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UNDERSTANDING PEOPLE
The term ‘hospitality’ is derived from the Latin word ‘hospes’ meaning ‘guest’ or ‘visitor’ - ‘hospitari’ means ‘to be a guest’.
By the 1560’s the French adjective ‘hospitable’ described as being ‘kind and cordial to strangers or guests’.
Making people feel welcome will always be at the heart of any hotel, restaurant, café or bar and thus, being able to understand people is the most crucial skill of any professional in the hospitality industry.
So how can we truly understand people? To understand people we must understand emotional intelligence and how to practice it.
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EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Emotional Intelligence is the ability to use your understanding of emotions, in yourself and others, to deal effectively with people and problems in a way which reduces anger and hostility, develops collaborative effort, enhances life balance and produces creative energy.
Emotional Intelligence can be divided into two sets of capabilities, each with its own unique skills:
- Personal Skills - how we manage ourselves: self-awareness, self-confidence, adaptability, innovation, motivation, commitment, initiative and optimism
- Social Skills - how we manage relationships with others: empathy, service orientation, leveraging diversity, communication, conflict management, leadership, collaboration and cooperation.
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EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
One of the highest measures of emotional intelligence is being aware of others.
Listening attentively to your customers’ needs allows you to understand the problems they face. It shows that you are on their team and willing to put yourself in their shoes.
Emotionally intelligent sales people place the customers’ needs above their own, in order to achieve desired results for the customer.
This goes a long way to improving customer service delivery, employee retention rates, and absenteeism.
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BODY LANGUAGE
Staff in the service and hospitality profession are always visible and their guests are making decisions about the experience they are going to have before even realising it
- 55% of first impressions are entirely visual and are made based on appearance and body language
- 38% of first impressions are vocal and based on the tone, pitch and pace of the person's voice
- Only 7% of first impressions are the result of what has actually been said.
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STORYTELLING
Research shows that when provided with facts versus being told a story, over 80% remember the story whereas only 8% remember the facts.
It’s important for the listener to find the information authentic and credible - in order to do that, there must be emotion included.
A successful story is combination of factual information and emotions.
There are stories to be told and shared across all areas of the hotel – stories that will humanise & personalise the guest experience.
