“How can we all show genuine empathy, make sure that a smile is somehow evident over a phone? We need to find a solution, and then impart it to the entire cast, again and again.” Also: “Everything must be genuine, and come from the heart, with more than a hint of vulnerability.” Chintan Dadhich, General Manager of the Waldorf Astoria Las Vegas asked this question in an article in Hotels Magazine recently.
The solution is actually very simple. But while Covid-19 has edged the hotel industry a little in the direction of the answer, it may take another generation before the hotel industry can accept it because the solution is based on concepts and a worldview which are currently anathema to hoteliers generally and especially corporate offices. Over the last 10 years or so I have even tried multiple times without success to get 700-800 corporate hoteliers to understand the concepts, but it’s probably like trying to get an ardent Jew, Christian, or Muslim to change to Atheism.
Heart-based hospitality is the solution, and there is no other way; but hoteliers and in particular corporate hoteliers, can’t accept this direction yet because they will have to change their worldview to the quantum worldview and its principles in order to do so. But once you change your worldview and embrace what the new science has discovered about the energetic and spiritual nature of life and also what mankind has known for thousands of years about the same and which is enshrined in mankind’s religious traditions and ancient cultures, then the solution to hospitality problems becomes as plain as the sun rising over the sea in a cloudless sky.
The outbreak of Covid-19 has actually done me a big favour, namely, it finally made me leave the hotel industry for good, something I was reluctant to do and I needed a push. I gave up trying to get the hotel industry to see that it could revolutionise hospitality by embracing energy, in particular heart energy but also the energy that is all around us; and by developing the spiritual capacity of their staff so that their capacity and desire to show love and compassion could be increased without limit.
Indeed, when energy, love, and developing spiritual capacity become the focus, the hospitality industry will have discovered the “Holy Grail” of hospitality and hoteliers will be able to transform the hospitality experience in ways they can’t imagine now. Does it work? Oh, yes!
But energy and love are foreign concepts in the hotel industry’s corporate board rooms. The prevailing belief seems to be that the guest experience just needs every member of staff drilled in the SOP manuals, following the credos and gold standards on the small laminated cards and “The 7 Steps of Perfect Customer Service” – plus lots of technology. The manuals may take care of the service efficiency, but not the hospitality or the spirit of the service or the spirit of the hotel or the energy of the hotel or … People want to feel loved. People need the energy and spirit of love and compassion. Why can’t corporate folks understand this?
Unfortunately, Heart-Based Hospitality is still just “too far out there” along with aliens, dragons, ghosts, and conspiracy theories, and as untouchable as those at the bottom of India’s caste system. But this will change. Ironically, poor and uneducated farmers in African countries can understand energy and love because they see the energetic effect on their soil and crops. In contrast, highly educated hoteliers just can’t grasp two of the most basic elements of human life.
The mechanistic concept of SOP-Customer Satisfaction has disconnected the hospitality industry from the essence of hospitality, namely love and compassion and the heart-warming care that stems from them. “Quality Service” fit for “Ladies and Gentlemen” has replaced it while people want to feel loved and shown compassion.
The energetic heart, love, and compassion have been tossed away by the need to conform hotels to corporate standards and manuals, which appear to have been written by loveless people in windowless, black-painted offices, and approved and cleaned of all emotion by equally loveless corporate lawyers. How can hospitality industry corporate offices create manuals, which are as distant from the essence of hospitality as Alpha Centauri is from Earth? Yet they do and nobody dares to question this.
Going back to the General Manager’s question: “How can we all show genuine empathy, make sure that a smile is somehow evident over a phone?”, how can this be done? Firstly, showing empathy is not enough. People need compassion and love far more than empathy.
Secondly, how do you develop in people the capacity to feel, exude, and want to show love and compassion, and to show ever-increasing levels of love and compassion including over the phone? You have to develop spiritual capacity. Hoteliers have to learn how to develop the spiritual heart.
“But that sounds like religion!”, some of you will be crying out. Hoteliers have to accept the fact that we human beings have a spiritual nature. We are energetic, spiritual beings. And no, the corporate SOP-Customer Satisfaction manuals don’t and can’t develop spiritual capacity. Their purpose is to create fast, efficient, and faultless “quality service” that is even fit for “Ladies and Gentlemen”.
When you develop the spiritual capacity of staff on a continuous basis and at the same time you work on human and heart energy, the staff change in a beautiful way. They soften, they become naturally more loving and caring, they become more gracious, they smile differently, and their eyes reflect the Nur blessing: “The most beautiful eyes are those who see everything with love and compassion.” They become more and more in line with their true and authentic self. This is the solution that Chintan Dadhich, General Manager of the Waldorf Astoria Las Vegas is looking for, but when I tell hoteliers this, they don’t want to know or they just can’t understand.
The downside of this for corporate offices is that heart-based hospitality isn’t clonable and it can’t be constrained in the straitjacket of corporate standards. While you can create physical standards for every hotel in the group, the hospitality and service in every hotel will be different. When love and energy are the focus, no hotel in the group will be the same because every hotel will develop in these two areas at different speeds and levels.
The future area of competition among hotels will be the level of love and compassion the staff show; and the energetic vibration of the staff and the hotel. This is how the hotel industry will be able to evolve to new levels of hospitality not considered possible now. A revolution in hospitality is possible and it will take place one day in the future, but a new generation of hoteliers is needed first. Hotel groups that refuse to change or are too slow to change will fall by the wayside because the demand for hospitality that is strong in the energy of love and compassion will only increase.
So, to General Managers such as Chintan Dadhich, you will find the solution by looking inwards, particularly to the human heart. The solution to hospitality problems has always been there and always will be. Future generations of hoteliers will work on human energy, heart field energy, and develop spiritual capacity so that the love and compassion of hotel staff flows naturally and limitlessly. They will create heart-based hospitality and they will wonder why their predecessors didn’t.
