When should you bring in interim management?

Interim management has a reputation problem. Owners often hear it as an admission that something has gone wrong. In practice, the best use of an interim is the opposite — it is a planned decision made from a position of control, not a rescue mounted from one of panic.

There are five moments where I would advise almost any owner to consider bringing in an experienced interim general manager rather than leaving a seat empty or a stretched deputy carrying two jobs.

The five transitions

• A sudden gap — a general manager resigns, falls ill or leaves at short notice, and the recruitment process will take months you do not have.
• A change of operator or owner, where someone independent needs to hold the operation steady while the handover completes.
• A pre-opening or a major repositioning, which demands a specific skill set the standing team has never had to use.
• A period of clear underperformance, where the business needs an honest outside assessment and the authority to act on it.
• A recruitment you cannot afford to rush — an interim keeps standards and figures intact while you take the time to hire the right permanent GM.

What links all five is transition. The operation cannot pause while the situation resolves. Guests still arrive, teams still need leading, and the numbers still have to be reported and defended.

The signs you have left it late

The cost of waiting is rarely the empty salary line — it is the compounding damage while the seat is unfilled. Enquiries going unanswered and dropping out of the sales funnel. A team without a clear decision-maker, becoming stressed and inconsistent. Small operational problems that no one has the authority to fix hardening into guest complaints and poor reviews.

A vacancy at the top of a hotel is not a saving. It is a slow leak in every department at once.

A good interim is productive within days, not weeks. They read a P&L quickly, stabilise the team, keep the commercial engine running and hand back a business in better shape than they found it — with a clear, written account of what needs to continue. The point is not to cover a gap. It is to make sure the gap costs you nothing.