The details of the horrific Mandalay Bay attack offer a clear example to the hospitality industry as to just why proactive – and often covert – security standards must be tested and implemented. The name of the game is to detect, deter or neutralize an attack before it takes place. In order to do this, smart technology and keen intelligence gathering techniques must be deployed. Well-versed analytical personnel must have unfettered access to the intelligence and offer management their professional assessment as to the threat at hand.
We note here some of the suggestions we have provided in recent conversations with hotel security personnel or in hospitality sector security associations or meetings. If implemented, these revised or updated protocols could further enhance security for guests and employees. But to be effective, they each must be studied by the hotel operator, assessed for potential legal challenges and training must be provided to employees.
Again, with the emphasis on being proactive and getting out in front of potential threats, consider the following measures:
*Key Point: Consider adding a waiver or consent clause to your guest registration paperwork in which the room occupant specifically agrees to periodic entry by hotel staff to ensure the safety of all guests and employees.
There are many other proactive ways to enhance security at hotels and large venues. Various technologies are commercially available which permit iris scanning or facial recognition. Of course, with the adoption of new techniques, some privacy is given up. Individual brands and properties will determine the right mix for their locations, based on customer demographics, prior incidents, crime and terrorism trends and importantly, the law. Privacy cannot and should not be total in a hotel as guest and employee security and safety must be taken into consideration.
]]>Create Exclusive Deals for Your Text Messaging Subscribers
Customer loyalty is important in any industry, but especially in hospitality where competition is fierce. You want your guests to feel valued, and one way to do so is to create exclusive deals that only your subscribers can receive. When your guests feel special, they are more likely to be loyal to your company. When you send out deals through text messaging, make sure that those who are receiving these messages know that the deal is exclusive to texts. With SMS alerts for hotels, you can give your customers discounts on hotel stays, or offer upgrades when bookings are low.
Send Text Messages as Reservation Confirmations
Text messages are an easy way to let a hotel guest know that you have received their request for a booking. Whether the guests want to stay an extra night or is reserving a table at your restaurant, a quick text lets your guest know that the request has been received. While you can take the time to make a phone call to let your guest know the information was received, a text message is faster and a more direct form of communication.
Let Guests Know What is Going on in the Area
Guests feel cared about when you share interesting activities that are going on during their stay. Whether your hotel is hosting a comedy night, or there is a fun event in town, share these events with your guests through text messaging. You’ll be able to reach guests no matter where they are, and you’ll be providing great customer service at the same time.
Texting Can Be Essential for Communicating in a Crisis
It’s simply not possible to call every guest at once, but you can reach all your guests instantly through texting. With two-way texting, you can both send out alerts and also enable guests to respond to confirm their safety or give tips to law enforcement. A real-world example of using texting during a critical situation is Omni Dallas Hotel was able to use their texting platform to ensure the safety of staff and guests when the Dallas police shootings occurred in 2016. They sent a total of four messages during the crisis that allowed them to first alert employees about the issue and then give them the all clear when they hotel had been secured. They said about the whole ordeal that it brought them “great peace of mind to know that we can reach our entire team during events like this.”
Allow Guests to Order Room Service
When you have guests that would prefer to text an order rather than use a phone, text messaging in a room service order provides the opportunity. Once the food has been ordered, you can send out a text to let the guest know that their order has been received. Once the meal is ready for delivery, another text can be sent to the recipient to let them know the meal is on the way to their room. Text messaging makes ordering room service a more streamlined process.
Ask for Hotel Guest Feedback Right Away
It’s important to know if your guests enjoyed their stay at your hotel. If there is a problem, you’ll want to address this problem right away. When you send out a survey to ask for feedback when the guest checks out of your hotel, you are more likely to receive the feedback that you want. Guests will often answer the survey while traveling back home, when the stay is still on their mind. Keep the survey simple so that you receive clear answers to the questions you seek.
Text messaging is an essential tool when you are trying to provide quality customer service. With messaging in place, you can request customer feedback and offer deals that are exclusive to recipients. Texting offers an open form of communication that is clear and direct, giving you the ability to provide excellent customer service at all times.
]]>Unfortunately, there’s some bad news, too: Meyer’s initiative, which he is calling Hospitality Included, will raise prices 20 to 35 percent. So that $138 tasting menu could soon cost about $170.
The new policy will be rolled out at all of Meyer’s restaurants in the next year; Shake Shack, his fast-food chain — and his only D.C. presence — will not be affected by the change. But as the restaurant industry begins to rethink the way its employees are compensated, the no-gratuity business model — which has already been implemented in two local restaurants — may catch hold in Washington.
