by Josiah Mackenzie
Christoph grew up in a small family hotel in the Swiss Alps, and was exposed to hospitality at a very young age. “I remember talking with guests since I was eight years old.” He entered hotel management school in Lausanne, before starting his career in the industry at Hilton. He did two hotel openings, one in Zurich and one in Sofia – before heading to Berlin to work at the Four Seasons. He took a little time off to earn his MBA from the Berlin School of Economics, and used his skills to manage the Ritz-Carlton in Berlin for two years. Since returning to his home, Christoph has been managing operations for LAAX resorts.
What role do systems play in ensuring a consistently good guest experience?
Regardless of the size of the hotel, it is crucial to have some systems in place. Certainly, the type of system will differ depending on if it’s a small independent hotel or if it’s a large international company. I’ve seen both.
I think a system is certainly essential to assist the employees in fulfilling the guest experience. With a system, you can cover many things but ultimately the service happens in front of the guest. The employee can use the system, but at the end, they need to use their judgment in serving the guest.
For the small hotel, it may not be worth the effort to build a big computerized guest information system. For large hotel companies, it is important to share guest information between properties. You want your guests’ experience to be the same if they are staying in Madrid or Milan. Ideally, you want to have a detailed profile of your guest, knowing what he likes, what his preferences are, what his hobbies are. Sort of like a CRM system for hotels.
How do you develop this profile information? How would you discover a guest’s hobbies?
The system needs to work with guest communication. So the employee who knows that a gentleman likes a lot of strawberry marmalade at his breakfast needs to have a procedure where this information is saved. At one of the hotels I managed, we had small notepads where we could write this information down, and then it would be given to the guest relationship manager.
This process needs to exist in a small hotel as well. The software that you use to save this information is secondary, it’s more important to develop a good procedure for saving and recording information. You must have a workflow system like this before the software system. Employees must clearly know what to do with the information they receive.
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