Kontakty interpersonalne w hotelarstwie

Abstract

The subject of interpersonal contacts is not frequently mentioned in the hotel industry literature. The authors of handbooks focus mainly on history, facility management, equipment, service procedures and description of a model hotel employee. Hotel industry is a particular branch of services, where people and their relation to others play a crucial role. Hotel industry is based on meetings of accidental people who undergo series of mutual relations. A guest, who decides to spend a night at a hotel, automatically makes a decision to trust a hotelier. Guests entrust hoteliers with their property and safety but also allow hoteliers to have an insight into personal, intimate areas of their life. Hoteliers, on the other hand, automatically provide hotel guests with smiles, words and gestures, which are learned, practiced and trained to a degree which resembles natural human behavior. These interpersonal relations are the nature of hotel industry. There is a reason behind a saying that hotels can be as good as the people who work there. How to reach this level of perfection? How to serve the guests well and meet their needs? Good communication is crucial. The basis of good communication is mutual understanding. The foundation of understanding is getting to know the guests and their needs and, what is most important, confronting these needs with the needs of a hotelier. It is not always as easy as it seems. The basic needs, which are at the very bottom of Maslow’s pyramid, are the easiest to diagnose and to fulfill. All hotel guests expect a roof over their head, a comfortable bed and a delicious meal in a hotel restaurant. Everyone, regardless of their destination, wants to feel safe and stress-free at the hotel. When these basic needs are fulfilled, there are new needs, called the higher level needs, which emerge. In order to fulfill these needs, we should get to know our potential guest better. This can be achieved by queries, questionnaires, interviews and information collected directly by hotel employees. However, it is the communication that is the most important. In order to make guests feel as actual guests, not as elements of room furniture, we need to make contact with them and reach an agreement. To achieve this, we need to know the types, temperaments and characters of our guests as well as secrets of effective communication, both verbal and non-verbal. While talking, we are communicating only 7% of information verbally; 38% – through tone, timbre and vocal signals such as sighs and murmurs; 55% – through gestures and mimics. The distance between interlocutors is also important in interpersonal contacts. It is usually determined unconsciously and depends on such factors as tempe-rament, social and cultural environment and mutual relations between interlocutors. We will keep different distances while talking to a hotel guest and a friend. While talking to hotel guests we need to keep far enough so that we do not interfere with their intimate space but at the same time stay close enough to make them feel comfortable. In other words – we should not stand neither too close, nor too far. It is worth to remember that every human being and every situation requires individual approach. Metaphorically speaking, we should not approach a guest with a measuring tape, but with empathy and intuition instead. A good hotelier uses these abilities to make a right judgment in a right moment.