Though Meyer certainly isn’t the first restaurateur to eliminate tipping — restaurants such as New York’s Dirt Candy and Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., have already instituted service charges instead — his 13 restaurants will set a high-profile example for others in the industry struggling to retain an often low-paid staff.
That’s because the reasons for eliminating tipping go beyond just sparing diners an arithmetic problem when they’re a little tipsy. Tipping is an unequal system by which servers can make more than three times what highly trained cooks preparing the food earn, even though a waiter’s base minimum wage is less. That’s one of the primary reasons Meyer says he is doing away with the practice.
“We believe hospitality is a team sport, and that it takes an entire team to provide you with the experiences you have come to expect from us,” Mayer wrote in a statement. “Unfortunately, many of our colleagues — our cooks, reservationists, and dishwashers to name a few — aren’t able to share in our guests’ generosity.”
He put it in starker terms to the Web site Eater: “I hate those Saturday nights where the whole dining room is high-fiving because they just set a record, and they’re counting their shekels, and the kitchen just says, ‘Well boy, did we sweat tonight,’ ” Meyer said.
To be fair, tipping can also be unjust to servers, whose livelihoods depend on the whims of hard-to-please guests. For every $10,000 windfall, there’s a night where a waiter gets a foreign tourist unfamiliar with American tipping customs who leaves nothing. Which in turn can lead to servers fighting over tables they see as big spenders and stereotyping minorities and international guests, whom they perceive to be poor tippers.
You may think that tipping motivates good service, but in fact, the correlation is murky. Michael Lynn, a Cornell University professor of consumer behavior and marketing who studies tipping, has found that the amount of a tip isn’t what motivates waiters — it’s the number of tables they can serve in a given night. But when Lynn compared Miami restaurants with a conventional tipping system with eateries that have a flat service charge, he found that diners considered their service to be better at the tipping establishments. Apparently, the suggestion of a link between tipping and service is enough to influence both diners’ and servers’ perceptions.
There are already restaurants in Washington experimenting with the no-tip model. Sally’s Middle Name, an H Street NE restaurant that opened this summer, adds an 18 percent service charge that is split evenly among all employees (excluding owners) working a shift. Servers there make a base wage of $10.50 per hour, compared with the District’s minimum tipped wage of $2.77 per hour.
There has been some grumbling about the system on Yelp, and in a review, Washington Post restaurant critic Tom Sietsema writes that “Sally’s employs a few waiters who seem more intent on hanging out, or pushing diners to order more food, than on considering what diners might actually want or need.” But co-owner Aphra Adkins said that no one has expressed any disappointment to her.
Adkins hopes that Meyer’s decision will have a ripple effect in the industry.
“I think it definitely shows that it’s on everybody’s mind to make sure that everyone who’s working for them, and everyone in the community, is being treated fairly and making the money they deserve,” she said.
The biggest difference between Sally’s Middle Name and the Modern is that Meyer has eschewed a service charge, building the cost of labor into his menu prices. It’s a risky move that could turn off diners. And it could deter servers, too: Many servers at high-end restaurants prefer tips because they can make much more money. Plus, there’s the transparency of tips: Tipped wages are legally protected, and though servers may choose to pool their tips with busboys and other front-of-house staff, that money can’t be touched by owners or cooks. Meyer says he’s working on a transparent system that will keep his servers’ wages the same, or better, but many longtime servers in the industry fear the loss of that protection against wage theft.
That’s part of the reason Adkins went with the service charge: “That 18 percent is kind of our way of saying, ‘We’re being open and honest with you,’ ” she said. “It’s not going into our pocket.” Another D.C. brewpub, the Public Option, has built tips into its prices — but it has been open for only a week and isn’t yet serving food. The owners are so far the only employees.
Saru Jayaraman, co-director of Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, a group that advocates for better wages for restaurant workers, applauded Meyer’s decision in a statement, saying it “sets a powerful example for New York restaurants and beyond.”
“Dignity and profitability are not mutually-exclusive ideas at America’s restaurants,” said Jayaraman’s statement. “Eliminating the two-tiered wage system is essential to ensuring a fair and just future for the nation’s 11 million restaurant workers.”
Whether diners will find it fair remains to be seen. And if not? They’ll always have Shake Shack.
]]>As we previously reported in our June 2013 issue, New York City recently became the largest municipality in the country requiring employers to provide sick time to employees under the “Earned Sick Time Act.” However, in order to become effective, the Act contains a unique provision that ties its effective date to the New York Coincident Economic Index. On December 13, 2013, the New York City Independent Budget Office announced that the economic thresholds were met and that the Act will go into effect on April 1, 2014. The letter on Coincident Indicators for the Paid Sick Leave Act is available on the Independent Budget Office of the City of New York’s website.
