Inspire Your Hotel Staff to Serve Guests from the Heart

Guests are bringing baggage as they start to trickle back through hotel doors, and not just the kind you pack your clothes in. The strain of travel logistics after so long at home, the ongoing fear of contracting COVID-19, the uncertainty of stepping outside comfort zones…it’s a lot for some guests to handle. At the same time, many hotel employees are worn out, spread thin, and struggling to recover from an unprecedentedly hard era of their careers. How can General Managers continue to create meaningful, seamless guest experiences in an environment like this?

The best thing you can do is inspire empathy in your employees, encouraging and motivating them to serve guests from a place of kindness, friendship, and mutual understanding. Service workers play a definitive role in guests’ overall opinion of a hotel, and studies have shown that these employees work up to 20% better if they’re happy on the job.

As Founder of eTip, my job takes me all over the world to talk to General Managers about what their employees need most to do meaningful and productive work. Here are some tidbits of advice I humbly offer:

• Recognize that your employees have needs that are as important to serve as those of your guests. Don’t just incentivize your employees to stay with the team. Inspire them to go above and beyond by going above and beyond yourself. Culture is critical for this (see below).
• Create space for employees to come to you with problems and encourage them to form solutions that suit their needs. Empower them to be autonomous; if possible, encourage ways to creatively fill gaps and solve issues versus sticking strictly to company policy.
• Build a mission-driven culture and a team structure that emphasizes management’s support for staff. If your service workers truly believe in the work they’re doing, and can see that that work is valued and appreciated, they’re much more likely to continue performing at a high level.

Of course, the greatest reason why my job takes me all over the world is to talk to hotel management about how eTip can transform their guest and employee experiences. It’s easy to use, supports today’s increasingly cashless world, and is obviously more than welcomed by service workers (money is still a huge motivational tool). If you’re interested in having eTip at your property, you can learn more here.