Tourism / Aviation / Shipping

Random thoughts on hospitality: The years gone by and the one ahead

04 Jan 2016 - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

It’s that time of the year when new resolutions are made. Chances are good you made some last year -- and the year before as well. But, looking back, how many of the resolutions did you actually keep? I recall someone jokingly remarking that New Year’s resolutions are a bit like babies: They’re exciting to make but extremely difficult to maintain.
As per Wikipedia, “A New Year’s resolution is a tradition in which a person makes a promise to do an act of self-improvement or something slightly nice, such as opening doors for people beginning from New Year’s Day.”
Opening doors is one resolution that resonates well with hotel doormen who can claim to do exactly that every day at work. Seriously, the truth of the matter is that many people set resolutions but a few actually follow through on them. It’s just like many hotels and restaurants that make heaps of promises they simply cannot keep.

Ducks and drakes
‘Ducks and drakes’ is the old English name for the pastime of skimming flat stones on the surface of water to make them bounce as many times as possible. The first known reference to it is in 1585, where the use of ‘ducks and drakes’ meant ‘to idly throw something away or squander resources’. The meaning now seems to have migrated closer toward the ‘unreliable and reckless’ and away from the original ‘idly squander’.
In any event it about defines the approach of some hotels. Why else did the Drake Hotel in New York advertise “free limousines for guests”, when in reality the hotel had one limo for 622 rooms? Now, that’s one lame duck of a GM at the Drake! Look around; are you able to spot the lame ducks in the tourism industry?
Many in the industry confuse the means with the end. Sometime ago, a restaurant ad referred to a meal-discount coupon. I dropped in forgetting to take the coupon and remember the manager’s reply: “You have to have the coupon. That’s the whole idea of the ad.” I disagreed! The whole idea was not to get the coupons (the means) into the restaurant. It was to drive diners (the end) into the restaurant.
A local pizza operator launched a ‘Collect 10 to 35 coupons and get any pizza, brownies, wine, and more free…’ promo with no mention of the promo period. You get to the stage where you have earned a reward – only to be told that the promo has been discontinued. The lesson here, (unless the operator has closed shop - which he hadn’t), is that this promo was premeditated to take customers for a ride! Both incidents had the power to astonish the customer - in a positive way - if only the staff had said, “No problem, what would you like to have?”
Here’s another example, a businessman after flying over seven hours was checked into a room right next to a construction site. Under the circumstances, sleep was impossible. So he complained at the front desk - and they brought him a fruit basket. All that the businessman wanted was some rest in his room before his next appointment. He needed to sleep and a fruit basket was not going to solve his problem.
If the hotel didn’t have a quiet room available, it should have dispatched room service with ear plugs and a soothing pot of hot tea. Better yet, knowing that there was noise, it should have offered to book him in another hotel. Why not? Guests will feel that the hotel genuinely cares if it is willing to forgo revenue from that room and very few guests will opt to move - the hassle is
too great.
Have you ever noticed that some things seem so clear from the outside, yet from within, things became cloudy and confused? We repeatedly see this in politics, when we accuse – often with good reason, elected officials for being “out of touch with reality”. What seems like common sense to us just doesn’t seem to filter into their bubble.

The gathering
Last year in November, it was reported that Shangri-La’s Hambantota Resort and Spa would finally open in June 2016. That’s nearly 52 months after the building work commenced in February 2012, on the then, hyped-up premise, that named Hambantota as the fastest developing region in Sri Lanka. Purportedly, by 2015, the sea port envisaged to serve one of the world’s busiest shipping routes, (competing directly with Dubai, Salalah and Singapore), create over 2000 employment opportunities and provide indirect employment to over 50,000 people.
Named for its patron, the gift-bearing Sri Lankan ex-president, the new airport was expected to handle 45,000 metric tons of air cargo transactions annually with an expected aircraft movement of 30,000 per annum. The International Convention Centre with 1500 seating capacity is probably host to more mice than MICE (meetings, incentives, conferencing, exhibitions) events.
Opened in 2009, the cricket stadium, with a seating capacity of 32,000 to enable the local inhabitants to watch matches, instead of travelling far, has held an average 2.4 international (ODI) matches each year. Since its opening in March 2010, there has been very little film shooting at the National Tele Cinema Park (US $ 15 million).
A six-lane highway, a flyover and an interchange were built in the Hambantota District spending millions of dollars. These roads are now empty. Some internal roads that lead to the airport are now being used by villagers to dry pepper crop. The IT Park, which was to eventually grow from its initial land area of 500 acres to an expanded land space of about 1,500 acres, like everything else has gone into virtual unreality.
What is real however, is that until the Southern Expressway is extended to cover the 96 kilometres between Matara and Hambantota, the five-plus hour journey by road will be tiring. The challenge ahead for the Hong Kong-based hotel group is on how it would promote the destination and lure visitors from the UK, Germany, India and also China.
Hold that thought…the single largest gathering of Asian elephants on Earth occurs around the man-made lake in the Minneriya National Park. Unlike the pachyderms in Minneriya, which gather only during July-September, 300 kilometres away, Hambantota has a permanently pitched circus of the largest number of white elephants. Organising a wild white elephant tour for visitors would surely be one heck of a story to take back home!

New generation
I get to talk to several prospective new hires during my ongoing overseas training and coaching assignment on ‘on-boarding new recruits’ and on ‘managing diversity in the workplace’, involving supervisory staff of two international five-star hotel brands. One thing I was really keen to gauge was their attitudes and mindset - especially how attainable their goals were coming out
of college.
Many want to go into sales and marketing. Whenever I was told this, I would always fire my first question: “How do you expect to get there?” In most instances, I received a blank face and a lot of fumbling for words. Hotels don’t just hire these managers straight out of college like most students would like to believe. I would explain to them that moving into positions in sales and marketing is much easier when you are already on some rung on the ladder within the organisation, rather than hoping to enter as a new manager.
We would then engage in an open-minded discussion that explored the wide array of possibilities that our industry offers in terms of career options – from finance to operations to MIS to catering, just to name a few, many of which carry multiple entry-level opportunities. Once young people realise how broad this industry truly is, and, that anyone can, over time, become a hotel manager, they do their research and discover that there can be a great fit for many career choices.
Some want to do their own business, especially on the food and beverage (F&B) arena. Whilst I admired their entrepreneurial passion, we would talk about how tough it was to run a profitable restaurant. (Did you know that in Singapore, for every four restaurants that open each year, three close shop and that four of five new restaurants close within the first five years?) Interestingly, many of them were aware of the failure rate for restaurants and almost all admit that knowledge and experience are keys to success.
On a personal level, I share with them my own career path and the work-life goals I had set myself. This involved broadening my horizons in terms of short-term career familiarisation, going to hotel school, keeping up with the latest trends in the industry, mastering how the hotel performs through operational experience and least but not last – staying purposeful.
Everyone knows that nobody (unless it’s a family-owned business) starts at the top. This is where one is required to be resolutely determined in the present, absolutely focused on the future and have that inner fire to attain the next level of performance – while all the time staying within the realms of reality. And that dear readers, is my New Year message to all those who can be persuaded to follow the path of hospitality.

(Shafeek Wahab, a hospitality consultant, professional speaker and trainer, works with organisations that want to become more customer centric by changing how they deal with customers and are passionate about enhancing their reputation. With an extensive background in hospitality management spanning over 30 years, he uses his experience and knowledge to provide assistance to clients who want to move beyond the limitations of traditional ‘best practices’. He can be contacted on [email protected]. Website: www.in2ition.biz)

Tourism / Aviation / Shipping

Random thoughts on hospitality: The years gone by and the one ahead

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