Andrew Stembridge, managing director of Chewton Glen in southern England, says it is the magical moments of a hotel stay that make the guests want to come back
One of the questions that Andrew Stembridge asks applicants for jobs at a hotel is ‘What have you done that has most delighted a guest?' One young woman replied that while working in reception a guest who had a grand do to attend in the evening wanted to book an appointment to have her nails done in the beauty salon.
The appointments book was full so the receptionist, who was due to have her nails done that afternoon, offered her slot to the guest. (She got the job).
On another occasion, Mr Stembridge said he recently received a letter from a guest describing an event which had made his stay. He had got lost in the hotel corridors looking for the spa and the housekeeper had put down her pile of towels and escorted him to the right room.
"These are magical moments for guests which do not cost anything. Guests here expect comfortable rooms and excellent food. What should come across is a level of service that makes their stay. I think it is all about that, any hotel experience where one member of staff should make a guest's stay," he said.
At Chewton Glen, a five-star country house hotel on the edge of the New Forest in Hampshire and a member of the Relais & Châteaux organisation, he arranges what he calls "Wow!" training so guests can deliver that higher, decisive level of service.
"This is pro-active training. You can't actually legislate for what will happen. We are empowering staff to say it is okay for you to take the initiative - ‘You will not get told off for doing that.'"
His philosophy is straightforward and one recognised as best practice by hoteliers throughout the world - it is a "people business".
Many hotels chains, Mr Stembridge ruefully points out, make major investments in the hotel style and furnishings but "too often the same level of resources does not go into staff, the people who run the hotel".
He added: "We get people at Chewton Glen who will distinguish between a good stay and an outstanding stay. It is because of good old fashioned hospitality. The problem with a lot of hotel businesses is that they are run by marketers, business people who have a tendency to lose sight of fact that what drives our day is the human element."
Mr Stembridge had more or less marked out a career in the hotel business from the age of 14. "I sort of fell into it. I had a vague connection as my mother was a cooking teacher and had her own catering business.
"My first job was as a 14 year old washing dishes - a friend who usually did this could not do it that week and asked me - soon I was making starters and puddings."
Mr Stembridge grew up in the Scots border town of Melrose where there is an annual Melrose Sevens rugby festival. It was, he remembers, one of the busiest days of the year with plenty of work for a would be hotelier.
"I was thrown in waiting at tables and that was that. I wanted to go to university on leaving school and it was going to be hotel management or landscape architecture. I chose a four year course in hotel management and tourism at Strathclyde University," he said.
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A meeting room at Chewton Glen |
The variety of different jobs he has done in hotels has, he said, equipped him for the manager's role. "There are very few jobs I have not done so far so in terms of managing, I understand the challenge when you can say ‘I have done that'."
He first arrived at Chewton Glen, a 58-room hotel which is a serial winner of awards in both Europe and the US, in 1997as operations but left four years later to take over as general manager of The Scotsman in Edinburgh. He returned to Chewton Glen in2003 as managing director of the privately owned property.
The majority of the guests at the hotel are leisure but there is a good proportion of groups, there for a combination of business meetings, team building and relaxation. The largest meeting room will take 140 while the three smaller ones take between six and 24. All are equipped with necessary projectors and screens so there is no need to hire any extras.
"We made a decision to build these things into the price. It makes a big difference. People would book the rooms and then find they had to pay thousands of pounds for equipment," he said. Similar thinking went into the decision to include WiFi in all bedrooms at no extra cost. "People don't like being nickel and dimed," he said.
It is in the incentive and team building aspects of corporate visits that Chewton Glen comes into its own. There is golf, tennis, clay pigeon shooting, croquet for the stout hearted and sailing on the Solent. Corporates or the staff at the hotel will also draw up programmes including treasure hunts and other diversions
"At big hotels, they are doing so many of these they become repetitive. We have simple itineraries that other groups have done. We give them ideas once we have established what their budget," Mr Stembridge said.
Much of the success of these events depends on the staff. There are 235 at Chewton, a ratio of three to one guest. "That's a ratio that most people would baulk when they hear it. But it is typical Relais that they lavish attention on people.
It is the attention his staff can give guest which he believes gives Chewton the edge of other establishments. "We have always had a high proportion of staff to guests. For us a group is just a bunch of VIPs who happen to know each other.
"We take very single delegate to their room. We never hand out the keys. Because you are part of a group, you must not think that the service we give you is any less.