Thank you to all my readers and supporters of Hoteliers of Tomorrow! My most popular posts according to Google Analytics for the month of July 2013 are: Continue reading My Most Popular Posts of July 2013
Steve Jobs’ Most Memorable Speech
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment of failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
Above is a taste of Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address and one of the Top 10 Commencement Speeches of all times. It’s also most motivating and encouraging when having to face the uncomfortable situations in life and when having to make the tough decisions that really matter and make a difference. Watch the full speech by clicking on video below.
My Take on SoulCycle
I just returned from my first SoulCycle experience at Soul West Village and have to admit that I feel great, absolutely exhausted, but great! While striving to achieve a healthy work-life balance, I was always looking to workout more often (who doesn’t, right?), and more importantly on a consistent basis. I would never come up with the energy to workout by myself.
So a couple of months ago I discovered the Niketown Running Club and would run in Central Park twice a week. I was fascinated by the encouraging feeling of running in a group, and by being pushed to do more by the fellow runners. I recently moved from Midtown to West Village, further away from Niketown, and with it the original excitement to commit myself to run weekly started fading away.
How to Fire an Employee
Having to fire an employee is never an easy or pleasant thing to do. You spend a lot of time and efforts searching for the right person for the job, conducted numerous interviews, focused a lot of attention and resources on the training of the new-hire, and strived to grow and develop the employee to help you in return growing your business. That being said firing an employee should only happen after you tried to counsel and help the employee to improve.
Once you tried every avenue and termination is the last option, it’s the right thing for your organization, the other employees and in many cases for the employee being let go as well. Continue reading How to Fire an Employee
The Power of ‘Thank You’
I first heard about the power of frequently writing ‘thank you’ notes a couple of weeks ago at a training about leadership. The instructor of the training made a point of highlighting the power of saying thank you for a job well done, and how effective ‘thank you’ notes are for appreciation and recognition.
Motivated and inspired by the training I started writing these notes for a couple of days until my excitement started fading away, and I just stopped doing it. I felt that it really wasn’t that important, and that people wouldn’t care anyway. Until last weekend… Continue reading The Power of ‘Thank You’
What I Learned from ‘The Startup Kids’
The Startup Kids is an excellent documentary about young entrepreneurs starting their own businesses. It talks about entrepreneurship and how successes are the consequences of failures.
So what does it take to be a Startup Kid and build your own business? Continue reading What I Learned from ‘The Startup Kids’
How To Improve Your Guest Surveys The Fast Way
How did you enjoy your stay with us?
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No matter if you are working in a hotel or are a frequent traveller chances are that you asked or heard this question over and over again. Many times it’s the question asked most upon check-out and your way out of the hotel. Continue reading How To Improve Your Guest Surveys The Fast Way
How Do You Get People To Like You
Working in the hotel industry just like any other service industry it’s all about people, it’s about one person respecting another person.
It’s about people trusting each other, because if there is no trust between people, efficiency and productivity will go down to zero.
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So how do you get people to like you, or better yet, how do you get people to want to work with you and for you? And I am not talking about a popularity contest, I am talking about respecting another person, respecting his or her values and beliefs. Continue reading How Do You Get People To Like You
Are You Really Busy or Just Lazy?
Being busy is just another form of laziness!
‘Excuse me? I am running around the entire day putting out fires and getting things done!’ This would have most likely been my response to above statement just two years ago when working more than 12 hours a day and seven days a week. Two years ago I honestly believed that I added value every minute of all those extra hours worked.
As Tim Ferris describes it in The 4-Hour Workweek ‘Being busy is a form of laziness – lazy thinking and indiscriminate action’, and what this means is that being busy is only a sign of not being able to prioritize tasks and being able to focus on the important stuff.
How to Get Promoted in 3 Steps
You are eager to get promoted and move on to the next step. You are constantly comparing yourself to your peers, are impatient about your own job situation and cannot wait for something exciting in your career to happen. You want to get promoted!
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Every once in a while when your personal life calms down a little and work isn’t as busy for a change, you’ll get the feeling that it’s time for something new… that you’re standing still and that something new and exciting needs to happen for you! Continue reading How to Get Promoted in 3 Steps
How To Make Feedback Effective
Giving and receiving feedback can be a gift, as it can help you build or strengthen a relationship, if done right, or it can damage a relation, or be career hindering and de-motivating.
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Concerns with giving & receiving feedback:
When receiving feedback our potential concerns are that we fear criticism or our reaction to feedback and that we are nervous about having to hear something that might make us feel uncomfortable. When giving feedback we could fear that we hurt the other person’s feelings or that the other person might get defensive… and just like when receiving feedback, we could be nervous about giving it. Continue reading How To Make Feedback Effective
You Are The CEO of You!
Congratulations on being the CEO of what should be the most important corporation for you, congratulations on being the CEO of ‘You’! Understanding yourself as a business, that requires planning, investment and exercise is the foundation for a balanced and fulfilling professional and personal ‘career’.
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What’s important to keep in mind as the CEO of ‘Yourself, Inc.’: Continue reading You Are The CEO of You!
212° the extra degree
At 211 degrees, water is hot. At 212 degrees, water starts boiling. With boiling water comes steam, and with steam you can power a locomotive. It is that one extra degree that makes all the difference, and it is that one extra degree that separates the good from the great!
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How often did you have the feeling of frustration and lost motivation because you couldn’t seem to achieve your goals, and that no matter how much efforts you put in and how hard you tried, nothing was going to change? … chances are that you were sitting right at 211 degrees, and all it would have taken for you to succeed was that one extra degree.
