Working in a hotel it is often hard to experience what the guest experiences and this often means that we miss things that are vital to a guest’s overall experience with us.
Yes, if we are working very late and need to be in early in the morning, we can grab a hotel room for a few hours kip. Often this will be an ‘out of order’ room; and even if we are lucky enough to be given a regular ‘vacant, inspected’ room, staggering in to a room, dumping your clothes on the chair and falling into bed immediately is not really checking the guest’s overall stay experience.
In senior management one of the ways to check the F&B offer is to ensure that you eat in your restaurants on a regular rotating basis and to try a variety of menu and beverage items. This gives you the chance to check standards, service, food/beverage quality, lighting, music etc etc…all part of the guest experience. Believe me, as hoteliers, wandering around and ‘checking’ your restaurant is a whole different ball game to actually sitting there and suffering the music, peering in the darkness to read your menu and having a club sandwich prepared 3 different ways in one week!
Now, to an outsider (like my mother!) this seems like a real ‘perk’ or ‘benefit’. Which I guess to a certain extent it is. But, bear in mind that hoteliers work incredibly long hours… a short day for your average F&B manager is about 10 hours; I am sure many would agree with me when I say that if you leave the hotel after 10 hours there can be a certain feeling of guilt at only doing ‘a half day’. So a nice meal in a nice environment during which you are still working your 15 hour day is a nice ‘perk’. I would also like to state for the record, that these ‘duty meals’ are not a relaxed meal lasting an hour or so with general chit chat, they are normally fairly rushed…20-30 minutes, talk being of the hotel, and more often than not being called away to deal with some issue mid meal!
Which is why it was with a certain amount of amazement that I heard that a market leader in the hotel world has decided to remove the ‘duty meal’ benefit from all of the management in each hotel…including the General Manager level.
I understand that in these times of high fuel prices, high food prices and the resulting cost cutting that this could be seen as a big chunk of savings to a company. However, complete cancellation of this benefit will result in a huge chunk of the hotel not being seen from the guest’s perspective…which cannot be good for the guests.
Everything in moderation……
