Be warned! This is not a respectable, “How to Provide Great Service!”, hotel industry status quo-massaging blog.
I have read so many hotel industry articles over the years on how to improve the “guest experience”. The service ideas are basically all the same. My point here is simple: Why is nobody talking about increasing love and compassion in hospitality … because after all, hospitality is about love and compassion?
The hotel industry has long lost its connection to the essence of hospitality. Hospitality isn’t about providing efficient, fast, polite, tech-rich service according to corporate SOPs. Or about providing “… exquisite immersive experiences, impeccable service, modern indulgence and refined taste” or “Enriching experiences thoughtfully crafted by associates…” or “Legendary service [that] creates experiences so exceptional our guests can return simply by closing their eyes.” (Sorry, Marriott!) That’s service.
The essence of hospitality is love, loving kindness (metta), and compassion. But you don’t find these spiritual values on any corporate hotel group website. I’ve looked already. I wonder why!
You know when you are receiving hospitality infused with these limitless spiritual values because you feel its energy and the staff somehow seem almost angelic. The care the staff provide is so soft, gentle, and heart-warming, and you can even experience tingling feelings when you receive it. It’s a world apart from corporate SOP manual care. And yes, human beings can create such hospitality. Hotel Human Resources Departments just have to do things differently. (Incidentally, isn’t “Human Resources” a concept from the year 1901?)
In such hospitality there is no limit to the level of love, loving kindness, and compassion that the staff can show. By developing the spiritual capacity of your staff and by working with heart and human energy they can show these spiritual values at the level of 100 degrees Celcius, 500 degrees Celcius, 1,000 degrees Celcius, etc. There is no limit to love. Staff are spiritual beings after all, not people who should be “thoughtfully crafted” by corporate SOP manuals.
Corporate SOP manuals and the pervasive SOP-Customer Satisfaction concept have dulled the spirit of genuine hospitality, and nobody seems to have noticed. This dullness has become the norm and made its proponents into rebels who should be kept as far away as possible from the stage of a hotel conference.
But one day, love, mettha, and compassion will be the areas of competition between hotels. Not service. Good service is a given, just like a guest room has a ceiling and walls. Eventually, the hotel industry will move in this direction and there will be a revolution in the hotel industry.
