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The Holy Grail of great hospitalityOctober 1, 2010
Oliver Raggett
We all know great service when we receive it – it just makes us feel special. From a personal perspective it’s probably that simple. But from a hotelier’s, it’s complicated. Every individual is unique, with a different personality, culture, sense of humour, attitudes, likes and dislikes. Each situation is also different – when they check in they may be tired, checking out they are possibly in a hurry, but over dinner they may be feeling very sociable. They could be on a stressful business trip, taking a romantic break with their wife, or celebrating with colleagues. How you treat each individual, from one moment to the next, takes terrific judgement and awareness.
Giving great service is largely about attitude, about being naturally positive, cheerful, caring, friendly, thoughtful, observant, and having bags of common sense…so we take great pains to recruit people who already have these attributes. Everything else we can teach, but if they don’t have the personality, it’s not going to work.
Next we instil into every member of the team a very simple message – “no request is too large, no detail too small”. This isn’t just one of those corporate mission statements people pay lip service to. It’s the central organising principle of the whole company, and is at the heart of absolutely everything we do. Large requests, frankly, are not the toughest test. If a guest wants a helicopter chartering you get it sorted. It’s the little things that are the easiest to overlook, because you think they won’t be noticed. But they are noticed, and paradoxically they are more telling – they reveal more about the attitude of the company and that individual member of the team… guests are very quick to pick up on the tiniest details, and soon join the little dots to figure out the bigger picture.
The Terrace Bar
All our staff are encouraged to be alert, to spot opportunities. If we discover someone is staying for their honeymoon we’ll put a complimentary bottle of champagne in their room, if it’s their birthday well give them a little cake. We have a huge number of regular guests and most of them can walk into the bar and have their drink in front of them almost before they’ve even sat down. The barman remembers their favourite drink, but where most hotels fall down is sharing all the information amongst the whole team. We create and maintain very thorough guest history records. The maid sees they’ve brought their golf clubs – next time they stay we’ll put a golf magazine in the room.
Restaurant Manager Lois Lucchini
Deciding whether the guest wants to be engaged in conversation is a skill in itself. If the occasion is right our staff are very good at making conversation – not the banal “have a nice day” scripted routine, but genuine engagement. There are plenty of top hotels where the atmosphere is intimidating – guests and staff are almost afraid to chat with each other. We want guests to relax, to feel at home, and a big part of that is getting to know them better, which means having a proper conversation.
We’ve got quite a few characters on the team, and every hotel needs that. The characters lift everybody, take things up another notch. We’ve got one gentleman who’s been with us 15 years. He started off in the linen room, as a linen porter, and he’s worked his way up to become one of our concierges – everyone loves him, he is Mr Personality.
This raises a couple of other important points. We go out of our way to spot talent, recognise it, develop it – there’s so many stories of people moving up through the ranks. This in turn creates terrific loyalty – people want to do their best, and staff turnover is very low, which helps things run very smoothly. This attitude comes down from the very top. The owners take a real interest in every single individual on the team. At Christmas, for instance, they personally choose a different gift for each one, and wrap it by hand. That’s over a thousand gifts, a lot of work. And they keep records each year, so each year it’s a different present.
I guess the bottom line is if you make the staff feel special, then the staff make the guests feel special. That commitment, that passion, that genuinely caring attitude filters down all the way from the very top. It’s something you can’t fake – which is why guests are so alert to it.
The Chesterfield Mayfair has just been awarded an Inspectors’ Choice Award 2010/2011 by the AA. Each year the AA Inspectors select the very best hotels in the UK and the Republic of Ireland, in each of their five rating categories, identified by red stars. The much coveted red star status showcases hotels that have exceeded their merit score in the accommodation standards rating by consistently delivering high levels of service and memorable experiences to all their guests. Of the 3,500 hotels within the AA quality-assured accommodation scheme, less than 200 were awarded with the mark of exceptional excellence in 2010/2011. The Chesterfield Mayfair was recognised as the only hotel in the exclusive Mayfair district of London to receive this prestigious award this year.
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