At your service.

• Author: Lewers, Christine
• Position: Indiana's hospitality industry - Includes related article on using information services - Industry Overview

Why Indiana's hospitality industry is emphasizing just that

It's not unusual for guests at the Holiday Inn Select North to be a little surprised when they meet bell man Bobby Elliott, says the hotel's assistant general manager, Linda Poore.

If a guest is having trouble getting to the airport on time, he'll make a special trip for them. Or if they've forgotten something that isn't in the hotel's gift shop, he'll take them shopping.

"It's like they're not expecting that kind of service," says Poore.

It's because of that kind of service that Poore's hotel won Bass Hotel and Resorts' Members Choice Award. Bass Hotels, which owns and operates the Holiday Inn brand, relies on customer surveys from its 2,000 properties to select one hotel each year that excels in customer service.

The recognition gives Poore tangible evidence that money and time devoted to service training pays off. But measuring how training improves service is often difficult, say industry professionals, and during economic good times when room occupancy rates are high, training is often overlooked.

Nonetheless, industry professionals agree employee training is essential to guest satisfaction, especially during periods of low unemployment. And as hotel rooms become more homogenous, it's service that will make a brand or individual property stand out from the competition.

For these reasons, industry executives say there is a renewed interest in staff development within the hotel/motel business today. Not only does this mean the business traveler will enjoy better service, but many of the methods employed by today's hotels serve as an example for other service-based industries such as financial services, insurance and retail.

The first step, hotel executives say, is to recognize that training doesn't just mean showing a housekeeper how to run a vacuum. Cultivating a service-oriented workforce begins with hiring and is an ongoing process involving training, motivating, retaining and rewarding employees.

John Greulich, general manager of Ramada Inn in Columbus, relies on personality indexing materials from Ramada's corporate office to help him find the right person for a particular job. The materials are part of Ramada's Personal Best program. Personal Best is a comprehensive program developed at Ramada's corporate headquarters in Parsippany, N.J., about two years ago to improve service anti is available to managers at all 900 Ramadas nationwide.

Personal Best questionnaires help Greulich's managers determine such things as whether a candidate is high-energy, detail-oriented or someone who likes to clean, says Greulich.

"In the past, a lot of times people were crammed into whatever position is open without assessing...