It is easy to forget, in the frenetic pace of the hospitality industry, the need to create opportunities to talk with other industry professionals. Show me a successful hotelier and somewhere down the line you’ll find a mentor or friend who helped clear the pathway to that business success.
Ehotelier recently had the pleasure of speaking with the International President of Skal, Mr Mok Singh and the Secretary General of Skal, Mr Bernhard Wegscheider. Skal is a professional organization of tourism leaders around the world promoting global tourism and friendship. With 18 000 members and 450 clubs in 85 countries, Skal is a trusted voice in travel and tourism. Here are three reasons why hoteliers need to talk to each other and build friendships to support each other.
1. To learn from each other
I asked Mr Bernhard Wegscheider, Secretary General of Skal International what he thought was the key thing hoteliers could learn from each other. He said “The hotel industry just runs when you provide special service and service is the success of a hotel. A hotel General Manager told me ‘You can buy a cheap watch and if it shows you the time it does its job. You can buy an expensive watch – if it doesn’t show you the time, it’s a waste of money’. So, it’s not the hard skills but the soft skills, and the hotel industry can learn from each other how soft skills work.”
In order to find out how Skal saw hoteliers connecting internationally, I asked Mr Wegscheider what he saw as being the best way forward. “We are working at Skal International on a database where we have built up the possibility for all tourism channels to do business together. Each member will have access to the database where they can look for partners. We are also working on an app where members can get connected with other members – we are providing the communication channels and which channel they use is then up to them.”
International President Mok Singh talked about the advantages of communication internationally. “A lot of developmental opportunities come along when we communicate with each other. In India, for example, there is a tremendous need for infrastructure for tourism and for hotel rooms and we have members in India who are very well connected with members overseas that communicate with each other and possibly can bring different flags to areas that need additional hotel rooms.” On a domestic level, he said “There are many common causes that we need to work on together. A lot of that has to do with taxation and government regulation. In the United States, particularly in recent months, there has been a lot of activity related to taxes on internet bookings and if hoteliers were able to communicate and form a common opinion about how these things need to be dealt with at the policy level, I think we would all benefit.”
President Singh also commented on learning best practices from each other and told a story about a General Manager from Orlando whose employees all wore a badge inscribed with the letters W.I.T. When Mr Singh inquired as to what it meant, the GM asked him to ask the employees. The staff all said it meant ‘Whatever It Takes’ to satisfy the guest. The badge was working well for the hotel in building a culture of service. President Singh says “By meeting each other and talking about successes and failures we can establish best practices which can be of great use and value to us.”
2. To stay relevant and up to date in the industry
Mr Singh cited the single most important thing for hoteliers to be running with right now as being sustainable tourism. “A lot of hoteliers still do not think that the sustainable tourism aspects of what the industry demands going forward are being viewed by the travelling public as being very important, so the hotels that subscribe to sustainable tourism practices and make that information available to their guests are benefitting and will continue to benefit. So, my best advice to hoteliers is to look at your operations and see how and where you can introduce practises that are sustainable for our environment and if that results in a higher room rate, then your clients are willing to pay.”
With regards to social media, Mr Singh had this to say “There’s no substitute for face to face meetings however, we have amazing opportunities today with social media to use these opportunities to enrich our business lives and I think we need to develop processes where groupings within the travel industry can come together and set up forums. It’s a new opportunity which we never had before and some of us old hands, including me, are in a learning mode as to how to best harness these opportunities.
3. To show that the tourism industry has the power to make social and political change
“At Skal, our motto is ‘Through tourism, we can build collaterals that lead to peace,’ said President Singh. “When you have people exchanging tourist visits and getting a better understanding of the folks across the border, it builds the collateral that leads to peaceful coexistence. One very significant example is that we have a Skal club which we call the Red Sea Bay Club. This is at the northern tip of the Red Sea where three countries, Egypt, Israel and Jordan come together, and this club was established to bring together the nationals of all three countries in one grouping to sit together and discuss areas of common interest on how they can develop the tourism infrastructure within their region and work with each other to accomplish that. They come together in peace, friendship and understanding and the authorities have recognised that to the extent that they actually facilitate the movement of our members to the meetings.”
“Another example – you know there are no tourist visas available for Indian nationals to visit Pakistan and vice versa. I was in India recently and had some conversations with the Indian government about offering a platform at Skal for Skolleagues in India and Pakistan to speak to each other where we might hopefully be able to convince the governments on both sides to issue a limited number of tourist visas. I’m going to continue to work on this for as long as I can but regional circumstances change almost on a daily basis, however the seed and the idea have been sown and hopefully it will bring results at some point.”
When we meet as hoteliers, there are so many things to be gained. Sometimes we just need reassurance that we don’t need to be intimidated by the bean counters. On my table at the Skal meeting was a GM who told us the story of a visiting auditor from a large hotel chain who had requested a stocktake of the number of teabags used at breakfast. ‘What did you say to him?’ I asked. He answered matter-of-factly, “I told him to bugger off.”
About Anne Edwards
Anne Edwards combines her love of language, travel, and different cultures as Editor in Chief of ehotelier.staging.wpengine.com. Prior to this position, Anne lectured in Cross Cultural Studies at the Blue Mountains International Hotel Management School in Australia and currently consults to the Australian Federal Government on subjects such as Leadership and Building Productive Partnerships. Anne has travelled and worked internationally for twelve years, holding various positions in the field of education, most notably as linguistic advisor to the Crown Princess of Thailand for two years where she sampled some of the best hotels in the world. Her love for travel spans the freedom of wandering on a shoe-string budget to the finest standards of service in world-class properties. As Editor in Chief of one of the largest hotel news sites in the world, Anne has a birds-eye view of what is happening in the industry internationally.
