Back in the years when I used to mass-recruit for large hotel openings, I always stunned the agencies with my brief.

“You cannot be serious!” they used to protest. “You must be joking! We can’t do that!”

Interviews with a difference

But they did, and my opening teams have always been the grandest, the most flamboyant, the most special. I never recruited waiters with experience. I never looked at their previous work in hotels when recruiting for front office, concierge or any entry-level service positions. Instead, I recruited from flight attendant schools, from theater and dance schools, from singing schools.

My interview? “Tell me a joke.”

Candidates didn’t understand either. “A joke? What do you mean?”

“Tell me a joke your dad used to tell his friends during a dinner, or a joke or story you like to tell when you meet new people.”

If they were not good at storytelling, they were not hired.

And then the walk.

“Can you please go back out, close the door and come in again. When you open the door, I want you to imagine you have an audience of a thousand people looking at you. The spotlight is on you. Now, look straight into my eyes, or close them if it’s easier for you to start that way, and walk straight to me as if you were on a catwalk, with a thousand eyes watching you enter. Walk as if the world was yours.”

Confidence. I wanted to measure my candidates’ confidence, their security, their ability to show off, their readiness to perform and to show it.

Later, during training, everybody was taught how to walk on high heels, male personnel included. And how to walk a catwalk.

Service is acting

Hotels and restaurants, spas and events are all stages where we perform enchanting acts to captivate our customers.

If you are a bad actor, you are a bad waiter. I wish the entire service industry would take that approach when recruiting and training. Imagine how much better the banking industry would be, or the supermarkets, even the gas stations!

I don’t care if you know how to carry a tray or perform French service. I can teach you all that.

But I cannot teach you attitude, to be accommodating, positive and charming, to be funny, to be a performer, to fascinate people just by the way you walk. Or to have a passion for wanting to get a smile out of that sometimes ugly bitter face that is waiting there for you to check him in or take her food order.

Training and then some

Granted, one needs to dedicate time, effort and money to be able to train hundreds of newcomers on the ins and outs of the service standards.

Our courses spanned wine training and food training. Not just the recipes, but the story of every dish, the anecdotes. And we taught everybody to cook too! Because only if you cook will you respect what you serve.

The training covered topics that aimed at answering any possible question a guest could ask. We would cover dishes that were not on the menu, just so the waiter knew what the guest was talking about when asking for something. The wine training covered the most famous and also the most popular wines the world over.

The reception staff knew the name of every hill you could see from every single room. They knew how it felt to be in front of that window because they had all been there. We aimed at providing tools to all our team so they were never standing with a blank face in front of a customer. And so they knew what alternatives to offer when asked for something we didn’t have.

We also trained to never say no.

The power of saying yes

A former general manager at a Hyatt hotel I worked in at the start of my career, the late Mr. Norman Rafelson, an icon in the industry, a guru and an inspiration to many, had these words to say. They were: “No one in this hotel is paid enough to say no to a guest. If you can’t say yes, call your immediate supervisor.”

And the rule applied all the way up to him.

“No” was not an answer. And I lived by it throughout my career. I teach it to anyone I can.

“Customers are not always right, but your task is to make them believe we believe they are,” Michel Kooper, food and beverage (F&B) director of another Hyatt property used to say. “Every morning, before you change into your uniform and come to work, have your slice of humble pie.”

We ought to teach our teams that arrogance or even arguing with a customer about what he ordered, so he understands we are not at fault (and he is therefore wrong), takes us nowhere.

Make them believe they are right and we made a mistake, accommodate their desires and you will have won the most loyal customers ever. Complaints are a blessing. They give you the opportunity to show clients how much out of your way you are ready to go to please them.

All my most loyal customers were once a complaining customer.

Building loyalty through performance

I remember vividly my opening team at the Pyramids Dubai. Everybody on the floor had a background in the performing arts or were innate storytellers and performers. Nationalities didn’t matter. But mastery
of languages, a passion to please and to make our customers smile was of the essence. Every night they dressed to kill and man they did. They were the masters of improv. And customers loved them.

I had not known till then of tips that doubled the value of the bill. Is that not a win-win situation for everybody?

And so to the million-dollar question: Does education, skills, training or experience make the biggest impact in hospitality?

None of the above. Attitude does. Passion does. And having the grace to perform the never-ending act that is the service industry.