Are your guests receiving a world-class welcome?Today’s hotels, be it five star or no frills, consider a smile from the doorman or bellboy a more than adequate sign of welcome. True, guests can get a warm blurry kind of feeling from something as simple as a smile. Even then, hotels do not properly train their staff on the art of smiling. We agree smiling is great, but not all smiles are created equal. Having worked for nearly forty years in the hotel industry, I’ve learned how to spot the great ones from the fakes.
A genuine smile comes naturally - guaranteed to give those who see it a little rush of serotonin. It involves smiling with your mouth and eyes. It has some involuntary contractions in it, so it’s hard to fake. Remember, a fake smile usually doesn’t use the eyes. It’s like when people tell us to “smile” for the camera, odds are that we engage in a fake smile. Sometimes people in customer service have to put on smiles to hide how upset their customers are making them. Defunct airline Pan Am trained their flight attendants to do this to the point where the smile is the only thing left of the company. Remember, a smile you don’t mean is often worse than not smiling at all.
Smiles apart, how do you inject the “wow” factor into a welcome that makes your hotel stand above the crowd? A smile is just the start of a positive culture of service which mostly fails when the activity starts and ends simultaneously with only just that! Winning guests over with a warm and genuine smile is not just the act of smiling but more of the actions behind the smile. What this means is that it is crucial for frontline staff to always fully engage with the guest, whether they are returning or new to the hotel, and to make them feel valued. Done properly, it will not only make me as your guest - feel welcome. It will show that you cared enough to make me feel that I belong here. Most of all, during that initial ‘moment of truth’ it reinforces my decision to stay here… as a good one.
I am often pleasantly ‘taken aback’ on being addressed by my name during the hotel welcome. This is where my journey begins and a receptionist who introduces him/herself whilst projecting a genuinely welcoming smile, gives me full attention, all the time maintaining eye contact and being totally engaged with what I am saying gets my vote.
The ‘one-fit-for-all’ cookie-cutter welcome that some hotel brands adopt simply loses its fizz when staff fails to recognise and treat all guests as individuals. In some hotels it is not uncommon for travellers to be addressed by name when they call the front desk, the concierge or room service. Switchboards equipped with digital displays make this easy. A word of caution here; technology is only as good as the people using it. My wife who has a definite feminine tone of voice, remembers calling room service at a particular hotel, where the disengaged operator answered ‘Hello, Mr……,''
The universal language is the smile. However, recruiting for a smile alone will not be successful if the people you recruit are not confident. Training can create confidence but first impressions are critical: how staff present themselves, are they both caring and confident, can they listen and remember names. It’s most important that front desk personnel be outgoing. Focusing on the guest as a person rather than a transaction is crucial. "Checking in?" Is a terrible way to greet a guest. It’s very cold and transactional. In a ‘hi-tech, hi-touch world delivering a ‘WOW’’ welcome by a truly caring team member is the ‘hi-touch’ component.
Shafeek Wahab |
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