Hotels are a vibrant industry – as temperamental, moody, fun, idiosyncratic, and eccentric – as the people who make the structure throb and come alive. And that presents a unique challenge to those who are responsible for ensuring that the brand personality seeps into each employee optimally for a cohesive representation of the brand. Ask the Training andHuman Resource fellas and they will tell you how much sleep they lose over beating, shaping, moulding, clubbing a delightfully eclectic mix into a unified cookie-cutter, strait-jacketed, assembly line incarnations of the Brand.
So, let’s take a closer look at these folks who hold the power of the Hotel’s universe in their very able hands.
3. THE SCINTILLATING SENTINEL
There is something really magical about the tall, turbaned Doormen of The Raffles in Singapore and The Oberoi and The Imperial in New Delhi, India. Not only are these Sikh gentlemen large, pillar like guards to the hotel but are also the most gregarious, charming, sincere and larger than life direct-guest-contact members of the team. They help to draw the guests in and create a friendly first impression. They pull the guests into a comfort zone of familiarity with a know-you-from-before effortless conversation that guests seem to strike with them with utter ease. Above all, they convey a sense of security with their bear-like burliness. Perhaps that is why these gentlemen have become brands in themselves; literally iconic figures that the hotel finds absolutely irreplaceable. They have been some of the most photographed by the visiting guests and have had their mugs framed in hotel postcards sold in the hotel’s souvenir shops or tucked away in the guest compendium.
The Doorman who stood guard at The Pierre – then a Four Seasons Hotel – in the summer of 2001 has made such a strong impression on me that I have written about him often and put him down as a case study in my training papers. While on a Rotary fellowship, I was travelling through the United States on a shoe-string budget; hence my transportation of choice from Newark Airport to the heart of Fifth Avenue was not expensive cabs but affordable public carrier. As I stepped down at The Pierre’s porch from a far less than perfect bus, I showed trepidation and an oversized hint of hesitation. But not the majestic Doorman as he extended his gloved hand to help me get down from the bus and whisked away my baggage ever so discreetly. He welcomed me with the most heart-warming smile and ushered me inside the hotel into the very hospitable and efficient hands of the Front Desk. His respect towards the guest and overall pleasantness stayed professional and un-shifting, whether he saw me alighting from a public transport or hobnobbing with his super boss – the dapper General Manager. I think that is class and highly evolved standards of service that his Brand has benchmarked and instilled in him.
In direct contrast have been Doormen of a clutch of hotels who size up the guests from the clothes they wear, the cars they come in and also whether they drive it themselves or are driven in. I once had a journalist friend complain sorely about one such Sentry who was a complete anti-worker to the Brand philosophy we were trying to espouse. He, with his ogre like bearing, displayed a condescending bias against the important guest only because she had decided to take an auto rickshaw to the hotel and walk up to the porch. This is such a big reason for the GM, RDM, Training Manager and Director – HR to get into a huddle and relook at the best practices blueprint with the biggest lens in hand.
There is something really magical about the tall, turbaned Doormen of The Raffles in Singapore and The Oberoi and The Imperial in New Delhi, India. Not only are these Sikh gentlemen large, pillar like guards to the hotel but are also the most gregarious, charming, sincere and larger than life direct-guest-contact members of the team. They help to draw the guests in and create a friendly first impression. They pull the guests into a comfort zone of familiarity with a know-you-from-before effortless conversation that guests seem to strike with them with utter ease. Above all, they convey a sense of security with their bear-like burliness. Perhaps that is why these gentlemen have become brands in themselves; literally iconic figures that the hotel finds absolutely irreplaceable. They have been some of the most photographed by the visiting guests and have had their mugs framed in hotel postcards sold in the hotel’s souvenir shops or tucked away in the guest compendium.
The Doorman who stood guard at The Pierre – then a Four Seasons Hotel – in the summer of 2001 has made such a strong impression on me that I have written about him often and put him down as a case study in my training papers. While on a Rotary fellowship, I was travelling through the United States on a shoe-string budget; hence my transportation of choice from Newark Airport to the heart of Fifth Avenue was not expensive cabs but affordable public carrier. As I stepped down at The Pierre’s porch from a far less than perfect bus, I showed trepidation and an oversized hint of hesitation. But not the majestic Doorman as he extended his gloved hand to help me get down from the bus and whisked away my baggage ever so discreetly. He welcomed me with the most heart-warming smile and ushered me inside the hotel into the very hospitable and efficient hands of the Front Desk. His respect towards the guest and overall pleasantness stayed professional and un-shifting, whether he saw me alighting from a public transport or hobnobbing with his super boss – the dapper General Manager. I think that is class and highly evolved standards of service that his Brand has benchmarked and instilled in him.
In direct contrast have been Doormen of a clutch of hotels who size up the guests from the clothes they wear, the cars they come in and also whether they drive it themselves or are driven in. I once had a journalist friend complain sorely about one such Sentry who was a complete anti-worker to the Brand philosophy we were trying to espouse. He, with his ogre like bearing, displayed a condescending bias against the important guest only because she had decided to take an auto rickshaw to the hotel and walk up to the porch. This is such a big reason for the GM, RDM, Training Manager and Director – HR to get into a huddle and relook at the best practices blueprint with the biggest lens in hand.
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