TEDx: The secret ingredients of great hospitality

Will Guidara. The secret ingredients of great hospitality. Source: https://www.ted.com/talks/will_guidara_the_secret_ingredients_of_great_hospitality

I have watched the video so you don't have to. The 5 best quotes that teach you about the essence of hospitality, tourism and leisure management.

See, that hotdog changed the way I approach restaurants from that point forward. Because up until then, I had been so focused on excellence, on all the little details that go into making a meal great, that I somehow hadn’t realized something really important: That in restaurants, our reason for being is to make people feel seen. It's to make them feel welcome. It's to give them a sense of belonging. See, in restaurants, the food, the service, the design, they're simply ingredients in the recipe of human connection. That is hospitality.

I realized, if we could be unreasonable in our pursuit of that, we could give people the kind of experiences they would remember forever. It was only then that I realized I wasn't actually in the business of serving people dinner. I was in the business of serving them memories.

First, being present. Which I get, it's like, kind of overused these days. But for me, being present means caring so much about the thing you're doing or the person you're with that you stop caring about all the other things you need to do. And it's essential in delivering unreasonable hospitality. See, so often we have such long to-do lists that we aren't able to slow down enough to actually listen to the people around us, to the things they're saying and all the things they're not saying.

Hospitality is about making people feel seen. And the best way to do that is not to treat them like a commodity, but as a unique individual. I really do believe I could have comped that table a bottle of vintage champagne and given them a free bucket of caviar, and it would not have had the same impact as that two-dollar hotdog. Because it would not have been specific to them.

For most of America's history, we were a manufacturing economy. Now we're a service economy and dramatically so. More than three quarters of our GDP is driven by service industries. Globally, it's more than 65 percent. That means that whether you're in real estate or retail or construction or finance or insurance or computer services, you do the same thing for a living that I do. You’re in the business of serving other people. And if you start to look closely enough, you will find opportunities for unreasonable hospitality, to give people more than they could ever possibly expect all around you.

Just go with me here. Imagine if the person that checked you into the dentist's office started thinking like this. Imagine if the person that sold you your next car started thinking like this. Or better yet, imagine if everyone on your entire team started thinking like this. Because making good products, it's no longer enough. Serving them efficiently is no longer enough. It's how we make people feel that matters most of all. Because I believe we are on the precipice of becoming a hospitality economy.

It does not take a big budget to start infusing this into your culture, because remember, it's not the cost of the gesture that matters. It's how it makes people feel.

This is not rocket science. It just requires caring a little bit more and trying a little bit harder. Being present, not taking yourself too seriously and remembering that one size fits one.