For hotels around the world, to prepare for the holidays means different things for different locations. Some hotels are anticipating holiday travelers on vacations, while others are setting up to wind down after a busy business travel season.

At Narsi, the holidays are a time for us to reconnect with our hotel families and friends. It’s an opportunity to regroup, refresh, and revitalize. This often means completing projects that keep our hotels looking great. We decorate, we laugh, and some of us even dress up in seasonal garb to spread holiday cheer to colleagues and guests at our various Narsi locations.

How We Prepare for the Holidays

In our industry, the season means a mix of decorating, creating a festive environment, and prepping for a myriad of guests with varying needs. This mixture of guests only happens during the holiday season and can bring out the absolute best in a hotel team’s efforts. Success for us is seeing the same families and travelers who have connected with our team and trusted us to host them year after year. 

Like many hotels, we decorate to align with the holiday spirit. We provide treats and “greets,” meaning you can always rely on a warm holiday welcome from our teams. Though our hotels are not located near holiday destinations, we do have our fair share of guests who stay with us to attend local holiday events. It’s important to remember that some guests are away from home and family over the holidays for work. As a best practice, we always ensure to have a holiday meal provided for them, even setting up a communal area to dine among colleagues and our hotel family.

Staffing can be a challenge for many hotels during this time of year. It’s important to understand we are a 24/7/365 business, meaning some team members must work on holidays. However, we have teams from very diverse backgrounds, varying in cultures and religions that do not always align with the “traditional” holiday calendar in the United States. Narsi management understands these differences and provides flexible paid time off,  which allows us to correctly staff the hotels during these periods.

Caring for Your People During the Holidays

While scheduling can be challenging at times, we have made some changes to our benefit time offerings. These changes create a flexibility for our hotel associates which has helped us staff correctly during the holiday season.

The holidays also provide us with the opportunity to boost our team engagement. We host a year-end meeting with leadership that is about 75% fun and 25% work– as opposed to the opposite ratio the rest of the year. We give gift cards for shopping, have holiday meals, and potluck lunches filled with multicultural sharing of different foods and traditions. Providing the opportunity for our hotel families to connect with each other is really at the heart of our holiday experience.

At Narsi, we have a fun tradition of having our VP of Operations, Regional Director of Sales and Marketing, and Director of Accounting dress up as Santa, Mrs. Claus, and Buddy the Elf respectively. The group visits all of our hotels to spread holiday cheer. There are tons of pictures, laughs, and even guest involvement. Last year, our Director of Accounting’s daughter spent the day being Santa’s helper. 

Implementing fun traditions like this is a great way to boost team morale and join the holiday spirit. Our team members are already asking when we’re making the rounds this year.

About Narsi Properties

Narsi Properties is a private family-owned Hotel Development & Management company based in North Carolina. Founded in 1978 on principles of trust, authenticity, and family, we take pride in our community, guests, and team members as the cornerstones of our company values. Our philosophy of positive reinforcement ensures a comfortable and unique experience for hotel guests, in turn reassuring our investors and stakeholders of our consistent reliability and superior performance.