Much too often we give up right before that moment when we would have accomplished everything what we strived for, and we just needed to keep trying. If you want to get ahead, become great at what you do and be successful in achieving your goals you’ll need to keep going when it seems to be the toughest and not turn around.
The 30 most important minutes of your day
It’s your 30 minutes lunch break! You either believed it to be an interruption of your day as you had so much work to be done, or the highlight as you were able to step out of your busy day for a moment to take a deep breath!
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But one way or the other, it turns out that you were wrong. Talking to my dear friend McKinley the other day, who follows this blog loyally from the beginning, and listening to him talking about the importance of not only never sitting alone while having lunch in the staff canteen, but also making a point of always sitting with different people, and use this half an hour to connect with people and build or strengthen relationships, opened my eyes. Continue reading The 30 most important minutes of your day
5 Benefits of Effective Complaint Management
Things go wrong all the time and when they do, it’s important to recognize and fix the problem, to follow-up with everyone involved and learn from it so it doesn’t happen again and again. That’s easier said than done since most managers prefer to keep themselves busy by putting out fires and look like heroes, rather than to face the real challenges, the root causes of the fires, and to make the tough decisions that would really change things to the better. But one way or the other customer complaints are unavoidable and depending on how effectively your team manages them it will make or break your organization.
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Besides the obvious benefit of having a problem temporarily go away and the pain that comes with it, and turning an upset customer into a happy one, the 5 main benefits of effective complaint management are:
- It creates a customer focused culture. Having your team understand the true value of every guest who is walking through your doors is fundamental for the success and long-term profitability of your business. Understanding that a guest is not an interruption of your work, but the reason that you have a job is crucial.
- It reduces the operational cost. Effectively managing a complaint and ensuring that the guest is satisfied with your service recovery, will reduce your expenses and cost in the long-rung, as you may otherwise end up having to reimburse more than necessary to keep the guest from talking bad about your business.
- It reduces the cost of winning new customers and increases customer loyalty. The return rate of a guest that was satisfied with his or her stay at your hotel is less than the one who experienced a problem at your hotel that was solved to his satisfaction. Why? … simply because your customers know that things can go wrong, but it’s important that when they do, that they can trust your organization to take ownership and get it right.
- It reduces any brand and market damage. Solving a guest complaint to the customers satisfaction not yours, hopefully stops your client from talking bad about your business or commenting negatively about the service experience on social media.
- It enhances the customer experience and increases sales and profitability. A happy guest as a result of effective complaint management will spend more at your hotel, stay longer and more often. Even more importantly a happy guest will tell his or her friends about it and act as a brand advocate.
Question: Can you think of any other examples of effective complaint management?
The 7 Deadly Sins Of Complaint Management
Getting a guest complaint is always an opportunity to turn an unsatisfied customer into a loyal advocate of your business. Understanding the value of focusing on training your employees on how to handle guest complaints and effectively manage guest expectations to prevent complaints from occurring in the first place does not only boost a customer focused environment, it also fosters a winning culture.
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While we hopefully always have the best intentions in mind when dealing with an upset customer, the outcome may not always be positive. Better understanding the 7 deadly sins of complaint management will help us to be more conscious of the do’s and do not’s when facing an angry customer the next time. Continue reading The 7 Deadly Sins Of Complaint Management
If You Want Your Business to Improve, Do It the P&G Way!
Are you just pretending that you want to know what’s wrong in your business that you can improve it, or do you really want to hear the hurtful truth and are ready to make the uncomfortable decisions that are necessary?
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Either your managers are conducting superficial meetings pretending that they want to learn what’s wrong in their business so that they can learn from it and fix it, or they really want to know what’s wrong but their middle managers are filtering reality and telling them only what they want to hear so they can look good in front of their bosses. Either way any necessary progress and healthy change is being made impossible. Continue reading If You Want Your Business to Improve, Do It the P&G Way!
3 Reasons You Should Start Your Own Blog Today
Publishing your own blog or website as in AlexanderKellermann.com or HoteliersOfTomorrow.com couldn’t be any easier and if you’re interested in getting started within only 15 minutes just click on the image below.
The 3 main reasons why you should start your own blog today are:
- Your own blog gives you a platform to share your ideas and expertise with others. In sharing your knowledge and in providing useful suggestions you can help others grow and develop and this feeling is incredibly fulfilling and enriching.
- You broaden your audience and with it your influence. Your own blog or platform literally enables you to share your opinions and thoughts with the entire world.
- You continue to grow. Maintaining your own blog is a lot of work and requires you to constantly stay updated with what’s new in your field of expertise.
I am sure you’ll find your own reasons to start a blog and hopefully will find it as enriching as I do.
Who Else Wants to Achieve Work-Life Balance in Hospitality?
Is work-life balance a loanword in hospitality?
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I took me about eight years to understand the importance of work-life balance in hospitality and that it’s not just a myth. Continue reading Who Else Wants to Achieve Work-Life Balance in Hospitality?
Do you know what your goals are?
What’s my goal, is one of the most important questions you can ask yourself at the beginning of your journey and your career in hospitality!
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I am recruiting graduates from hotel management schools for the position of housekeeping floor manager now for years, and my experience is that many, if not most, do not have clearly defined goals and are rushed to get promoted as fast as possible, and definitely faster than their peers from school. Continue reading Do you know what your goals are?