Time to double down

I’m sure, like me you have experienced some pretty challenging post covid service.?

I’m currently at Edinburgh airport heading home to London, my 10th?flight in the last 20 days and my 10th?flight in a row that’s late. This one today is only delayed by 2 hours, so pretty good. Imagine if we ran our businesses like that, we would all be out of business in?a matter of?weeks…. Yet for some reason airlines / airports can. I have learnt not to make too many plans either side of a flight as it’s like?Russian?roulette if you turn up or not. (maybe you do, but your cases?don’t)

I noticed something today sat here.?

It’s that we ‘The General Public’ have become used to this, there wasn’t any screaming or shouting, just an airport full of shrugs and eye rolls. British Airways won’t do anything to fix it, so we have almost become conditioned to accept the new level of hospitality / service that is well below the baseline we all had and expected pre covid. Anyone checking luggage in nowadays is the modern-day equivalent of Van Gough cutting his ear off. Mad. I saw a guy in the lounge go through about 7 plates at the buffet to get a clean on to have his lunch?on, you could see he was just over it, but there was no on there to talk to, so he just carried on.

Ok, it’s not only BA.?

Some of my more recent examples include Uber, it would be easier to actually hotwire a car?to?drive home than wait for an Uber to turn up… that’s if?they?accept the job and then don’t cancel it for a better job. Before you mention it my score is 4.83, I’m no slouch! I was waiting at Heathrow the other day, at the pick up zone and it was just full of intercity commuters looking at their phones, then each other, as uber after uber cancelled. Something that never happened pre Covid now it’s just ‘How it is’?

Near on every dining experience I’ve had in recent months has been hard.?The teams are stretched, the menus are limited and the level of experience has been traded for the view of ‘lucky if you get fed’. You can see the team are done, God knows how they keep turning up to work, but we are grateful they do.?

I could go on and on. Lets remind ourselves this isn’t the teams fault.?

What’s really interesting is the public seem to have all started to feel like they have Stockholm Syndrome, the realisation that losing your shit won’t fix anything. Those of us in hospitality have?seen?it all.?Screaming, shouting, crying with sheer frustration and that’s just on a Sunday breakfast while waiting for a table (look if you guys all come down at 9am what did you expect), I digress.?

The point here is, there is a general acceptance of this new world order of sub-standard service, people have had enough but lost the fight as nothing is changing. What a time to be alive. Shell is making millions while Grandma can’t heat her house, we cant water our gardens because as an island surrounded by water we have run out of water, the government are too busy trying to?re-elect?the geezer that lied to us and wears Palm Angel sliders, now he’s our saviour. All while we become acclimatised to the human capital crisis in front line roles of our service industry.?

What does this mean?

Well, it’s an opportunity and a massive one for us.?

We have the chance to drive quite a considerable point of difference by investing into our people, the ones we?still?have. While our peers are cutting their cloth to fit the level of business, true visionaries are looking past today and tomorrow. They see the bounce.?They are thinking how they want to drive brand accretive service, how they want to stem the bleeding of record high LTO, most of all they want to be seen as human companies investing in what matters. The teams, our futures.?

Hotels are banging at the moment, massive occupancy, stellar rates. This is while some hotels (not naming names) are cutting back their offer! I stayed in one brand the other day and they had taken so many things out of the room I was glad I still had a bed and ONE towel (please stop the towel thing it makes you look crazy cheap and I was paying over ￡200). What’s important to note here is guests are willing to pay for it, these guys are smashing it on to their credit cards. They are sending us a direct message, being prepared to get themselves into debt at a time when you need to?re-mortgage to fill up your car with?fuel. 2 years of being locked in at home has been a lot for all of us. Travel is needed for our mental health and more importantly these guys want to be looked after and feel something they haven’t in a couple of years, a quality experience.?

Our guests are pushing through train strikes, cost of living expenses, no luggage, no uber… no joy… just to get to your business. Don’t just take the money and run…. Think bigger, be better.?

If you are delivering top quartile hospitality in 2022 you are winning. You are delivering something 90% of the industry isn’t capable of. So don’t start making cuts in the bits that matter.?Start building training courses, go back and look at how you want your brand to be defined in this busy market. You have a chance to drive brand advocacy by working harder than the rest on?the?front line, face to face experience.?

Imagine a year’s time, when you doubled down on your investment of the teams, your LTO has stabilised making quality easier to deliver, you have created a ton of brand advocates by delivering some epic service experiences?and?you never know you might have been?reunited with your lost luggage?from the airport, happy days.?

In truth the choice is yours.?

As a business owner/leader, you can decide the future of your business. As a team member you have the choice of working somewhere that invests in you or somewhere that doesn’t.?

The last few weeks at edyn have involved a lot of meetings with the People and Culture and Learning and Development teams all talking future, the courses being written, the investment into leaders development, better inductions, better training for new starters, more well defined experience in 2 of our brands (Locke is already pretty defined). The continued goal even in a manning?light?lifestyle offer is to sit in that top quarter position in each market we deliver in for quality. Soulful hospitality doesn’t just happen.?

What are you doing to take this situation in both hands and drive difference that outlives a crisis?