Service “Attitude”

In the service or hospitality industry and especially if this type of industry is the one and only economic pillar of your country or island nation, it must be something that should be safeguarded very carefully.

Nothing is perfect, OK my mistake in thinking so, but if you are in the service or hospitality industry I believe that you should strive to be as close as possible to “perfect”.

Running out of gas or forgetting to buy milk when going home are things that can happen in your daily life. Of course forgetting to buy bread or milk can land you in hot water at home depending on your home situation but this exactly why I try to use real life and personal experiences when I write these articles and that is why I question the following scenarios.

Not too long ago I attended a dinner birthday party of a friend and the family made arrangements with a local restaurant two days before the event. Basically the guests would order dinner from the menu and drinks were included.

When we arrived (19:30) five other tables occupied but the restaurant wasn’t filled to capacity and our party of twelve was seated at joined tables. When the appetizers were ordered one of the waiters came back after 10 minutes and said that they ran out of two types of appetizers. So some people had to re-order something else.

While dinner was being served another waiter returns as some of us already started eating and announced that from four people whom had ordered the same dish, two orders for the same dish couldn’t be delivered anymore because they ran out of pasta and there wasn’t enough shrimp for the two remaining dishes. So other orders were placed and finally everybody ate after a delay.

Mind you, the food was very good. Everybody mentioned this and regarding the quality of the food there were no complains but the fact that the restaurant ran out of items that were on the menu and this was done after it was ordered left a very bad impression on the family and the guests. By the way, this is a restaurant that the family visits every time they visit in Aruba.

My question is this. At 19:30 we were not at the end of the night so how come our table that was reserved two days in advance still got short serviced? What happened to other tables while we were there? Did they also experience the same things as we did?

To break away from the every day I sometimes will check into a hotel for a weekend or week just to take a local vacation so to speak.

While staying at a timeshare resort I walked out of my room and saw a housekeeping staff member in the corridor with her cart. At the same time another guest, (American) staying next to me came out of her room and she turned toward the housekeeping lady and asked in English “can I have two towels please?”

The housekeeping person looked at me in horror and as the guest repeated her question she panicked and turned to me and asked in Spanish if I can help her.

I don’t know what made her think that I spoke Spanish but as I saw the other guest becoming impatient I told her (in Spanish) that the other guest wanted two towels.

The guest thanked me and returned to her room while the housekeeping person thanked me for helping her and she mentioned that she doesn’t speak English. I still don’t know what made her think that I spoke Spanish because for the same token I could have been someone who didn’t.

So my next question is this. How can a hotel “hire” someone like that? As a housekeeping person you are one of the persons that are in direct contact with a guest. It’s not about the work itself but it’s about the interaction that one will have with the guest, where the guest is most likely to have a good and pleasant experience or feel frustrated because of the lack of communication.

Personally I don’t care if the resort is short staffed, understaffed, outsourced or whatever the problem might be. The quality of service or care for the visitor or guest be it local, (me) or the international visitor must be equal, good and professional. Incidentally this was the second time I had experienced this situation. The first time it was in an E.P. hotel with pretty much a similar situation.

But the following blew my mind away. How is it possible that a restaurant or even worse, a hotel can “forget” to order one or more items, which are needed on daily basis as part of their menu or service?

Many hotels (or some restaurants) have a food and beverage director, assistant director and along aside an executive chef or the chef is next in line. The F&B director is followed by a restaurant manager, assistant manager, (shift) supervisors and waiting staff.

In this hierarchy, someone is responsible for the ordering of supplies, keeping inventory and make sure that things are ordered and delivered on time so that the service or production is not interrupted.

If your restaurant, (hotel based) starts operations some days and there is no bread or on other days there is no coffee or milk, no butter at breakfast, no eggs or doesn’t even have enough plates, utensils or staff to work, what type of service are you providing?

What does this do to the overall tourism product where millions of dollars are being spent by the Aruba Tourism Authority on advertising and marketing but industry stakeholders themselves are failing the product?

What type of hotel/restaurant management or management structure is in place that allows this type of gross negligence time and time again? What kind of remedial actions, interventions or even sanctions can be taken in cases like this to correct these actions so that the service and service “attitude” can be changed for the better?

I find this very unsettling to say the least that this type of service neglect is possible in 2016. It’s not that we have a shortage of supplies or supplies are not available, no, this is a structural lack of management and total disregard for not only the industry but also the service “attitude” towards the guests.

Doesn’t anyone take pride in their job or do they just want the paycheck without actually working? How can a corporate head office of a hotel chain permit this type of situations and nothing is done about it?  

These were three examples of what I consider to be part of service attitude. Three examples of how things shouldn’t be. The sad part is that while I experienced this, what will the international guest say about the service and how will they project this attitude towards the outside world?

Doc