For those of you who know me personally and have had the opportunity to talk-shop, you've probably heard me say this about our industry, "It's not rocket science." I stand by that statement and really believe the fundamentals of our business are pretty simple. Don't misunderstand that to mean that the hotel business is easy to manage, it's not. While the principles of hospitality management are pretty basic, executing them consistently is what makes the business challenging. I'll share a few simple, but insightful concepts from lecture one of my class that started this week. Perhaps the refresh on these basics will help you be a better manager:
- Our products are intangible. That's right, when you checkout of a hotel, all you leave with is your receipt and your memories. Our products are service and experience, nothing more. [One student argued that you leave with towels and pillows too...only if your a thief, they aren't really the product, just an amenity for your temporary use.]
With an intangible product we are constantly challenged to produce a consistently positive experience for guests, but we have a litany of variables that influence that experience (aka: product). For one, our customers are part of the product. That's right, guests in a hotel have an ability to influence other guests experience and therefore are a part of the product. For example, if the room next door is loud and obnoxious that influences your opinion of the hotel/services/experience. Controlling this element of customers influencing others is difficult. Another way guests influence the product is because each guest has unique expectations, and therefore we must tailor our product to each individual consumer. We can't just produce 100 widgets and make them all the same - we have to make each of those 100 guest experiences unique in a way that satisfies each guests' needs. Consequently, quality control of our intangible product is a constant challenge because our factory (aka: hotel) doesn't (or shouldn't) operate like an assembly line.
So how do we deliver on the service promise that our guests expect?
1. Encourage every employee to act like a manager. Simply, the first fundamental of managing a positive service environment is to allow your front line staff to act like a manager. It's critical that they are trained and then given the autonomy to make decisions on the spot and in the moment. Will they screw it up sometimes? Yes, but the cost of those mistakes will rarely outweigh the cost of consistently poor service from un-empowered employees.
2. Handle moments of truth correctly. A moment of truth is when there is direct interaction between customer and staff. Whether checking in or checking-out, scheduling a wake-up call, taking a breakfast order, or making an airport pickup -- these are the moments your guests will remember. How did the staff act, what was their body language, did they speak genuinely and professionally, was their uniform tidy, how did they handle a question or complaint? Guests' perceptions are created and expectations are met, not met or exceeded in those moments of truth. Of note is that managers are present during only a small fraction of these moments of truth, hence the importance of #1.
3. Hire good people and keep them happy. Turnover is perhaps our industry's worst enemy. The reality is that hotel managers often make the mistake of hiring for skill, instead of hiring for personality and training the skills. The unfortunate truth of service industries is that we often fail to set the expectations early on, we fail to spend adequate time training and we fail to keep our associates motivated. Check out this video - it is so accurate it's embarrassing. Keeping associates happy who spend long days on their feet, dealing with people or cleaning rooms or serving food all day is not exactly easy. It's incumbent on the managers (who don't exactly have a boring day either) to keep the work environment relatively fun and enjoyable, if want to reasonably expect associates to deliver on the service promise. Generally speaking, unhappy associates do not make for ambasadors of good service.
4. Respond in a timely manner. Like it or not, our guests expect (and generally deserve) an answer now. Whether is a sales lead, customer complaint, meal service or simple reservation request - time is of the essence, if we intend for the guest to maintain a positive impression.
5. Control costs - especially labor. Finally, the catch phrase - "do more with less" is forever our task. Of course, cost containment yields higher profits. Unfortunately, cost containment generally wears on employees who in turn feel over worked with fewer resources than ideal, and so #3 become ever more important.
Again, nothing I've written here is rocket science. However, as managers (I'm guilty too) we get caught up in the administration of our business and often lose sight of delivering our core products - service and experience. I've found this holds true for companies both large and small, well structured and poorly, with and without organized training and those that operate both big and small hotels. To counter the challenges we face, it's important to regularly and consistently manage our service standards and expectations using the above fundamentals in order to deliver the service promises we make and our customers expect. When you combine the core fundametals of hospitality management with common sense, I belive the rest (ie: profiability) falls into place. This general approach has worked well for the likes of Bill Marriott, Walt Disney and Conrad Hilton so I think it's fair to recommend...
Good luck in producing your intangible product and consistently delivering on your service promise!
