Let’s take a look “behind the scenes” at our hotel, get to know our charming employees and gain exciting impressions of what’s happening in Vienna’s most charming private hotels – the Schick Hotels!

My name is Barbara and as an HR manager I am responsible for all personnel matters in our 5 hotels in downtown Vienna. I am proud to work in a company in which we are valued as employees and in which cooperation counts. That’s why, in this column on our popular blog, I’d like to offer my colleagues the opportunity to introduce themselves, their respective occupations and their departments. Be there when we “give away our secrets” and join me on a virtual tour through our hotels!

This time, together with my colleague Caroline Hadl, I’d like to give you some insight into the reservation department! All the impressive things our ladies do there and just how much they are responsible for our company’s commercial success – I’d rather let them speak for themselves…

Caroline Hadl works in the reservation office at Hotel Stefanie

Let me introduce:

“My name is Caroline Hadl and I have worked in the reservation department at Hotel Stefanie since June 2013.

I was practically born for this choice of occupation, since from the time I was little I had something to do with gastronomy and the hotel business. My father owns his own guesthouse and my mother also has considerable experience in this occupational area. For me, it was clear from the very beginning that I wanted to attend a tourism school. I then did so and in the end completed my Matura school leaving exam with a focus on cultural tourism and event management in Bergheidengasse.

Then I made a little ‘excursion’ into student life, though I soon recognized that this wasn’t the right thing for me. More or less ‘back to the roots,’ I sought jobs in hotels and found the ‘Stefanie.’ When I entered the hotel for the first time, I immediately felt good, and after a one-day work trial I knew that this was the company where I wanted to work.

In the meantime, I’ve been in the reservation department of the Hotel Stefanie for nearly four months. My colleagues and I are pretty much the first point of contact when someone wants to book a room. What may sound quite simple isn’t actually, since every guest wants to be served in the best possible way and this is of course our utmost concern.”

What is a reservation department responsible for?

“It’s not just individual reservations that cross our desks – we also receive requests for large conferences every day, currently up to the year 2020, corporate bookings for seminar participants, as well as group reservations. Of course, the right price for our hotel needs to be found every day and yield management is a major part of the work in a reservation office. That’s why we also work very closely with the yield manager of the five Schick Hotels. For yield and revenue management, you can imagine price calculation on a daily basis, dependent on demand, market price and booking projections.

A close collaboration also exists with the colleagues in the hotel reception, since we’re a collegial team and we support each other in our work.”

What inspires you about your job?

“Up to this point I’ve already had several happy moments in which I simply noticed when a guest was really pleased with the service, even if his or her desires may have been out of the ordinary. Or when you speak with a guest about a room reservation and suddenly you digress and talk about the hiking trip that the guest is currently planning. This contact, even if it’s only by phone and email, is a lot of fun and motivates me to continue giving my best.

Also exciting for me was to witness serving the JEWISH WELCOME guests at the Hotel Stefanie. The travel organization was done by our reservation office. This invitation program by the City of Vienna is valid for displaced Austrians during the Second World War, and speaking with contemporary witnesses made quite an impression on me!

I’m happy that I can now gather experience in this company. Maybe I’ll soon know our regular guests as well as my colleagues.

Maybe one or another of you will be the next person I get to greet with the words, ‘Schick Hotel Stefanie, Hadl Caroline, good day” on the telephone…”

Have we piqued your interest?
In our next blog entry, we’ll carry you off into the most important part of our hotel – the rooms, and we’ll answer the question of how we manage to maintain a more than 400-year-old building so well!