The 19th Annual Hotel General Managers’ Conference – hosted by the Master Innholders and titled Going for Gold – was held last week at the London Hilton on Park Lane, attracting record attendance (440 delegates from 4 and 5 star establishments), as well as an ’18 carat’ line up of speakers.
Reflecting the theme and the London Olympics, speakers included Lord Coe and Kate Howey, Olympian in Judo.
The Transforming Power of Hospitality
First up was Danny Meyer, CEO of New York’s Union Square Hospitality Group, whose success is based upon a very clear understanding of priorities in the hospitality business, foremost of which is staff and their skills.
Pointing out that hospitality is about much more than just eating and the delivery of ‘good food’, Meyer introduced the concept of the Hospitality Quotient (HQ) that is designed to secure repeat visits (loyalty) and recommendations from clients.
HQ recognises that hotels and restaurants should aim to score 100 out of 100 with clients, but that technical skills (product quality, ambience, delivery quality…) can only score 49 of those 100 points.
The other 51 points come from the ‘hospitality’ skills and delivery that ensure customers have an excellent experience and feel that all staff are fully ‘on their side’. To achieve high HQ scores, you need staff with high HQ attributes and skills, whose greatest pleasure is to provide pleasure to others. Such staff are
- Kind: good to be around, they care about others
- Curious: they’re always learning and seeking to learn
- Hard working: their work ethic seeks the highest standards
- Empathetic: how others feel always matters to them
- Team player: aware of the rest of the team and how they are treated
- Emotional self-awareness: recognise their own emotional states, and how to deal with them
- High integrity: they do the right thing, even if it’s not in their own interest
HQ enables staff to observe, anticipate and act upon what the guest wants: to have a dialogue with the guest that ensures understanding of what will make the experience special. In contrast, the one-sided ‘monologue’ that is often experienced demonstrates that the member of staff is not empathetic and listening, but simply deciding what is ‘best’ for the guest.
Meyer’s thought-provoking delivery started an intensive afternoon of presentations that included Technology Change, by Rupert Gutteridge of IDeaS; Inspiring a winning team (featuring Peter Lederer, Harry Murray, and Dr Anne Pierce); and Hospitality Action and The Ark, featuring a powerful and personal presentation by Philip Howard of The Square on helping hospitality employers protect against and deal with alcohol and drug misuse.
Government, Hospitality and a call to adopt
Ufi Ibrahim, Chief Executive of the British Hospitality Association, demonstrated the scale and importance of hospitality establishments to both local and national economies across the UK – up to 20% are directly or indirectly employed in hospitality in some local authority areas – and called upon delegates to ‘adopt’ their local councillors and MP to ensure they are aware and seek to support the hospitality sector. More details available from the BHA on this campaign.
Martin Couchman then outlined some of the costs and regulation/legislation that would be changing looking ahead, including
- 20% increase anticipated in alcohol licensing fees, as well as the introduction of minimum pricing for alcohol, early morning restriction orders, late night levies
- Up to 5000% (!) increase in recorded music charges by the PPL in 2013
- Welsh Government introducing food hygiene ratings on establishments serving food, to be followed by EU regulations on food information (for example, allergens) from 2015…
- Employment: possible introduction of fees for employment tribunal claims (which have risen by 44% over the last 2 years); EU seeking to increase maternity leave to 20 weeks at full pay; discussions around the Working Time Directive…
- 5% increase sought in waste reduction through WRAP
- 5%+ increase in business rates
- Bed Tax – the good news! – will not after all be introduced in Scotland (it had been proposed for Edinburgh).
Day 2: More Gold – and a Brilliant finale!
The hotel industry employs a range of services to assess and accredit its products, and the session Who needs who? Featured an experienced panel to discuss the relative and future importance of such services as mystery guest programmes (for management), Michelin, AA, Best Loved Hotels, and TripAdvisor.
Clearly, all are currently playing a significant role in assessing and maintaining standards, and then helping guests to identify the establishments that they intend to use. And their marketing is expanding into social media in order to ensure that they reach the widest possible audience. The AA, for example, has had 1.6 million apps downloaded.
The ability of social media to engage with customers, to facilitate dialogue, and to drive traffic on hotel websites to the room booking service, is well recognised by the hotel sector. By the end of the session, delegate voting established that TripAdvisor had become most relevant to their business. At the same time, it was pointed out that 72% of reviews on TripAdvisor are grades 4 or 5: in other words, are positive for the hotels featured.
A 360 degree look at managing your hotel’s presence on social media
This session, lead by RJ Friedlander of ReviewPro and Justin Cooke of Fortune Cookie, identified that presence on the web has a significant impact on hotel reputation, and therefore on revenue and profitability. Many hotels have already implemented a programme to monitor and manage their online reputation, utilising specialist software, with only a tiny minority still determined not to respond to this challenge.
However, it’s not quite as simple as we might like or imagine:
- 65% to 85% of consumers consult online reviews before making a hotel reservation(Google)
- And – guests are willing to pay 38% more for hotels whose online reviews indicate top-level service (ComScore)
That’s the good news, but it gets more complicated:
- Guests are today LESS likely to return even when satisfied! Why? Because they are increasingly looking for new and unique experiences.
But don’t be discouraged:
- Positive reviews from guests may not persuade them to return – but can and do influence and encourage others to book!
In summary, Social Media is here to stay, and hotels should be busy engaging with it and, through it, with their customers in order to:
- Know what’s being said about your hotel
- Obtain quantitative and qualitative feedback
- Benchmark guest satisfaction against direct competitors
- Maximise online distribution sales and increase direct bookings
- Ensure that all their staff are focussed on delivering operational and service excellence
The Brilliant finale
If you want to experience 400+ senior hotel managers from across the UK standing on their feet, waving their arms, and shouting – then you need the motivational and inspirational presence of concluding speaker Michael Heppell, international success coach and best-selling author.
In less than an hour, he energised the entire delegate audience as he ran through the tools and techniques that will enable delegates to break out of their comfort zones, break away from old habits, discard the belief systems holding them back, and move from ‘Good’ to ‘Brilliant’.
Next year, the 20th Annual Hotel General Managers Conference should start by establishing which delegates followed up this Brilliant presentation, visited www.michaelheppell.com, and embarked on the process of change!
