hospitality training

5 Easy Ways to Reduce Turnover at the Front Desk

Cathy Cook | February 11, 2019

By Cathy Cook With one of my main roles at KTN being to conduct front desk hospitality training worldwide, one issue that always seems to surface is turnover at the front desk. Turnover everywhere in the hotel staff is a major challenge in tight labor markets most hotels operate within, however it seems to especially be an issue at the front desk. Certainly, working at the front desk can be a stressful job as we are dealing with guests who are arriving after a long day of travel disruptions and frustrations and therefore prone to over-reaction to even the smallest challenges. Also, regardless of where any gap in service occurs during a ...

The Need for Big Data and Quantitative Skills Training In Hospitality

Dr. Giuliano Bianchi | October 4, 2018

By Dr. Giuliano Bianchi & Dr. Isabella Blengini The hospitality industry is becoming increasingly complex, with financial engineering, corporate governance, and strategic interactions with other sectors now part and parcel of daily life. In addition, publicly-traded major hotel chains manage a portfolio of brands and deal with a range of other industries at the same time. Hotels can no longer rely on experience and 'savoir-faire' to get by, but need to hire staff who are comfortable with quantitative skills such as mathematics and statistics. This is why, as economists, we believe hospitality business schools that teach subjects suc...

Train Your Front Desk Team on the “5 Pillars of Hospitality Excellence”

Doug Kennedy | September 17, 2018

By Doug Kennedy When a guest enters your lobby, chances are they are about to have their first human interaction with your hotel's individual "brand." In the past, most guests called to book by voice and then called back multiple times prior to arrival with questions about driving directions, transportation, area restaurants, hours of operations and the like. These days most guests book online and then Google search for answers to these and other pre-arrival questions. Therefore, while I have always believed that the front desk staff played a critical role, now more than ever they truly are the first impression makers, for better or for...

The Profession of Hospitality: Enough With Elites, Welcome Entrepreneurs!

Georges Panayotis | September 11, 2018

By Georges Panayotis The entire profession agrees that the sector is short of manpower. Very often, restaurants, bars, hotels are unable to find competent, motivated and loyal staff to make their business grow and provide irreproachable customer service. Once you have gone around and squared the circle, you find yourself back at the beginning. Consultations, experiments, meetings, debates, brainstorming... much effort has been put into finding a solution, but but they result in half-measures and ultimately do not really solve this problem. Nevertheless, it is central to our profession, which is based on know-how and human contact. Paral...

How to Make Hotels More Human

Dean Minett | July 30, 2018

By Dean Minett Isn't it strange that technology designed to bring people together could have the opposite effect? As smartphones and tablets have become more engrained in daily life, prospects for real human interaction feel strangely diminished. Why strike up a conversation – or look out the window, for that matter – when there's always a task, a search, or a social media post to absorb your attention? Academics and researchers have been saying plenty about this in recent years. The Media Consumer Survey 2017 by Deloitte found clear patterns of fatigue amongst social media users in Australia, with nearly half of the study's...

Sleek, Fresh, and Improved = ProSolutions

ProSolutions | June 13, 2018

By Jana Love Hey, check out what's "new" with ProSolutions! Over the course of 2 years (much longer than we thought), we have been working on a re-brand. This is the second re-branding experience that we have taken ourselves through in our "almost" 30-year run. These experiences give you permission, and require you, to explore the "what if's." What if we told our story in a different way, what if we brought in fresh new colors into our look, what if we changed our logo, what it we simplified, what if…. Having been here for the last 30 years, constantly testing my entrepreneurial skills as a business person, what has been in my re...

Hospitality Requires Stepping Into “Character” Like an Actor on a Stage

Cathy Cook | April 23, 2018

By Cathy Cook In the hotel industry we all know how important it is to deliver hospitality, which is the key to a positive guest stay. Otherwise we are simply in the "room rental business" and our guest rooms devolve into a commodity like a seat on an airplane. These days hospitality has become even more important, as the number of "touch points" in a guest's stay are reduced, as automation of the booking process increases and as the amount of pre-arrival information (directions, amenities, local area details) is included in an email confirmation. Put simply, we have fewer conversations than ever before. At the same time, those of us wh...

Get Your Hotel Operations Team Onboard The Tricycle of Guest Service

Doug Kennedy | February 14, 2018

By Doug Kennedy As hospitality industry trainers know, using symbols and models can help trainees grasp abstract concepts and make seemingly-complex paradigms easy to understand. Seems like is a good time for the hotel industry to update its model, so let's get your team onboard The Tricycle of Guest Service. When you think about it, a tricycle is the perfect model for a positive guest experience. For one, it has three wheels, just like the three components of a memorable guest stay. The back wheels represent Technology and Systems Efficiency and a quality Physical "Product," while the front wheel stands for Hospitality and Guest Servic...