Hospitality careers need to be embraced fully and industry newcomers should eat, sleep and drink hospitality, as Olivier Jacquin of Mangalis Hotel Group explains in this TV show.

Hospitality careers require patience

I grew uh, for the past 25 years with big hotel chains, then I learned from them, and I gave the maximum of my capacity. My advice should be to be always keep an eye open to what's happening in the world. You should eat hotels, you should think hotels, you should absorb our hospitality industry like a coffee in the morning, or a uh whiskey on night. You need to be connected, 24 hours in our industry. It's a fantastic industry, it's a demanding industry, it's moving a lot, you see all the movement in design, in the operation, the way of thinking, the distribution changed a lot for the past 5, 10 years, and we need to adapt permanently uh, our skills, but I would say that if you feel yourself, here in the middle of your body, that hospitality is one of the key sector, you should jump into that. I have not a special advice to give, but just to stay connected and give your patience – it's a patient business, you know, we don't send rockets on the moon, we do hospitality business, we build hotels for sure, but at the end of the day, we operate hotels to make the guest satisfied to sleep well, to eat well, and to come back at home and to propose these clients to come back again on the site, and to make him loyal to the brand and to the continent we sell that's the most important, to make our guest happy.

Browse more videos by the Hospitality 250 experts and find more insight into hospitality careers and other hospitality topics.

Developing talent is a core part of any business and what companies are looking for in a new hire is changing. Remy Merckx looks at recruiting digital skill into a company.

Developing talent with digital skill

We are not, not digital by nature, we have to become digital in order to keep up in this business. So, it’s hiring new competencies, bringing people from outside of the industry – hotel industry has been historically very close in the way they hire people. You know, you had to work for different hotel companies before allowing yourself to work for another hotel company. Is that a good model? Probably 10 years ago, today we are very happy to bring people from outside who work for companies like Coca Cola, or to work for more technical companies or agencies. It brings a completely different vision also to the hotel industry and I hope that we’ll have good results in the way we are going to develop this industry moving forward.

Keep browsing Hospitality TV for more TV shows and briefings on developing talent, recruitment, looking after staff, and digital competencies.

 

Hospitality careers success can hinge on the company you choose to work for, as Daniel Ruff of Wyndham discusses in this TV show.

Hospitality careers advice

So, for me I think the most important decisions that I've made in my career are really around the people I've worked with and for. I think, you know, companies are fantastic, and you have to believe in a company's vision, but ultimately you're working for great people, and I think the most exciting thing about joining Wyndham is I really believe that we're a company full of great people, and it's been a fantastic first three months for me, to really jump into that and see it first-hand.

Browse more videos by the Hospitality 250 experts and find more insight into hospitality careers and other hospitality topics

I just saw this morning on the television here in Berlin, a whole transmission on, a new concept of, working only with icons, so we don't have a language any more, but we work only with icons, which would help to have all the language issues worldwide eliminated in one go. But this is very much the new generation, I mean everything is, with pictures, everything is visual, everything is, short and fast, you know, I mean what we see in the span of attention is not too high, not too long, so you need to interest in them and involve them in a very short period of time. I think visuals help a lot there. And I also support the creativity of the young generation, there's a lot of creativity and imagination, and if you try to, to limit that down to words, it’s not in line with how they function. So that's what we see, and and it means that in our curricular at our school and our university programs, we work very much with simulations, and er, interactive courses etc, so to really involve them directly and give them the chance to, to, work on their creativity. And we see that happening, and because, I mean, our students yesterday, that one against it was Cornell, it was really based on a sort of really creative imagination of how the world could be if you look into the developments of an Airbnb and all other kind of of Uber's etc that is going on. If you look into, into this development, they find a sort of very easy going answer, it's not complicated. And I think this is one of the skills of the new generation.  

Developing talent and hiring the right staff is a very important part of running a hotel. However recruitment isn't always given the attention it deserves. Nicolas Mayer looks at People vs Products.

Developing talent takes effort

If you look at the efforts that we spend in selecting new napkins, versus the efforts we spend in selecting a new front office agent, you will see that much more management attention is done on the napkins, than on the front office employee. So in the asset game, you will go through a purchasing and request for proposals, you will order samples, you will test them, you will give them to your laundry to test wash, and eventually you will go into negotiations, and then you have napkins. Most recruitment for a server at your breakfast café if at all an hour of management attention is spent on it. Since we all inherently realise what the impact of a good employee can be, or what the damage of a false hire can be to you, it is still very surprising to me that we don't focus more energy resources and management attention on the recruiting on the line staff. People that are gems, of course have a lot of opportunities, and they have a lot of ways to move, not just for money, but they will often move to places where they feel they are going to be more appreciated, so this is, again, a question of celebrating someone's achievement, a team member that is a gem, and gets acknowledged as a gem, and that gets celebrated for it, and that goes through a regular course of you know, of your promotions and training, but not an accelerated one, just a normal one, will tend to stay much longer.

The Hospitality Channel is very interested in approaches to recruitment and developing talent. Look out for the next 10 industry experts to be announced as part of Hospitality250.

Workplace culture is beginning to incorporate more efforts to improve the wellness of staff. In this TV show Nicolas Mayer discusses the benefits of napping.

