Professionalism in Hospitality

Professionalism in Hospitality!!!


A well known Sanskrit proverb, "Atithi devo bhava" which further re-defined in english as "Friendly and generous behavior towards visitors and guest, intend to make them feel welcome" is what now we called "Hospitality"

But do you really satisfy by conversion of this behavioral aspect into commercial aspect. By just saying "We are from Hospitality Industry" or "We are Hospitality Professional" doesn't make sense at all. Hospitality is something which is in your attitude, which is in being a good and kind hearted person, is what we call "Respect" reflected by love , affection and care for others... Truly speaking its not worth to call everyone a Hospitality Professional…Yes! Certainly we should refer them as a Service Professionals…

It become question now, how to re-vitalize the zest of true hospitality among the today's so called Hospitality Professionals… correlating two word Professionalism and Hospitality is easy but giving justification is hard.. Let us find out what is true sense of hospitality and how one can make it more meaningful when we talk about Professionalism in Hospitality.



In my five year's of life span in Hospitality Industry its harder to find any employee with the real smile on face. We all look very friendly, well-disposed, generous and try to become more and more caring when we are involved in providing Services to the Guest. Here I'm putting a question in front of you , How much comfortable do you find yourself by doing the same?

According to a research "Making yourself delighted forcefully led to adverse affect on our day to day behavior". Job in the hotels and other service sectors like – BPOs, Airlines etc involves such practices. In that case if we refer the Employee a Hospitable Person, definitely not sounds good. Yes it will give a soothing effect if we say they are Service Professionals. By putting such statement I'm not trying to affect the dignity of the front-line staff, rather putting effort to convey the right psychology required to become a hospitable person.

When I was working as a Waiter in a reputed hotel of India, we feel pride in doing service… but truly speaking if any one ask me are you hospitable at that moment, my zeal says "No"… We involved so much in increasing the sale, that sometime we forgot the Ethics of profession, that again lies in Hospitality… We minimize the options available, while recommendation. Say, we provide Regular RO drinking water, Packaged drinking water and Avian Mineral Water. Out of which the packaged water priced Rs.100 and Avian Mineral Water priced Rs.250. The manager forces us to sell mineral water as much as possible. In such cases we approach the guest and say "Shall I get a bottle of Mineral Water" definitely the frequency of "Yes" were more. There are only few guest who raises there voice saying "Won't you offer regular water"…

Similarly, if you talk about 'Upselling" its tough to find the ethics over there…

We cant increase the sale by making our self adhere with Ethics of profession.

Professionalism always teach us to show Empathy in spite of Sympathy. Think by brain not by heart… be professional in decision making… Non of your action lead to loss in revenue (in priority) and goodwill(in minority).

We get training on various type of Selling practices like- Cross, Switch, Upselling and so on. But never ever correlate the same with Ethics of the profession. Truly speaking business can't run by just adopting Ethics all the time, like one of my senior colleague says "Rules and Regulations are Guidelines we cant work considering or making rules and regulations mandate for us."

The similar thing I find in case of "Hospitality Industry". The word Hospitality is somewhat we say is a Ethics and thus we cant work with Ethics.



We need to become professional also in order to sustain….



Talking now about how to re-vitalize is the essence of Hospitality in profession, requires not only the thorough "training" but also involves developing a mindset with passion to serve with a right attitude. Developing a right attitude respective to the profession is good, but ensuring its implementation is tough. We dealt with 'n' number of employees in a company, and Human Resource put there best effort to hire person with domain specific attitude. People now are smart enough to speak; that's why the psychometric test is also incorporated by few companies in the procurement process in order to make there selection process worth for the companies. Research seems to play important role at this stage, especially related with "Understanding Employee Psychology", "Effectiveness of Selection Process", "How to ensure Implementation of Training Inputs", "Socio-Economic Factors affecting Employees Attitude" and other similar topics.



My dear friends, this effort of mine is to put forward some issues which are not focused and ignored by us, especially those which affect the Ethics and Morale of the profession and trade.


It would be delighted if you give your valuable comments and feedback on the above discussed matter.