Leadership In Hospitality Industry

The Arrival Experience at the IHG For the IHG Brand one of the most important ingredients to ensure the secret for success in creating guests a memorable stay is their first impression, their arrival experience. When our guests enter the hotel, their arrival experience sets the bar for any further relationship with the hotel. When the bar is raised and maintained at high levels, a strong relationship with the guests can be built. It has been said that in the hospitality industry the first impression is the last impression. At the David InterContinental Tel Aviv the first impression is also the future expected arrival experience as our guests are anticipating experiencing it again and again during each future arrival.

By keeping a directive and authoritative style in assigning & managing your projects, you will always find yourself being challenged by your own managers, which is how you will accomplish your vision & plan. Most of the time, if you are directive and somehow absolute, you will find your managers trying to look for an easy way to accomplish projects effortlessly. However, they are, then, more likely to end with unwanted and unsuccessful results. Possibly then you might find yourself adjusting your project repeatedly or even dropping it, hoping you will find the right people to accomplish it, or even blaming your managers. You worked hard and invested many hours in planning all the logistics of your project, you have set milestones defining periods, you have assigned tasks to your managers to bring it to life and you have tried all possible ways to commit your team.  But it doesn't always work effectively. Why? The answer is that by being an authoritative and directi...

Creating new products and solutions stems from our ability to think and see outside the box. Creative people today are dealing with the challenges faced by groundbreaking pioneers: the need to explain and convince others of what they're doing. Sometimes, they battle alone, and they may experience difficulty and doubt along the way. If they wish to succeed, they must believe in themselves and know they are on the right path. Furthermore, they should select a supportive environment that empowers them. Most people have yet to see that creative thinking isn't the privilege of a few; each of us has the ability to be creative. When I started walking down this road of collecting information and directing through images, I felt like a pioneer in the field. No one seemed to understand what I was doing or why. Many believed that I was taking unnecessary personal and financial risks. My environment encouraged me to stop and "get back on track"; my loved ones explained to ...

"When Sotirios Ikonomou was promoted to Rooms Division Manager, he brought forth an idea that he believed would strengthen the relationship between our Housekeeping department through motivating and bonding with the supervisory team, and the outcome was truly phenomenal. Shadow your employees to learn about them. "After dedicating two weeks to shadowing his employees, Sotirios understood not only their work responsibilities, specific roles, and individual skills, but he also achieved real insight into their personal stories. It was evident that the team was positively impacted by the quality time that Sotirios spent with them, so he felt that it was very important to share those special moments with the rest of the hotel managers so that they could be a part of the overall impact. Spot what makes them unique, and share that. Promote them, not yourself. "From a single room in the hotel, he constructed a photography studio where he created a film fr...

Leaders have to embrace their employees’ new ideas and initiatives and to guide them throughout implementation. However, the existence of the right environment is the most important component to awaken and challenge the creativity of our people. Creating the right environment at work is exactly like the  “space”  that a painter or a photographer needs in his studio to be inspired and create. If you take away this space, creativity will be less empowered.  In the hospitality sector, by not creating the right environment at work our employees will be less motivated to influence others by establishing a trend of routine.   Providing the right space is to recognize the employee’s ability to create and to invent ideas that he or she can translate into actions and services. The key element in the process is to provide your team with trust and independence, to allow them to practice their initiatives freely under your guidance as their leader.   As pare...