What are The Fundamentals of Hospitality? (Part 1)
In our last blog, I talked about the importance of training Hospitality. But to train it, we need to be able to define it. Usually, definitions are woolly, anecdotal and although they get a feeling across they never really touch on any practicalities. I always think it's a bit like teaching someone to box by talking about passion and spirit and playing them the Rocky theme tune over and over again. Yep, they might be inspired, passionate and even have some innate talent but if that's all you've given them, they're going to end up on the canvas pretty soon.
So with everything that's happened this year, I thought now might be a good time to share Hop's Fundamentals of Modern Hospitality. We use these Fundamentals to empower teams to be present with their colleagues and their guests. We believe the best guest experiences happen not only when the team member is fully present, but when they have the skill and the ability to be able to bring the guest into the present moment with them.
At Hop, we work around six Fundamentals. We believe that mastery stems from owning these Fundamentals, or as Micheal Jordan puts it,
“Get the Fundamentals down, and the level of everything you do will rise”
Over the next week or so we'll be sharing all our Fundamentals and today we start with our first two: Self Awareness and Guest Awareness.
Self Awareness
Hospitality starts with you. It's about being aware of how your behaviour - emotional, physical and verbal influences your guests and your team. Sounds easy, but under pressure, self-awareness disappears pretty quickly. Here's a quick test for you - from the conversations you've had today, how aware were you of the feelings you were instilling in the other person. Last time you were under pressure, how aware were you of the emotional impact you were having on your team? Businesses talk about creating a sense of warmth, care, familiarity - but the skill is being aware of how to get these feelings across to the guest.
Guest Awareness
The ability to be able to read the guest and anticipate behaviour. I've seen so many terrible examples of how to read guests - it's not about their clothes, or their accent or financial status (I think these are all old skool and totally unhelpful labels we use to read guests) but by reading their energy. What energy are they bringing to the restaurant, and how is that energy going to influence their behaviour? By reading energy, we start to have a very clear understanding of where that guest is right now. We can then begin using that information to tailor communication and build connection.
When you break Hospitality down into its Fundamental parts, you start to realise how skilful it is. The Fundamentals are attributes you'd want to develop in any team. It's not just this mercurial thing that people either do or don't have. I hope by sharing our Fundamentals, it inspires you to develop the Hospitality in your team. If we want to change the perception of Hospitality, we need to start taking ownership over how we train it.
Keep an eye out for the rest of Hop's Fundamentals of Modern Hospitality series. Happy Friday.
