Founder and Managing Director of Healing Hotels of the World, Anne Biging [pictured right] from Cologne in Germany told The Mole at ATE 2007 that employees, in addition to guests are major beneficiaries when a hotel adopts holistic principles, according to an international survey conducted this month.
Anne said that staff members become more enthusiastic and committed workers, when hotels become holistic and this has a positive effect on the business’ bottom line!
The survey was conducted in Europe and Asia Pacific and Anne told The Mole that Members of Healing Hotels of the World must meet strict criteria going well beyond the spa treatments one finds in hotels all over the world.
She added” We know that this pays off for guests, whether it is related to cuisine, mediation or yoga, our hotels offer high quality, holistic health and healing services and we now know that it pays off for staff too.”
Some of the survey results related to staff include, staff being holistically encouraged to live and work in healthier and more environmentally conscious ways, improvement of key staff retention and staff members more focussed on what is important.
The hotels surveyed also tended to have special classes for staff including in yoga, pilates, hydrotherapy and they offered healthy staff meals and training in how when handling guests they could turn negative energy into positive energy.
Anne added that management also had to relearn with some hotels saying that for staff to transmit the sense of well being to guests, employees had to be treated similarly by management and this could mean extra patience and acceptance of different productivity levels.
She said, “As one hotel reported, they put extra effort into training staff because when the staff are happy the guests are happy and return joy to the staff, with the result being an outstanding atmosphere.
Anne can be contacted at [email protected]
For more information visit www.healinghotelsoftheworld.com
Special Report by T he Mole on location at ATE 2007
