As a veteran hotelier, I am well aware of the significant effort that hotel companies and brands have been making in recent years to raise the bar on their hospitality and guest service levels. Seems like every hotel manager I talk to these days has some type of program in place, whether purchased from an outside training company or developed in-house. So why is it that the list of “most-frequent guest complaints” hasn’t changed in at least the 25 years I’ve been in this business? Do any of these guest comments sound familiar?
- “Not only did we have a problem, but no one seemed to care.”
- “The worst part is that no one apologized.”
- “There were three people on duty at the front desk yet no one even greeted us.”
- “I couldn’t believe when I walked up to the front desk with my luggage all they could say was ‘Checkin’ in?’ What do you think I’m doing, touring your hotel lobby artwork?”
- “Your hostess sure knows how to make those dining alone feel like losers when she greets us with ‘Just one?’ as I walk up alone to her stand.”
Having spent most of my career in the field of hotel training and consulting, I’ve had the opportunity to peak behind the scenes into the training programs of nearly every major hotel brand at one point or another. No doubt the instructional design professionals and their SME’s (Subject Matter Experts) have done a great job at teaching the “mechanics” of providing polite, professional, and dignified service. Commonly used program themes such as “wow,” or “legendary,” or “above and beyond” service have definitely helped our staff members identify exactly what they are supposed to be doing, which is a good start.
So what is missing? What is not being emphasized enough in most of our current training programs? The problem is that most programs continue to present hospitality as being more of a series of communications techniques, such as how to properly greet guests, how to listen effectively, and of course service recovery techniques for handling complains.
What these programs should instead be doing is helping our frontline hospitality professions to understand that hospitality is more than a communications technique. Certainly, the delivery of hospitality requires
good communication, but hospitality really should be an underlying philosophy for every aspect of our lives. So what is hospitality really all about? A simple check of most dictionaries will yield the truth:
For example, Merriam Webster tells us that hospitality means “Treating others with warmth and generosity.” There is only one additional word to add definition – authentically! It is the addition of this one word that differentiates authentic, genuine service from the overly scripted, robotic service styles that are the best possible end result of a misguided focus on interactive communications techniques alone.
So if you are looking to raise the bar to the next level, maybe its time for your hotel to starting training your frontline associations that hospitality means caring about as well as for others. Take a hard look at your existing training materials and process.
- What percentage of the total time invested in “new hire” training is spent covering hospitality at all?
- What are the topic areas/themes addressed relative to hospitality?
- Do we place enough emphasis on the philosophies and principles hospitality, vs. “basics” such as eye contact, body language, and facial expressions?
All we need to do is start helping our frontline associations better-understand that each and every guest is a unique and individual human being, and begin exploring the various circumstances, situations, and sometimes quandaries which guests find themselves in. We need to talk more about what life is like for our guests on the road these days, and along the way start “re-humanizing” our guests. We need to stop letting our guests become soulless creatures who stand before us waiting for room keys, tables in our dining rooms, or who call us to bring them more towels. We need to help our team remember that “the guy in room 205” or “the lady on line 3” is really a mother, a daughter, a father, or brother, and there’s a reason they are calling or standing before us right here, right now looking to us for help.
Perhaps its overly-optimistic, but I still believe that most of our employees really do want to give great service. After all, we all said the same thing in our first interview for a job in the hotel business - which is that we “really love working with people.” I can’t imagine any of those smiling faces at those interviews waking up in the morning first thing and saying “YESSS! I can’t wait to get to work today to give mediocre service and make people angry with me!!!”
Today’s training programs would be far more effective if they investment more effort in topics like re-humanizing our guests, and how bringing out the best in others also brings out the best in ourselves, and let those “people-people” who we’ve hired do what probably comes naturally. Instead, countless hours are spent regurgitating the same old themes like “smile at the guest and use their name three times,” or briefing our staff on outdated statistics such as “an unhappy guest tells an average of 9 or 10 others,” which was first reported via the TARP Reports in 1986.
Peter Yesawich, the often-quoted industry expert on consumer trends told us less than one year ago that in today’s business climate, “Brand Clarity is Key” If you want your individual hotel’s “brand” (and I don’t mean franchise flag) to stand for hospitality in the mind of your guests, perhaps its time to revisit your existing training content and to start turning those who stay in your hotel back into real people.
Originally published at www.hotelmotel.com.
http://www.winecountryjobs.com/articles/hospitality_training_more_than_c.htm
