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‘Bring back service with a smile’
Hotels could increase profits by re-introducing 19th century approaches to training, Supranational Hotels claims.
The hotel representation company’s managing director Niels Pedersen believes that young hotel staff throughout most of Europe no longer know how to make their visitors feel sufficiently welcome, relaxed, and special, or that their money has been well spent.
He said: “There must be a 100% focus on guest pleasure and joy, or else they might as well return home to stay, or sleep in basic accommodation.”
He proposes 10 “old-fashioned” training topics:
*Manners – because common courtesies are no longer passed on by parents, or taught in schools
*Attentiveness – because staff are too easily distracted or interrupted by colleagues, mobile telephones and text messages
*Hospitality as a lifestyle and career – because hotel jobs are often seen as short-term and part-time
*Grooming and smartness – because today’s haircuts, cosmetics and fashion accessories may not always suit the taste of guests
*The appreciation of fine cuisine – because today’s mania for fast-food means that staff don’t know what they are serving or selling
*Elocution and language – because today’s youth culture cuts conversational corners
*Humility – because cockiness and swagger have ‘street cred’, but no place in an hotel
*Apologising – because defensiveness is often the first reaction to a complaint
*Smiling – because it is sometimes seen as ‘un-cool’ to smile, and more ‘with it’ to smirk
*Relationships – because people today spend too much time with their computers, not other humans
Pedersen said: “This situation is not the fault of staff, for they have grown up in a different age and don’t know anything else.
“At the same time, we have to educate guests who themselves may not have experienced what true service means. Solve both these challenges and hotels will deserve to make more money because they genuinely will be offering the service, and the quality, to match their prices.’
Supranational represents more than 1,500 properties in 75 countries.
Report by Phil Davies
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