An open letter to hoteliers (Part 2)
Efficiency: Many of you opt for leaner staff as a strategic decision or a financial necessity. What you fail to do is to adapt to the staffing realities by updating procedures and creating new efficiencies. Properly managed, a reduction in manpower need not compromise service. However, provide your staff with the proper procedural tools, equipment and empowerment to provide attentive and responsive service. Having a single printer for a 150 roomed hotel delays me and leads to frustration during my morning check-out. Don’t keep a regular high-spending regular guy waiting for over 15 minutes until your housekeeping staff check out the mini-bar in the room I just vacated. Bottom-line: get out of your ‘doing it cheaper and constant fire fighting’ mindset and develope a ‘doing things better’ culture.
Ease of Access: Do I find it easy to reach the front desk or table staff if I need assistance? Envision a hotel stay where you didn’t have to wait in long check-in lines. In fact, think about a hotel lobby with no front desk. Yet, today’s innovations all embody a common theme: Less is more. Touch-less, contact-less, wire-less, and ultimately bringing less – while experiencing more. Today’s traveler is accustomed to having technology at their finger tips and is constantly connected through the use of smartphones, tablets and computers. Truth be told, in some parts of the planet, we have now entered a hospitality world where the front desk has fallen into obsolescence, a result of nearly eight in 10 hotel guests choosing to check in and out of hotels from mobile devices. I’m not saying you need to go that far…all I ask is that you allow me to get in or out of my room as swiftly as you can. By the way, Wi-Fi is another matter of access – 24/7 user friendliness must underpin all technology offerings.
Environment: I am rather skeptical when I see your bathroom sign asking me to help save the environment by reusing my towels - especially when the thread count in them is near non-existent. Appealing to my green conscience is hardly the most effective way of convincing me how best to dry off. Savvy travelers realize that hotels save on laundry bills if guests reuse their towels, so environmental appeals could appear deceitful. Promising to donate money in exchange for towel reuse will not work well either – unless you tell me how much you donated last year! Perhaps then, I may be obliged to be greener. Before looking outside, look around you inside too. When I observe disengaged employees I truly believe you need to bring in some positivism to the work environment. Don’t get environmentally ‘blindsided’.
Inter-Departmental Teamwork: You must understand your role as a leader who must foster collaboration and have your staff working toward common goals. Don’t be ignorant that departmental boundaries exist and I don’t appreciate your individual departments working in ‘silos’, because in a hotel, teamwork is the backbone of my guest experience. Without proper interdepartmental execution I am exposed to incidents, where the triple-bedded room I booked upon check-in turns out to be a double-bedded room or when my room service order is incorrectly delivered. If one department is out of touch, your service image takes the hit. Can you allow one department to sabotage your commitment to deliver proper guest care?
Front-line Service Behaviors: As a guest, I wish to be served by front-line employees who are both ‘willing’ (engaged) and ‘able’ (confident in their ability). Delivery of quality guest service is tarnished if the majority of your staff fails to meet the two aforementioned criteria. I would also consider the service climate (organisation’s environment factor) in your hotel to be weak – because this third factor inhibits the staff’s affective commitment towards you as the employer and your frontline staff is more likely to leave. If more of your frontline staff are leaving it is likely that your guests like me, are also jostling to get out of your hotel.
Commitment to the Customer: So what's the lesson here? First and foremost, do not toss out the traditional ‘customer first’ business model in favour of only serving the owner’s internal intention for life. As your guest I want your staff to give me their full attention and concentration, and I don’t want to be interrupted or compete for service. It is not uncommon to see front desk staff in the middle of a check-in or other transaction, stop everything, to take a long-winding phone call from a colleague. This angers me. If I need to find the location of your restaurant I don’t need someone to just gesture in the general direction: I want your staff to take an interest and guide me to where it is located. Teach your staff to accept responsibility and not to make excuses when they make a mistake.
Innovation: For most of you being innovative is all about expensive technology – not really. Innovation need not be costly at all! As much as I love it when a hotel has a good bed and a farm-to-table in room dining menu, I love it even more when it takes a big step out of the box to give me something unexpected. Don’t just follow the crowd by copying what someone is already doing and crow about being innovative – instead invent your own trends. I guess I may be expecting too much.
For those of you who run a property that succeeds in delivering positive ratings in all of the above ten domains of satisfaction, I promise you that I will be there for you through thick and thin. For those of you who don’t – be advised…I will constantly look to go elsewhere!
Ilzaf Keefahs – writes on hospitality related matters that he is passionate about, and likes to share his views with hoteliers and customers alike.
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