The sad truth about Hotel & Restaurant Service today
No culture?
Service is a matter of company culture and well treatment that starts with employees and gets delivered to the guest. If the owner and manager is willing to provide the first service to the staff. But most of the time he opts for outsourcing and later on is surprised that there is no service. This cost cutting without deeper thinking is normal today and expected from Management companies and owners. The word service is most of the time just lip service - Marketing and PR. It carries on so long that many owners and managers have no idea what service could do for them.
It leaves us with a hotel industry that was described by Dirk Dalichau in a rough but to the point article.
“It is a slow moving dinosaur with too many ego driven Narcissistic Managers, who spend too much time fighting ground breaking disruptors such as AirBnB, waste energy protecting their own power, complaining about the demands of new generations and limiting their teams abilities to please guests and deliver amazing experiences. It is full of boring and dated concepts that fail to understand todays traveller and their need for unique and effortless experiences.
Service Levels are shockingly bad due to an absence of TRUST in people. The ill founded belief that employees need to be controlled and restricted in their authority, instructed to follow orders and keep their mouth shut and their ideas to themselves.
Rather than identifying why so many people love new concepts such as AirBnB, they waste their Creativity looking for new ways how to control, and restrict.”
The shocking truth about todays Hotel industry! Dirk Dalichau, Published on July 25, 2016
The reasons why even only “good” service is hard to find anymore did not start in the hotel industry but in all customer service industries. But we jumped onboard and are drifting into mediocrity like all the others industries that are supposed to offer service. It is not saving cost that destroys service - it is cutting cost – cutting service. Guest even do not expect service anymore.
As John Hendrie put it in an article about hotel and restaurant service in 2006:
” We have done a pretty good job with lowering expectations, but that spiral can only descend so far.”
(4) Rescue From Mediocrity. The Decline Of Service Etiquette – A Sequel - by John R. Hendrie, Hospitality Performance, Inc. 2006
Author: Stephan Busch, Academic Director at the State University for the Humanities Moscow RGGU, Faculty of Tourism & Hospitality earned his Master Certificate in Hospitality Management from Cornell University, USA. He has a diverse experience in launching operations, business development and service training- for hotel and cruise companies in Asia, Europe, Canada and Russia.www.itsjusthotelsservice.com, contact@itsjusthotelsservice.com