Getting to the Heart of Hospitality
I was 20 years old when I first entered the Hospitality Industry. I was in Belize (where I was born), going to college, and in need of a part-time job to help with paying the bills. My idea of hospitality at the time was not very defined. I was a business major and can remember looking at the tourism management majors and inwardly thinking “is that a real degree?”. I’m sure that, at the time, I thought of it as just a job and not a way of life. Fast forward 18 years and I can say with certainty that not only do I consider hospitality as something that goes beyond working at a physical hotel or restaurant, I also believe that there are different ways to express and deliver hospitality. It can be either transactional or heartfelt. It can be about the “what” or it can be about the “who”. To explore this more, I’ve rounded up quotes from a few friends, colleagues, and respected voices in different sectors of the industry to share their unique perspective on heartfelt hospitality. You’ll gain insight into this idea and my hope is that you’ll be inspired to seek out travel experiences that deliver heartfelt hospitality and/or look for opportunities to be a part of an organization that does so.
“hospitality is about creating space for someone to feel seen and heard and loved”
What does Heartfelt Hospitality mean?
One of my favorite voices on the topic of hospitality is Customer Service Consultant and author, Micah Solomon. In his book, The Heart of Hospitality, he says that “hospitality is about creating space for someone to feel seen and heard and loved”. It is “the degree to which (the guest) feels that we are on their side, we have their back, we are their agent”.
What I love about this perspective is that it is the furthest thing from transactional. It is about connection and the genuine desire to care for another person because, by doing so, we get to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. And I also think that it speaks about a certain type of individual. The person who embodies this outlook is someone who has what CEO and Founder of Saira Hospitality, Harsha LA’cqua calls “the hospitality gene”. Her idea is that this gene is what links philanthropy and hospitality; it is the “gene of service: service to the guest and service to humanity’.
“The two cannot be separated: great service cannot exist without great leadership”
Can heartfelt hospitality be trained?
The idea of a hospitality gene might imply that once someone has that, the work is done. However, like with any inherent talent or natural ability, achieving excellence requires work, the right environment and the right coaches or leaders.
I love this quote from Simon Sinek about Will Guidara, another one of my favorite hospitality professionals, the co-owner of 11 Madison Park and author of the NY Bestselling book, “Unreasonable Hospitality”, that says: “Most people think of hospitality as something they do. Will thinks about service as an act of service—about how his actions make people feel. And he recognized that if he wanted his frontline teams to obsess about how they made their customers feel, he had to obsess about how he made his employees feel. The two cannot be separated: great service cannot exist without great leadership.”
This resonates with me so much because I’ve experienced too many times how hotel owners/general managers/leaders can spend all the time, money and resources on making sure the guest is taken care of and not nearly enough spent on the team members who are delivering that care.
Will Guidara nails it when he says, “whether a company has made the choice to put their team and their customers at the center of every decision will be what separates the great ones from the pack.”
“Culture comes from the leaders throughout the organization.”
How do heartfelt acts of service happen?
I asked three different hospitality professionals specializing in hotel development, talent and culture and creator and brand partnerships, respectively, to share how they would define heartfelt hospitality as it relates to their areas of the industry. Here’s what they had to say:
Mark Harmon, Founder, Auberge Resorts Collection
I think of heartfelt hospitality as a genuine, sincere, and warm act of service coming from the heart. Not scripted.
Each of us has the capacity to bring heart to our craft. In my experience, that happens when leading with your heart becomes your culture, your standard...when compassion and care is honored, celebrated and worn with distinction.
Does your organization (and its leaders) inspire you? Do you show compassion for others? Do you truly listen? Do you model heartfelt acts of service?
Miroslava Romero, Owner at Miroslava Romero Human Talent & Executive Coach
Heartfelt hospitality when working with and building teams, is having a genuine desire to make others feel special, seen, and cared for while being complicit in helping to create unforgettable memories.
Devon Gardner, Owner at Devon Victoria Consulting:
Heartfelt hospitality when working with creators and brands is making them feel SEEN. Showing them you care about them or their brand on a personal level, knowing their name and their children’s names or the details of their products, anticipating their needs, responding to requests with curiosity and joy, and making it a true win-win for everyone by looking out for the best interests of all involved. This builds the relationships, which is utterly crucial and a pillar of hospitality, and allows incredible partnerships to come to fruition. And at the end of the day, doing this all because of an intrinsic love of creating delightful experiences for others- your clients, its collaborators, and its fans.
Do you see the common threads that are woven through these responses and the quotes from Micah Solomon and Will Guidara the way that I do? I see words like “genuine”,” care”, “seen”, and “heart”. They all express what I consider the most beautiful part of delivering heartfelt hospitality as well as being a guest and receiving it: the human part. It goes beyond a monetary transaction, a templated response, or an automated process or system. It understands that those are just tools that mean very little without the people giving and receiving them.
Have you experienced heartfelt hospitality yourself? Do you currently work at or run an organization where you’d love to see this carried out on a daily basis? Get in touch with me if you’d like to learn more from me and my friends above about how to make that happen.
