Submitted with many thanks by Alice Robertson
Cultivating a successful career in the hospitality industry involves building and strengthening personal and professional relationships and ensuring you can deliver a stellar product or service. Success is also predicated on maintaining a solid, positive reputation in the industry and with customers and peers. Hospitality Cleaning 101 can help you build connections, solve problems, control costs, and develop a successful operational platform.
Hospitality Work
The term “hospitality” encompasses several different professions. It typically includes restaurants, bars, clubs, casinos, hotels, resorts, spas, and other service providers. It could even include event planning companies, event venues, and any other type of service in which you are working directly with customers and providing them with service. In these venues, people may come in with high expectations and often spend some money. As such, ensuring that you provide detail-oriented, customer-focused services is critical.
The first step is ensuring your place of business is free of unnecessary stressors and negativity. Bad vibes can be one of the first things customers notice and can result in an overall bad experience, which usually equates to lost business and bad reviews. As with your home, work to create a welcoming and positive atmosphere that makes visitors enjoy their stay. This involves simple steps, such as decluttering, cleaning, and organizing areas.
Education and Experience
Many colleges and universities, particularly those located in resort destination cities, offer hospitality and management degree programs. This can help you recognize hospitality services’ human and business elements. This includes managing people, planning events, and maintaining all applicable licenses and insurance while also understanding compliance with best practices in regulating food and beverage services. Hands-on experience is also valuable, particularly if you have the opportunity to work in different industries and in different positions. Recognizing what goes on behind the scenes and on the front lines can be invaluable.
Maintaining Relationships
The hospitality industry is often reliant on repeat business and word-of-mouth recommendations. It’s critical that customers enjoy their time in your venue, speak well of you online and in person, and are happy to refer others to your organization or business. Part of this also includes being able to resolve customer problems as they arise, so even if things don’t go completely as planned or there are unexpected bumps in the road, your ability to smooth things over and keep the customer happy will be important to overall customer satisfaction and reputation management.
Marketing Your Company
Your company should be easily found via a quick online search, and your website should provide visitors with all relevant information necessary to do business with you, such as location, hours of operation, entertainment options, reservations, ticket sales, menus, and anything else of interest. According to HVS, you should also have a strong social media presence. Consider live-streaming events, inviting patrons to share their experiences and tag you, and regularly interact with visitors as a way to build relationships. You can also advertise to your target demographic via email or text campaigns, ads in demographic-specific mediums, and things like open houses and online videos.
Working With Influencers
Influencers are increasingly leading the charge in helping hospitality-related entities promote their businesses. If this is something your business might benefit from, Creative & Cultivate notes that working with influencers can be a great way to generate interest in your business, whether a restaurant, venue, or event. Essentially, you provide comp (complimentary) services to influencers with a following in your target demographic to promote you to their audience. For example, you might allow a small party to have a free meal in exchange for posting pictures, comments, and other favorable reviews that will help generate interest.
The hospitality field can be competitive, so maintaining a reputation for high-quality service is essential to your organization’s success. Staying active on social media, marketing to your target demographic, and going above and beyond to provide exemplary service are all key to success.
Thanks for reading, and if you have any questions on Hospitality Careers or how we might help, please reach out.
Also, check out our podcast @ Podcast.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay