Mount Buffalo, North East Victoria

Winners:

The Mount Buffalo National Park is a remote location. A plateau, four hours drive from Melbourne in the North East Alps of Victoria, it forms the southern boundary of the beautiful Ovens River Valley. The historic Chalet and its sister property, the Buffalo Lodge, are both situated on the top of Mt Buffalo about seven kilometres apart, and form the core of a year round resort business. The resort features various levels of accommodation, food and beverage, ski and snow activities, horseriding, and guided trekking. The Chalet has 97 rooms and the Lodge has 30.

For many years the Chalet and the Lodge were run by the State-owned Victorian Railways, which in the quest to divest itself of financial liabilities, offered the leases on the two properties for private tender in 1992. The tender was won by Dean & Gillian Belle, a husband and wife team who were well experienced in alpine hospitality from a series of successful restaurants in the New South Wales ski resort of Threadbo.

The Belles faced a tremendous challenge. Both businesses were losing substantial amounts of money when they took over, and both had to be completely overhauled — restructured, restaffed, renovated and systemised. At the same time they had to contend with the difficulties of generating their own power, running their own sewerage processing plant and operating in an extremely environmentally sensitive location under the watchful eye of the park rangers.

In September 1994, after a difficult period of establishment, having stemmed the worst of the financial loss, the Belles engaged Eldred Hospitality to assist them to structure and manage the two properties. Eldred Hospitality has provided expertise on the restructuring of the management, the evolution of job descriptions, the introduction of a performance appraisal system, the upgrading of recruitment and training, and the introduction of monthly profit and loss accounting.

In addition Eldred Hospitality has directly trained the owners, managers and staff through its public short course training school, recruited senior staff for the businesses, and provided customer perception surveying on a regular, scheduled basis.

Summary of services to Mount Buffalo:

• management structure • management and supervisory training • recruitment system • performance appraisal system • job descriptions • recruitment of key personnel • negotiation advice • customer perception surveys • job aptitude testing • fortnightly visit and review

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© Eldred Hospitality Pty Ltd 2011