Remaining in contact with each other is a critical piece of hospitality communications. How can you ensure that your entire hotel staff is committed to doing so? By introducing the following points to them, you can establish what each person’s role is, along with encouraging everyone to work closely together.
Clear expectations can make all the difference. Remind them that they’re a team and should communicate clearly, avoid mixed messages, and prevent confusion. In essence, avoiding any missteps that could get in the way of providing an excellent guest experience.
Top 10 Hospitality Communication Practices
Ensuring your entire team is well-versed in various hospitality communication practices is an excellent place to start. It prepares them to help guests and their fellow employees right away.
1. Establish Your Communication Channels
Each employee should know what the plan is for communicating about a variety of situations. Everything from the signage inside your hotel to when they’ll receive email alerts needs to be well-established, along with how to resolve an emergency as quietly and efficiently as possible.
Some hotels rely on their employees’ personal cell phones for hospitality communications, but doing so could be a mistake. There are so many things that can go wrong with cell phones, including having no signal or a phone being dead. Instead, choose a form of communication that is reliable and more available.
Consider what would happen if a guest on the top floor reported an emergency situation to the bellhop, only for them to need to make their way down to the lobby to find help. The precious time that would be lost could make the difference between life and death.
How can you prevent this potential problem? By encouraging open, transparent communication between your hotel team members, along with stressing the importance of reporting concerns immediately.
After all, the outcome of our example would have been quite different if the bellhop was equipped with a smart radio. Rather than having to rush down several flights of stairs, they would have been able to ask for help right away.
2. Practice Active Listening
It’s vital for every employee to understand how to use active listening to their advantage, including repeating statements they’ve just heard, paying close attention, and practicing empathy. Even if an employee can’t resolve a guest’s problem, they can ensure that the guest feels listened to, which can make all the difference.
3. Avoid Creating Communication Silos
If your staff seems to cluster together according to their roles, it’s critical to encourage them to avoid creating a communication silo. A communication silo is a natural side effect of having multiple departments working on different functions of your hotel.
For example, your front desk staff may possess information that your housekeepers should know, but will they actually pass it on? Or will the info go no further than the front desk? Creating opportunities for your entire staff to get together can help ease the silo effect, thereby ensuring everyone has access to important information.
4. Create a Customer Service Tone
Did you know that your employees send a strong message to guests through their body language and tone? In fact, 55% of communication comes from body language, while 38% is linked to tonality. A mere 7% of communication comes from the spoken word, which makes it imperative to create a customer service tone.
Be aware that some employees aren’t in touch with the message that their tone can send. For example, people with different communication styles or sensory sensitivities may find it challenging to adjust their tone naturally. Provide extra assistance to help these employees present your guests with the right non-verbal messaging.
5. Always Rely on Empathy
Let’s face it; the average person will always be much more interested in their own issues than in someone else’s. While this might not be something you can change, you can teach hotel employees to rely on empathy for all their hospitality communications. The ability to look at things from another person’s perspective is the top skill you should seek when hiring or promoting employees to work directly with your guests.
Even when your employees are having a bad day, they’ll receive the benefits of taking an empathy-first approach, including improvements to their social interactions and mental health. Therefore, being empathetic can help your employees and guests.
6. Use Clarity in All Discussions
Some staff members may use vague sentences and filler language instead of getting to the point. However, your guests are looking for clear and honest language. That’s why the first priority of hospitality communication should be keeping it clear at all times. Be decisive and avoid overexplaining. One prime example is steering clear of excuses when a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ will suffice.
To promote clarity, it’s a good idea to model it from the very top. In other words, the head of the hotel should always maintain open, honest communication with team members. Begin by setting clear boundaries, so that each team member is aware of what is expected of them.
7. Maintain Ongoing Interactions with Your Guests
Checking someone in and out of their hotel room is a start, but it’s also the bare minimum when it comes to delivering exceptional guest service. If you want to gain their loyalty, you’ll need to maintain hospitality communications throughout their entire experience. Plus, don’t forget to maintain occasional contact even when they’re not staying at your hotel.
One of the best ways to keep this communication channel open is by providing direct messaging during their stay. Whether you choose to use a branded social media app or create something internal, you should have a staff member available to answer any questions or problems that may arise.
8. Always Make a Good First Impression
Remember when we said that you need to avoid creating communication silos? Imagine that you’ve checked a guest in, but a lack of proper hospitality communication has resulted in a dirty room. No matter how well you handle the rest of their stay, 91% of guests will never return. It goes even deeper than simply avoiding your specific location, though. The vast majority of patrons will cross your entire chain off their list.
Staying in contact with staff members from other departments is a good way to prevent this. Also, it’ll give you a chance to change the incoming guest’s hotel room, if necessary, which will avoid the entire negative scenario described above. Remember, every part of your team plays a vital role in guest satisfaction.
9. Online Reviews Are Part of Hospitality Communication
Taking care of an in-person guest is obvious, but what about former guests that leave a less-than-stellar online review? You might be tempted to ignore this or deal with it later on, but that’s not the right answer. Choosing to respond quickly, politely, and publicly, can provide a good opportunity to convert them into a satisfied customer.
Avoid denying any wrongdoing, even if your hotel staff is completely innocent. Instead, take the empathetic path by asking them to share their experience with you. Let them know that you’re very sorry that the hotel failed to meet their standards and ask what you can do to help correct the situation. Keep in mind that it’s not your job to be right; it’s your job to ensure each guest has a good stay.
10. Conflict Management Techniques Are Key
Working in a hotel means meeting people who are stressed out, tired, or flat-out angry from time to time. Learning how to contend with these individuals is key for staff members. Teaching them how to deescalate a situation is the best way to prevent angry outbursts. Using conflict resolution techniques such as showcasing patience, compromising, and active listening are your roadmap toward understanding.
Ideally, you’ll have new staff members undergo a de-escalation and conflict resolution course before they interact with guests. After all, an irate guest isn’t going to care that they’re new. Once their experience has become less than perfect, they’ll always remember the way it felt and are likely to never return.
Putting Hospitality Communications into Practice
Although you might expect hotel team members to automatically understand these points, it’s still necessary to provide a proven training routine. Be sure they understand how to use their tone correctly and know how to properly use your hotel’s communication channels. Don’t let fragmented hospitality communication hold your team back from giving each guest a memorably happy experience.
What’s the best way to get your team on the same page? Consider using smart radios with built-in panic alerts and real-time language translation to improve team communications. By better connecting your team, you can cut down on service delays, remove language barriers, and respond to emergencies faster.
Are you ready to take your hotel team to the next level? Leave your hospitality communication issues behind and switch your team to Relay. These simple yet powerful tools will provide the perfect way to get in touch with a mere press of a button.