Under the Act, any employee who is employed for more than 80 hours in New York City in a calendar year is entitled to paid or unpaid sick time (with limited exceptions). Employers with 20 or more employees in New York City must provide covered employees with up to 40 hours of paid sick time per year. Employers with less than 20 employees must provide unpaid sick time. Beginning on October 1, 2015, the threshold drops and employers with 15 or more New York City employees must provide up to 40 hours of paid sick time per year. Under the Act, sick time is accrued at 1 hour for each 30 hours worked, capped at 40 hours in a calendar year. Furthermore, employees are entitled to use sick time for absences from work due to: (1) the employee’s mental or physical illness; injury or health condition; need for medical diagnosis, care, or treatment, or need for preventive medical care; (2) the care of a family member needing such medical diagnosis, care, treatment, or preventive medical treatment; (3) the closure of the place of business due to a public health emergency (as declared by the commissioner of health and mental hygiene or the mayor) or to care for a child whose school or child care provider is closed due to a public health emergency.
New York City employers should begin to review and revise their sick leave policies as necessary. In addition, employers should implement necessary administrative functions to ensure compliance with the Act’s strict notice and recordkeeping requirements. For example, employers must retain records for a period of two years that document the number of hours worked by each employee and the amount of sick leave accrued and taken by each. Additionally, at the commencement of employment, employees must be provided with written notice of their entitlement to sick time and the notice must provide information relating to accrual, use of sick time, the employer’s calendar year, and right to be free from retaliation. Prior to instituting a sick leave policy, employers should carefully review the Act to ensure compliance.
]]>Common Sense and Substantiation
But hiring managers aren’t without their own “lie detectors.” Common sense is the first line of defense in ferreting out resume deceit. If, for example, a resume asserts that the applicant earned a Harvard Ph.D. in 1995 but also says he or she worked for a Texas company from 1993 to 1996, common sense says that one of those statements may not be true.
If you’re recruiting for an open position using an online job board, many job-seekers will be aware that if their resumes include certain keywords, they’ll rank higher on your list of potential candidates. That’s all the incentive some of them need to exaggerate their skills and experience. To validate their claims, ask applicants to detail their expertise in an expanded resume, explaining whether they’ve attained the asserted skills through training courses alone or through on-the-job experience, and when and how they applied the skills in previous positions.
Verifying other information, such as previous employment dates and education, requires old-fashioned legwork: online research to make sure a listed company or university actually exists if you’re not familiar with the name, and phone calls to verify
employment and graduation dates. (Hundreds of websites offer to supply the “highest quality custom replicated diplomas,” so don’t accept a proffered diploma as irrefutable evidence of a degree.) To make sure an applicant isn’t covering an employment gap by claiming to have been self-employed, ask for names and numbers of – and then call – former clients.
The Application Advantage
A customized application serves as the second means to uncover resume falsehoods. Drafted skillfully, an application can unearth information that a resume won’t. Most people, for example, wouldn’t volunteer information about a criminal conviction on a resume, but, on an application, would be forced either to address the question or leave it blank, which is a red flag in itself.
While a resume typically provides information about dates of employment and may list job responsibilities and achievements, an application can ask for the reasons the candidate left a previous position. An application also can request the names and phone numbers of previous supervisors, whom you then may contact to verify claims made on the resume. You also may get more information from the supervisor than from the previous employer’s HR department, where personnel probably are well trained in dispensing no more than “name, rank and serial number.”
Make sure the candidate completely fills out and signs the application. If he or she has completed the application online, a signature on a hard copy must be required during an interview. The signature provides confirmation of the statements and agreements on the application and can be important in the event of later litigation. Never fill in blanks on the applicant’s behalf.
Let the Applicant Speak
Use the interview to clarify and test the truthfulness of information on the application, and to learn about the applicant’s personality, character and motivation. You achieve that goal by letting the job-seeker talk, rather than spending the interview selling your organization. Certain responses can be telling – for example, if applicants talk negatively of their prior employers, you can expect that in six months they will be badmouthing your organization, too. As in the application, of course, avoid unlawful interview questions about age, ancestry, religion or other issues that could be used to discriminate against a candidate.
If you suspect the applicant has falsified information on the resume or the application, or simply may have made an error in the submitted information, don’t hesitate to ask for an explanation. But don’t accept the response as a truthful representation of the facts
without verifying its accuracy.
Hiring someone who has lied on their resume can contribute to costly employee turnover, endanger customer relationships, increase the risk of litigation, and hurt your company’s bottom line. You can avoid those potentially negative consequences by clarifying, verifying and becoming an insightful lie detector.
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