Workplace culture and employee wellness

We have a room in the office which has you know, ten recliners or eight recliners and we encourage people to go take naps. So we have a room in the office which has you know, ten recliners or eight recliners and we encourage people to go take naps. Now, new joining team members find that rather strange, you know they say 'I can't take a nap, you know, I can't go tell my boss, Boss, I'm going for a nap now' but that's exactly what we want to do. We actually had to kind of be role models, and start napping as partners in order to show our teams that it's okay to take a nap. Scientifically it's proven, and I can also prove it from my own, where I can contribute from my own experience, these power naps, you know, 20, 25 minutes when you need them, they are fantastic, and the purpose is not to send you back to work you know, a lean mean working machine, but it's just to get you balanced again. Continue in your work, you will be a little more productive in your work, but then equally important to me, send you home back to your family and friends, not as a wreck, but as someone that certainly has worked a good day, but is still there, physically, mentally and is able to you know enjoy and partake in his family life, and his friends' life, and his sports and whatever, so napping is fantastic. I can highly recommend it.

Take a look at our briefings for more discussions about good workplace culture and wellness in tourism.

Brand reputation can make or break a hotel. In this TV show Misha Pinkhasov discusses nurturing trust through authentic customer relations.

Building brand reputations through staff

Trust is particularly an issue that's acutely important since the financial crisis, 2008/2009. Because a lot of institutions were seen as having fallen down on the job. Institutions that we trusted, be they banks, be they the public sector. And, and I don't think that those questions have necessarily been resolved sufficiently. With trust in institutions low, with that comes trust falls the trust in CEOs, and anything that represents a corporate voice. And one of the things that studies by Adelman and Burson Marshall have shown that is that consumers trust front line employees much more than they trust brand communications. So this is becoming crucial for brands to, if a brand wants to control its messaging, and if the front line employees are really what's now driving the relationship with the customer, more than the marketing, more than the advertising, more than any of the top level spin, brands have to be very careful about how they cultivate their corporate culture. So that the front line employees can be authentic, and can be themselves, and still represent what the brand wants them to represent. We're getting into an area where brands can no longer police the behaviour of their staff. You can't, you can't just set up a framework and say this is what you have to do. You're going to kill the spark in the relationship with the customer by doing that. What's much more effective is to create a culture within which people know what is acceptable behaviour, what is not acceptable behaviour. What is desirable, what is undesirable. And then let them interpret that. And live it in their own way,

The Hospitality Channel will continue to discuss ideas around brand reputation and trust. Look out for the next 10 industry experts to be announced as part of Hospitality250.

Hospitality service, be it good or bad, will be what a hotel is remembered for. In this TV show Nicolas Mayer discusses how good service is a home away from home.

A focus on hospitality service

Many industry participants I believe sometimes have lost focus on the fact that service has at least an equal part to play to product. In provision of services. So very specifically, hospitality has come out of a service orientation where the building was important, but it was never the key. So you had lots of inns that were not so glorious but great service, whereas it has too much shifted now into an asset game, with service being left to the side. Ritz-Carlton, in the 80s, in the 90s mainly in the 90s, did something very much right, and I think it has been adopted by many other ones, sometimes even improved, but looking back at Ritz-Carlton and saying what did they do back then, why did they do it, what was George Schultz's motivation back at that time? I think from there you find many of the seeds that has now seeped into many other companies that do it right. Ultimately service is attention and time from someone that is taking care of me when I am away from home. And I think that is a very important element, I mean, even very seasoned travellers have a certain residual, let's say loneliness when you are travelling, right? You are away from home, you are away from your family, you are away from your, you know, familiar surroundings and as you arrive in a new place, very psychologically intuitively, you are looking for experiences that make you feel welcome and warm, to say you are safe here, you're welcome here, you're appreciated here, and in that space is where service happens. It's probably not very complex from an intellectual perspective, but it is never the less very difficult to get it right because it's long term, and it's consistent. You know, if you built a building, you have to have a one-time effort, get it right. Providing service and making sure you have a team, a workforce within your hotel, that consistently provides this kind of service, means that you have to be on it every day.

The Hospitality Channel is very interested in hospitality service, operations and staff. Look out for the next 10 industry experts to be announced as part of Hospitality250.

New hotel technology can seem daunting to implement. In this TV show Richard Valtr of Mews Systems discusses emulating technology that employees know.

Staff friendly hotel technology

I think most of the people that have actually – that we’ve implemented the system with, they're actually frankly quite shocked at how easy it is to implement, how easy it is to actually train the staff up on the system. Because – especially if you have a young staffing core, they understand some of the features. So for example, the way that we think about the guest profile is actually thinking about it from the point of view of how they would see profiles on a social network so that they can actually work with the guest in the same kind of logic. So we’ve learnt from the likes of Facebook and the likes of Google in trying to actually incorporate all of those things which people understand and know and actually trying to understand these kinds of complex systems from that point of view. So, the actual implementation process and the changeover process is very quick on our side then it usually takes only about one training day to actually get everyone up to speed in most of the hotels that we’ve implemented the system in, so.

The Hospitality Channel will continue to follow developments in hotel technology and will bring you more TV shows from the companies producing new systems.

Hotel technology systems are most useful if the information on them is completely up to date. Richard Valtr of Mews Systems explains how real time technology can be used for on the go service.

Hotel technology systems that keep up

With anything that works with connected systems, um, the real time aspect is incredibly important because you’re trying to pass on information through to your colleagues and your co-workers. So for example, just the fact that somebody might be on their, on our applications, ordered some kind of service, that information goes straight through and through to the system and to the department that actually needs to kind of work with that information and it’s shared across that network. So somebody, so even the doorman, if you want him to kind of see this information, sees exactly the same information in real time as the person who’s manning the reception desk or if you've gotten rid of your reception desk, that kind of, just a stand essentially, where you have some of your employees. So even across these huge distances, if they’re connected they can see all of this information.

The Hospitality Channel is very interested in discussions around changing hotel technology systems. Look out for the next 10 industry experts to be announced as part of Hospitality250.