In many ways, I’d like to believe we’re transcending the service. At our level of hotel quality, people shouldn’t be wondering ‘can I get a fax that works?’, ‘will the coffee be hot?’, you know – that should be assumed as a given.
And yes, mistakes happen, we’re dealing with humans and we’re dealing with circumstances, but really when people write to me and they talk about what they love about Fairmont is that one of their colleagues surprised them — they went out of their way to make that guest feel that they were unique and special and its not always the huge thing, something it’s the simplest little thing that they did.
I keep trying to get our colleagues to recognise the real job we all have is making the guests feel special.
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The secondary job is – your job is president and your job is housekeeper or F&B attendant.
They become empowered in a different way they really try to anticipate what does the guest want, what does the guest need, not just well I can’t worry about what you need cause I got to make the bed.
And that’s a different way, believe me, the only way you can implement this kind of a strategy is by hiring, training and motivating people. You can’t do it with rules. There is no rule to empower somebody.
Staff have to be protected enough to be able to respond to situations. Because if they make a decision to help a guest, whatever it is, giving you your meal for free or doing this or doing that they’ve got to have a manager over them that pats them on the back and says good job as opposed to a manger who says well you know ‘you’re hurting our margin, you didn’t say their name in the right way’ — if that’s the attitude, you’re going to get a very different type of experience.
What is on your agenda for your visit?
Well, the first thing I did when I came here to the Middle East is did a welcome to the family at the Fairmont Bab Al Bahr.
Myself, the head of human resources in this case, our vice president of sales, our vice president of marketing and our regional vice president all met with our 500 colleagues and welcomed them into Fairmont and showed them about our other properties, thanked them for doing such a great job opening another hotel..really welcomed them into the family, so that was a critical part of the trip.
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