Smile is inexpensive but Not Cheap!

Smile is the most cost-effective method to serve people, still one of the least used in today’s hospitality. Now the reference of using smile is subjective. Smile does not come from your mouth; well not 100% of it, a genuine smile comes from eyes, yes eyes. To distinguish between a real/genuine smile and a fake/plastic smile, just look at the eyes and you will come to know.  Most people, in this industry (service industry) under-estimates the power of a genuine smile. For instance, if you could see people around you, the air-hostess in a renowned airline, barista at a coffee shop, servers at the restaurants, sales people or executives in stores or malls, a next door store attendant, receptionists and N number of people like that, how many of them do you really notice giving you a genuine smile from the heart (eyes) and how many do it, simply because their manager asked them to?

Asking your staff to smile is good, but how many of us, do actually show them the importance of genuine smile? Smile is the best and the most economical jewelry, any person man/women can wear or say must wear. It’s cost-effective but by no means ‘cheap’.  When going to a nice restaurant, or even say your daily coffee shop, you get what you ordered, the quality of the product is excellent, exactly how you wanted, on top of it if one of the staff, smiles at you genuinely from the heart and wishes you a good day, it just makes your day sometimes. Smile is also said to be contagious and a good disease to spread.

It is an old saying that says ‘It takes more muscle to frown than to smile’ and based on science its WRONG. According to scientific back-up, it is actually the exact opposite; it takes more muscle to smile than to frown, to be precise it takes 10 muscles to smile and only 6 to frown  (Tom, 2009), and that is only mouth muscles. May be that is the reason, most of us Humans which are the only animal kind who are biologically able to laugh from birth, are prone to frown than to smile simply because it is easy.

Coming to other side of the scene, if you are a guests or a manager or someone at a high post, smile more often, and smile to people you might not know, or have hardly talked to. It might mean just a smile for you but it could mean a world to someone else. I recall once, in of the hotels I worked, it was a world renowned property, one of the house-keeping staff, got lit up in the morning, why? Because the General Manger of the hotel, saw him and smiled and asked how he was.

So to all those people, who are working in whatever industry you are, smile and greet people, it might really mean a lo to some and might motivate more than you can imagine.

BU MOST OF ALL SPREAD THE DISEASE OF A GENUINE SMILE FROM HEART & EYES AND NOT A FAKE ONE

"People" not "Human Resource"

representation image: swagathotel.in from google-images

Its been said like a thousand times, but yes it is very very important to understand in real sense that people are at the base of hospitality industry, as a matter of fact for any industry where service is a part of it. 

Whether its your driver that gets you to the hotel or drops you at the airport, the door man who welcomes you, the bell man who takes your luggage's responsibility , the front office agent who checks you in with a smile, the manager who makes sure that all is going well, the restaurant staff who serves you or the chef who cooks the food for you, all are in fact PEOPLE and then why is it not that all are respected as people. Now this is for the guests to understand but in most cases even people working on the other side of the hotel industry viz. the staff (generally at a higher rank) also forgets the same not needed to mention the person who gets the laundry done, or the plumber who works to make sure there are no leakages or the server who works in the staff canteen or the cashier who gets you pay check, we the same "PEOPLE" sometimes forget that we indulge and interact with people. Most of us after a certain time think of these amazing beings working day in and day out as just "objects', or 'machines' who are there to get the job done that is it.

Now some people tend to get their designation or their superiority in one way or the other that they are in some sense higher and thus they really don't think much of all this or that they don't have time for all this. Now what we all forget is that we all started somewhere. In most cases unless you are born with a golden or platinum spoon, you start at the bottom. In hotel industry to be specific, people who are at higher position now, like say the GM or the Food & Beverage Manager, the Housekeeping Head or the HR Director did start somewhere small in the beginning. Even if you are a graduate from "le amazation" school in Switzerland or France, you do similar work may it be during your internships or training or during your practical sessions of school. So in an ideal condition most people know what it is to work at the base level. Then why not appreciate this people. If you step back and think about the way you sometimes knowingly or unknowingly treat your subordinates and see to whether you would have liked it, if you were in their shoes, probably you wouldn't. 

Remember no matter how advanced your establishment is, doesn't matter if you have a Bugatti or RolceRoyce for pick-ups, or 50" flat OLED screen TV in the rooms, or a Molecular Gastronomical smoke infusing guns for futuristic cocktails, iPad for modernized check-in, order taking etc, in the end the establishment is still run with nothing but PEOPLE. Start to show a little respect and kindness. The guests will do the same. Lots of business man have said that make your employee/people happy and they will create amazing experiences for the guests.

Here I would like to quote what Sir Richard Branson had said recently (or at least I believe he said that cause it was a lot in news recently) and its sounds apt 

"There is no magic formula for great company culture. The key is just treat your staff how you would like to be treated" 

-Binny Varghese