What managers can learn from hoteliers

Unlike hoteliers, managers are not as close to their customers - a disadvantage. By Carsten Rath For every successful hotelier, the guest is at the center of their actions. Thus, the majority of their working time is spent on direct interaction with the "end consumer." This is the biggest difference compared to most top managers, and this is where the general economy can still learn from the hotel industry. Most managers manage companies where fixed working hours and opening times prevail. However, there are exceptions such as in aviation, hospitals, public transportation, and many service providers. A hotel has no closing times. And a hotelier has different working hours and distributions. We almost exclusively focus on our guests. Those in the upper hotel segment are always very experienced travelers and well-informed about their trips. They often know the competing products better than our employees. Our customers are familiar with the warmth of the Balinese people as well as the state-of-the-art service centers with the fastest internet access in New York, the business suites in Frankfurt, and translation services in Korean taxis. They know about the soap concierges at Ritz Carlton, who in the evening offer guests a wide selection of the finest washing utensils from their tray for the turn-down service. They have experienced pure romance at weddings in the Maldives, and in family hotels or resorts like Robinson Clubs, they have enjoyed sports, wellness, and world-class activities. They have eaten Kobe steaks in Japan and are knowledgeable about organic vegetables from the highlands of Bhutan. After the visit is before the visit These people, who can hardly be surprised by anything new, are our guests. Their collected service experiences are etched into their memory. Each new hotel stay recalls these experiences and compares them with the current service experience. Top or flop? For us, following Sepp Herberger's motto: After the visit is before the visit. We restaurateurs are only as good as the last meal we served. The hotelier is first and foremost a host, while a manager as an entrepreneur often focuses on processes, products, and relationships with employees. Many top managers, however, rarely have direct customer relationships. This is very different in the hotel industry: Here, everything revolves around the guest, and everything is exclusively controlled and oriented towards their needs. To meet the guest's needs, the most important leadership task in the hotel industry is to promote and demand encounter quality at the highest level with the customer and to address it continuously and motivatingly. This demand makes the hotel industry a training world champion. Each employee is trained for 120 hours per year. Trainings in a hotel naturally differ from those in other industries: they are conducted very regularly - almost daily - in short, concentrated units. In the hotel industry, training takes place during ongoing operations and is primarily focused internally rather than externally, despite operating in three shifts 365 days a year. Focused on the guest In the past, classic, rather stiff seminars as seen in the Hollywood movie Pretty Woman were known - do you remember the discussion about the prongs of the salad fork? Those times are long gone. The system we use, called "welearning," is a combination of e-learning and team learning. EVERY employee takes a brief break from the hectic hotel routine every week and focuses as a team on what really matters: the encounter quality between guest and employee. This focus measurably improves guest loyalty. If the hotel manager also perfectly embodies his understanding of hospitality, the processes are in place, and the product is exceptional, all conditions for a memorable hotel stay are met. As a hotelier, we spend at least 50 percent of our management time directly with the guest, usually 30 percent with the employees, ideally 10 to 15 percent on product development and improvement, and the remaining time on minor necessities. But most of the day, we focus on our "lifeline," our guest. Therefore, it can also be helpful for a manager in the free economy to reconsider their time management and spend their effective time with their desired "end consumer," the customer. This way, they can better recognize needs, actively foster customer loyalty, promote employee enthusiasm, and identify the status quo firsthand. However, this does not refer to the superficial PR events of an airline CEO who pushes the "juice cart" a bit above the clouds, but to regularly scheduled, conscious hours with the customer - at the grassroots level and on-site. It can't get any simpler and more convincing than that.