Purpose

This is the Team & Management playbook we use at Borgo Santolina. It describes how we organize coverage, ownership, team conduct, on-property work, coaching, and the management routines that support our guest experience. We are a small, full-service property, so people need clear primary responsibilities while still working as one team when a guest or the operation needs help.

The intended outcomes are:

• Guests experience one coordinated team rather than separate departments.
• Every recurring responsibility has a clear owner, with reliable handoffs when work crosses roles or shifts.
• The property has the coverage needed to respond to guests without making hospitality feel like an interruption.
• Team members are professional, well prepared, and able to use judgment rather than relying on scripts.
• Managers coach from real work, surface problems early, and improve the system when the same problem repeats.

Principles

• One team, one guest experience. Department or workstream ownership determines who executes a task, not who is allowed to care for a guest.
• Calm competence over performance. We want a team that works hard while remaining knowledgeable, relaxed, and unhurried in front of guests.
• Professional, not formal. Warm, peer-to-peer human interaction is encouraged, with a clear line of professional separation.
• Guest needs can interrupt operational work. When reasonable, pause to acknowledge and assist a guest rather than treating hospitality as a distraction.
• Own the outcome. The person who receives a request owns it until it is completed or clearly handed to someone who has accepted responsibility.
• Cross-train for resilience. A small property cannot depend on rigid departmental walls or a single person knowing how something works.
• Surface problems early. Managers need accurate information more than they need the appearance that everything is fine.
• Coach observable behavior. Feedback should be specific, timely, private when corrective, and tied to the standard or outcome.
• Professional boundaries and guest privacy are non-negotiable.

Roles & Ownership

All team members own the guest experience. Management owns staffing, service consistency, escalation, coaching, and the routines that keep work coordinated.

Every Team Member

• Acknowledge guests warmly and naturally.
• Notice needs, problems, and opportunities to help.
• Complete a request or make a clear handoff to someone who accepts ownership.
• Protect guest privacy and dignity.
• Escalate rather than guess when something is outside personal authority, expertise, or safety limits.
• Tell management early when a guest-impacting commitment may slip.

Host / General Manager

• Own the overall guest relationship and consistency of the hospitality experience.
• Know the group, its key personalities, priorities, sensitivities, and open issues.
• Coordinate across teams so the property presents one coherent experience.
• Set the tone for host presence, conversation, discretion, and judgment.
• Own escalated complaints, service recovery, and exceptions that exceed normal team authority.
• Ensure unresolved requests and concerns are handed off between shifts.
• Convert guest feedback and recurring operating problems into coaching, process changes, or playbook updates.

Department and Workstream Owners

• Deliver the underlying product or service to the agreed standard.
• Provide accurate status information so the guest is never given false confidence.
• Warn the host or manager early when timing or quality may slip.
• Close the loop when a guest-impacting issue has been resolved.
• Fix recurring causes rather than repeatedly treating the same symptom.

On-Call Host

• Provide after-hours coverage for urgent guest needs.
• Keep the approved urgent communication channel audible and monitored while on duty.
• Use judgment about what can wait until morning and what requires immediate action or escalation.
• Document important overnight issues for the next handoff.

Owners / Leadership

• Define the service philosophy and the boundaries within which the team can use judgment.
• Set escalation, service-recovery, and compensation authority.
• Resource the property so the operating and service standards are realistically deliverable.
• Review recurring guest issues, team problems, and service failures for system-level improvement.

Staffing, Coverage & Handoffs

Our staffing model must make it possible for the team to be present for guests while still completing the work required to run the property. Coverage is a management responsibility, not something guests should have to notice or work around.

• WhatsApp Business is our primary guest-messaging channel, using a shared host-team inbox so coverage does not depend on one person's phone.
• Urgent or emergency guest messages are monitored around the clock. The on-call host keeps alerts audible while on duty.
• The exact response-time standard for guest messages has not yet been finalized. Until it is, urgent matters receive immediate attention and other requests are acknowledged as promptly as practical.
• Shift handoffs include open guest requests, unresolved problems, important preferences or sensitivities, promised timing, and anything that could affect the next team's work.
• A request is not considered handed off until the receiving person has accepted responsibility.
• Important overnight issues are documented for the next handoff rather than relying on memory.
• Guests should receive one coordinated answer. Internal disagreement is resolved before communicating whenever possible.

Professional Standards & Guest Boundaries

Our style is professional-casual. Team members should look appropriate for the activity and the property without creating the feeling of a formal hotel staff.

• Maintain a consistent professional-casual presentation in guest-facing areas.
• Keep operational conversations, complaints, whispering, and staff clustering out of guest spaces.
• Use personal phones and staff devices discreetly in guest areas.
• Maintain professional relationships with guests throughout the active guest relationship. Romantic or sexual relationships with current guests are not permitted.
• Do not tolerate threats, harassment, unsafe behavior, or conduct that compromises another guest or employee. Involve management and follow the Safety, Security & Compliance Playbook when needed.
• Guest names, room information, schedules, preferences, problems, and personal details are confidential operating information and are shared only when needed to serve the guest.

