Know Your Guests

In all of your hospitality operations, it is critical to know your guests and understand your target market. This applies to every department within your hospitality business regardless if your business is a hotel or a stand-alone restaurant. Fail to know your guest and understand her needs and your chances of failure increase dramatically.

When I was a Food & Beverage Director, I was once asked by the property General Manager how I would go about designing a new restaurant menu. He was expecting the usual answers that revolved around food ideas, industry trends and what skills the chef brings to the menu. My answer bewildered him.

I said I would start by meeting with our marketing department.

"The marketing department? What in the world do they have to do with your menu? The marketing director, Jim, doesn't know the difference between a rib eye steak and a porterhouse" he said.

"My menu development has absolutely everything to do with Jim's marketing department because Jim understands our guests" I replied.

You see, a successful menu is one that caters to your core demographic, a key data element the marketing team spends an enormous amount of time and money to define and refine. Loop the marketing team into your menu planning becuase they know what your guests need and more importantly, what they want!

After all, it makes no sense to implement an expensive five star menu in a two star hotel. A guest who is paying $49 for a room isn't likely to spend $200 on dinner. Conversely, creating a low quality, family friendly Applebee's style menu wouldn't resonate well with guests of a five star resort who expect nothing but the best. So, unless you know your guest and understand the market your core demographic "lives in", you won't find much success in designing a menu.

The old mantra "Know Thy Customer" cannot be emphasized enough in the hospitality industry. Guest information such as demographics, tendencies, pricing profiles, visit histories, etc should be gathered, stored electronically and shared with all department heads. Services, offers, activities and products must be designed with the guest front and center in the minds of management. Everything must be optimized to meet the needs and wants of the core demographic.

"OK, I get it. I see how this applies to food and beverage.  But what about other hotel departments. What does this have to do with Housekeeping or Engineering?"' you might ask.

Here's a great example. One hotel I worked at had three levels of room quality within the same hotel. The lowest level appealed to the general vacation market, the middle level catered to those with a more discerning taste and executive business travelers while the highest level rooms were marketed to high rollers and those who don't blink at shelling out  $2,000 to $10,000 a night for a luxurious stay.

Thus, housekeeping stocked each room type with different amenities. The quality of soaps and shampoos increased as the room level increased. The quality of robes increased as the room level increased. The in room amenities such as complimentary bottled water and fresh fruit arrangements increased as the room level increased. 

The same "leveling up" philosophy applied to the quality of physical room elements such as furniture and fixtures the Engineering department maintained for each room level.

So make sure every department, including housekeeping, engineering and F&B gets to know your guests. Learn what makes them tick. Understand what your guest needs. Understand what they want. What does your guest find valuable? How can you personalize your service or product to your guest?

Knowing your guests will get you on the road to creating happy, repeat guests. Mastering the art of knowing your guests and really understand them and you will be pedal-to-the-metal speeding down the open freeway to a successful hospitality business.

So go ahead and give this Hospitality Gem some consideration. Meet up with your marketing team this week and see what you can learn about your guests. I would love to hear how you got along with this Gem so please leave a comment below or feel free to contact me at davidknight825 @ yahoo.com with your comments, queries or feedback!