Developing good tourism hospitality courses
January 2003
Tourism hospitality courses are an essential part of any tourism program. These courses serve not only as reminders of what to do and not to do, but they also provide the industry a way to gather together the various components of your local tourism industry. It is amazing how many people who work in the hospitality industry forget to offer good hospitality. A simple way to offer the hospitality that our customers deserve is to remember that when we travel we too expect good service. The next few years may prove to be very competitive years for the tourism industry. Those locations that offer safety and security will survive, and those locales and industries that offer good security with good service will thrive. To help you get the New Year off to a good start, here are some ideas to create a tourism hospitality course that meets your locale’s needs.
- Think through whom should be invited. Not only should hotel, restaurant and attraction personnel be invited to a tourism hospitality course, but also think through who else meets your public. Invite people whom you may never have thought are part of the tourism industry. For example, there should be representatives from law enforcement, hospitals, and banks. All of these people meet tourists and add to the overall tourism impression that your tourism community gives to the tourist.
- Think about special problems that a tourist might have at a restaurant, hotel, in a police station or at a hospital. For example, tourists at local restaurants often seek unique local dishes and yet often do not have a great amount of time. Restaurants need to know how to provide local dishes without wasting the visitor’s day.
- Learn to listen attentively. Again in the case of restaurants, waiters and waitresses should listen for special needs. Is the visitor allergic to certain foods, does the person wish to avoid pork products for cultural or religious reasons? Does the guest have a special physical need and therefore may require special accommodations?
- Do spend time practicing the correct way to greet visitors and to deal with the angry, frustrated or exhausted tourist. Travel is less and less fun in today’s post-September 11th world. Most people still like being there, but less and less people like getting there. That means that our visitors need our hospitality more than ever. Expect people to arrive angry, tired, or frustrated. Personnel must be trained never to take these emotions as directed personally against them, but rather to understand that the traveler has no one else to whom to turn.
- Study the cultures of the people who visit your community. While it is impossible to learn about every culture, most locales tend to have people who visit them from no more than 3 or 4 distinct cultural groups. Learn something about those cultures; find the time to publish basic information in the languages of the people who visit your community.
- Know what issues or problems most frustrate your visitors. For example are there problems with poor signage, is it difficult to learn when stores are open or closed, are road hazard signs clearly marked? Is the local visitor center or police department closed on weekends or at other times when visitors come to town?
- Teach personnel never to allow a tourist to leave town. For example, if your hotel is full, direct the person to another local hotel or even make a telephone call for that person. Ask questions such as: “Is this your first time here? or Do you need some specific information? Then make sure that when you say good-bye to express his/her desire that the visitor will return.
- Remind people never to give false information, never to oversell a product, never to look unhappy in front of a tourist and never to simply ignore the visitor. Never forget that although you may have been asked the question a million times before, for the tourist this is an important question and deserves and answer.
- Do not follow the current airline model of service. When profits are short, offer more rather than less service. Instead of complaining, as some of the aviation companies are doing, that you are not making enough money, use a downturn to build customer loyalty and gratitude. Too many people in tourism forget that not only is good service good business, but good service is security and good economic policy. A smile and a kind word may cost nothing, but they are an investment in your job-security. Tourism and travel professionals should never forget that the public has a choice not only of tourism service providers, but it also has the choice simply not to travel. Win over each customer as if your job depends on it, it does.