Uniform & Workwear

Our goal is a uniform that looks refined and appropriate for the property while remaining comfortable, breathable, and practical for warm-weather work.

Guest-Facing Staff

• Standard uniform: chinos with a long-sleeve linen or linen-blend button-down shirt.
• We provide the shirts and trousers.
• Staff provide their own simple brown shoes suitable for service.
• Fabrics should be breathable, durable, easy to wash, and resistant to retaining sweat or odor.
• Final colors are still to be selected. Lighter colors are preferred aesthetically, but darker brown, charcoal, or black may be used where more practical for warm-weather service.
• No visible branding is required on the standard uniform.
• During dinner service, staff serving guests wear branded aprons.

Uniform Quantities

• Manager: 3 shirts, with appropriate trousers.
• Regular additional staff: 2 shirts each, with appropriate trousers.

For Year 1, maintain a small inventory for on-call and temporary service staff:

• 2 Small
• 2 Medium
• 2 Large
• Stock both shirts and trousers in these quantities.
• On-call staff may use shared inventory when working. Staff who begin working regularly should receive individually assigned uniforms.

Groundskeeping and Maintenance

Groundskeeping and maintenance staff are provided branded T-shirts. They may otherwise wear practical work trousers, shorts, shoes, and other workwear appropriate to their responsibilities.

Working on Property

• Break area: final location is undecided. Current options are the wooden houses or Garden Cottage. The basement can serve as a Year 1 interim break area.
• Smoking area: the current working location is down by the A/C. The final designated location should be confirmed before opening.
• Parking: employees park in the lot farthest from the stairs.
• Entry and exit: employees use the commercial kitchen or show kitchen.
• Changing and personal storage: final coat, changing, and personal-item storage is still to be determined.
• Meals: daytime staff receive lunch and coffee; night staff receive dinner and coffee.

Guest Room Entry

This protocol applies whenever a team member needs to enter a room assigned to a current guest and is intended to protect guest privacy while keeping necessary work moving.

• Be certain the guest is out of the room. Check the activity schedule or discuss with management when in doubt.
• Knock twice.
• Wait 10 seconds, then knock twice again.
• Wait another 10 seconds, then enter while saying "Permesso," the standard Italian polite greeting when entering a house.

Quality Control & Training

Management should pay close attention to real work and real guest interactions. The goal is to make standards visible, correct small problems before they become habits, and help people build judgment.

Coaching & Operating Rhythm

• Coach quickly, privately, and specifically after real interactions.
• Coach communication and articulation when they affect clarity, confidence, warmth, or professionalism.
• Praise judgment, ownership, and follow-through, not only polished presentation.
• Show appreciation to employees for surfacing problems early.
• After each guest stay, review obvious misses, guest feedback, recurring friction, and opportunities to improve. Encourage a culture where mistakes can be openly discussed.
• Use team debriefs to recognize strong moments of guest connection as well as problems.
• Monthly, review service quality, including F&B quality, housekeeping, service, timing, and personal presentation.
• During soft open, management checks key standards at shift changes and reserves 10 to 15 minutes at the end of each shift to discuss what went well and what needs improvement. Whether that exact cadence continues during normal in-season operations remains an open decision.
• When a problem repeats, update the process, checklist, training, or playbook that owns the root cause.

Cross-Training & Development

• Every employee is cross-trained in at least one alternate area so the team can provide lateral support when needed.
• Pre-season F&B training includes 2 to 3 shifts in each relevant service position, excluding management positions such as chef.
• During employment, team members should experience the activities we offer so they can describe them knowledgeably and understand the guest experience firsthand.
• Identify useful individual talents and, when appropriate, build activities or guest experiences around skills that a team member can deliver naturally.
• Managers continue to develop training based on what happens with real guests.

Observable Quality Measures

We use a small set of observable outcomes rather than relying only on subjective ideas of good service:

• Guests do not need to repeat the same request.
• Every open guest request has a clear owner.
• Promised timelines are met or proactively updated.
• Service-recovery cases receive follow-up.
• Guest preferences are used accurately and discreetly.
• Privacy breaches are treated as serious incidents.
• Guest feedback consistently describes the team as warm, helpful, natural, and attentive.
• Recurring complaints decline because underlying causes are corrected.

Training Ownership

The detailed training schedule, cross-training plan, scenario practice, soft-open testing, quizzes, and department training materials live in 7a. Team Training. This playbook defines the management expectations that make that training part of normal operations rather than a one-time opening exercise.

Open Decisions

• Final guest-facing uniform colors.
• Permanent employee break-area location.
• Final designated smoking area.
• Changing, coat, and personal-item storage location.
• Exact guest-message response-time standard and the final after-hours escalation roster.
• Staff alcohol policy. Earlier notes proposed a responsible one-glass-of-wine rule, but it has not been approved.
• Whether the 10 to 15 minute end-of-shift debrief used during soft open becomes the normal in-season cadence.
• Formal employee-handbook language for dating, harassment, and conduct rules beyond the guest-boundary standard in this playbook.