A hotel purchasing manager negotiates contracts with suppliers and manages day-to-day operations, including purchasing food, beverage, and durable goods, setting prices, and managing budgets. They typically have an undergraduate degree in business or hospitality and experience in the industry. They may lead a team of purchasing associates within a hotel chain.
A hotel purchasing manager negotiates contracts with suppliers and manages many elements of day-to-day operations at a specific location or across a hotel chain. Typically, applicants for these jobs must have completed an undergraduate degree in business administration, hospitality administration or a related topic. Also, many employers prefer to hire people with previous experience working in the hospitality industries.
Hotels regularly purchase food and beverage supplies from vendors and these food items are sold either in their own shops or in the bar and restaurant. The hotel purchasing manager must liaise with the distribution companies and negotiate arrangements for bulk orders of supplies to be delivered to the site. In doing so, the manager must ensure that the building has sufficient storage space to contain these goods and that the supplies will not expire before they are used. Supply contracts can remain in place for weeks, months, or years, and over time, a hotel purchasing manager may try to renegotiate such agreements if other suppliers begin to offer lower-cost supply packages.
In addition to perishables, the hotel purchasing manager must also purchase durable goods such as furniture, bedding, and computer equipment. A manager may enter into negotiations with several companies before agreeing to a supply agreement. Some types of goods and equipment are purchased infrequently. In this case, supply agreements are often one-off events. Other types of durable goods need to be replaced relatively quickly due to heavy usage. In this case, the manager can enter into a long-term contract with a specific supplier.
After purchasing the necessary goods, the manager must liaise with the restaurant, bar, and store managers and set prices for various products that hotel guests can purchase. Managers try to price items competitively so guests aren’t tempted to leave the building and buy the same types of merchandise from nearby retailers. Despite trying to keep prices low, managers also need to ensure that the selling price of products is high enough to cover the cost of buying inventory and other costs such as sales tax.
Within large hotel chains, a hotel purchasing manager may chair a team of purchasing associates, each of whom is tasked with managing a location or type of product. Managers must ensure that overall budget limits are not exceeded. To accomplish this, the manager may have to spend time training associates on negotiation techniques and strategies.
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