—so they don’t look like your ideas but ideas that emerged with their cooperation.
This achieves two things: First, when the team sees real progress in customer satisfaction, you’ve also taken your place alongside it. Second and more importantly, the team starts to trust you to lead. The message “This manager listens to us, considers us while making improvements” carries you to a very strong position at the end of 90 days.
Prepare to Make Difficult Decisions
In the second half of the 90 days, you may probably encounter some difficult situations. An employee may not be performing. A department’s budget may be going out of control. Or you may have to solve a problem left over from the previous manager’s period. At these points, you need to make difficult decisions.
What matters here is making these decisions consciously and in a documented way. Don’t act just with emotions. Collect data, get team members’ views, and then make your decision. Communicate openly—explain why you made this decision. When the team understands why difficult decisions were made, they accept them more easily.
Questions You Ask Yourself at the End of 90 Days
At the end of the 90th day, ask yourself these questions: Does the team trust me? Can I identify operational problems? What are the team’s strengths and weaknesses? Do I have a roadmap? Do I feel I’ll be successful?
If you answer yes to most of these questions, it means the first 90 days went very well. If there are no answers, don’t worry—this shows you what your additional work areas are. What matters is the fact that at the end of 90 days you haven’t come as a management satellite but stand as a leader taking root.
Stepping into the Next Stage
When the first 90 days end, the real journey actually begins. But this time, you begin not as a neutral observer but as a leader recognized and supported by your team. The changes you’ll make, the strategies you apply, the systems you build—all of these will be built on the foundations you laid in these first 90 days.
As a young manager, being patient, curious, and open-minded in this critical period are qualities that will make you successful later. In hospitality, every condition is different, every team is unique. Your first 90-day journey may not be exactly the same as someone else’s journey. But this guide will keep you around the basic principles, keep you in the right direction.
If you’re on this path, remember that success is created not just with big decisions but with patience, empathetic listening, and consistent action.