Shape the Future of Senior Living Management

Seniors flipping through memories in a photo album

Driven by longer lifespans and the aging Baby Boomer generation, the number of older adults in the United States is expected to exceed 80 million by 2040, accelerating the demand for senior living solutions. Professionals in the sector are adapting to provide affordable housing and quality care as demographics shift.

Heather Kolakowski, interim executive director for the Cornell Institute for Healthy Futures, and seasoned industry specialists discussed potential solutions for creating sustainable and inclusive senior living environments in a recent Keynote webcast, “Affordable Senior Living: Challenges and Opportunities Ahead.”

Subsidized or Affordable: What’s the Difference?

Rent-to-income ratios are a key indicator of housing affordability. Financial experts frequently advise families to spend below 30 percent of their income on rent, and those who spend more are deemed cost-burdened.

“We are currently in the midst of an affordable housing crisis, and you probably wouldn’t know that from looking at the housing prices these days,” said Severine Petras, CEO and co-founder of Priority Life Care. “Nearly one in three households devotes more than 30 percent of their income to their mortgages.”

Subsidized and affordable housing are two distinct yet related concepts. Subsidized housing, often supported by the Department of Housing and Urban Development through programs like Section 8, ensures individuals do not pay more than 30 percent of their income toward housing. Affordable housing refers to units that are offered below market rates without government support.

Rising Costs on All Fronts

With rent prices increasing faster than income growth, seniors will have difficulty finding affordable housing options in the future. Jay Woolford, senior vice president at CIRC, questions how providers will meet the growing needs: “As rents go up and the cost of housing continues to go up, how do we fill the gap for people? How do we begin to look at ways to manage housing costs and be able to provide them opportunities for nutrition, for transportation, for healthcare, for access to entertainment?”

Financing senior living facilities is another hindrance, with tax credit investors, opportunity zone funds, and volume cap bonds playing crucial roles. Woolford has explored alternative financing with his own Tukwila Village project, a mixed-used senior housing development project in Washington state.

“We were getting tax credit investors to put in the bulk of the equity for the project. We actually used opportunity zone funds as the final equity piece of that,” said Woolford. “But the struggle now is the availability of volume cap bonds. The demand is outstripping the capacity.”

Senior living management professionals also face rising labor costs and a reliance on government subsidies. With labor being the most significant expense for assisted living facilities, providers must find ways to balance the need for qualified staff with the rising costs of care.

“The bigger problem is operationally making sure that you’re able to meet the extreme demands on an expense side,” said Petras. “When you’re talking about the revenue, we’re talking about relying on a government subsidy.”

Creative Strategies for a Brighter Future

The community aspect of senior living alleviates the heftier burden of healthcare service costs seniors and their families would otherwise face with private care. Maintaining this important benefit for aging adults requires innovative solutions.

Tukwila Village demonstrates how cities can provide land to facilitate the development of affordable housing communities. “The property was actually owned by the city of Tukwila. They had aggregated a little under six acres. And we worked with the city to be able to put this together in order to do affordable senior housing on the property in conjunction with a number of other partners,” said Woolford.

Modular housing, which involves the assembly of prefabricated housing units, can offer a faster and more cost-effective approach to building senior living facilities.

“Manufactured housing has a dirty reputation, especially after a hurricane. But the reality is that new manufactured homes are actually built better today,” said Mitch Brown, principal consultant for Senior Housing Consulting. “The new regulations for building those communities are more rigorous in terms of tie downs and everything that has to happen.”

Cornell’s Senior Living Management certificate program introduces professionals to best practices for service excellence at senior living facilities. Learn more and enroll today.

Watch the full “Affordable Senior Living: Challenges and Opportunities Ahead” Keynote on the eCornell website.

Navigating the Future of Hospitality Management

Labor market shifts and workforce issues continue to challenge the hospitality industry due to the lingering effects of global travel restrictions and safety protocols during the COVID-19 pandemic. With decreased interest in hospitality jobs, many people exited the industry, creating a need for new talent and a push to bring back those who left. The profitability of travel and tourism businesses relies on how well hospitality leaders can address these issues.

In the Keynote webcast, “The Next 100 Years: Hospitality Workforce of Tomorrow,” industry experts J.D. Barnes, vice president of global workforce innovation and optimization at Hilton, and Katherine Grass, CEO of Optii, joined Cornell Nolan School of Hotel Administration faculty J. Bruce Tracey, professor of management; Vincent Slaugh, assistant professor of operations management and Tashlin Lakhani, assistant professor of management and organizations, to share valuable insights on adapting and thriving in the evolving landscape of human resources in the hospitality industry.

How have pandemic-induced labor market shifts transformed the landscape of HR in hospitality? 

Barnes: “The emerging trends around greater flexibility, the reset from the pandemic, the rise of the gig economy – all of these considerations are things that are now impacting the labor market. At Hilton, we’re keen on embedding greater flexibility, choice and control, bringing in the best talent and modernizing some of the roles and assignments within our hotels to make them more appealing to different generations.”

Grass: “It’s all about how to keep these new entrants into hospitality happy. How do you train them? How do you make things very easy for them? How do you engage in ways that maybe, as J.D. was saying, they were used to in other industries and offering that flexibility. And sometimes the challenge of hospitality is offering flexibility in new ways because you don’t always have that work-from-home option.”

What are some ways hospitality HR professionals can attract and retain talent?

Barnes: “We have an ability to bring in students who might not have traditionally looked at our employment because they can’t give up an eight-hour shift when they’re working in between classes or managing a workload. For them what’s important is a four, five, six-hour shift, which is why they may have looked at gig endeavors. And then similarly, (we have) encore retirees and people who have left the workforce but want some level of flexibility in between their retirement to pick up a different level of work.”

Lakhani:We really need to focus I think on the retention and the growth opportunities, telling the stories but also creating the stories, showing them that there are opportunities for growth and that they can see their colleague being promoted to positions, and that there is really a space for them to grow and have a lifelong career.”

Grass: “There’s all these different (talent) pools coming in who maybe are not familiar with hospitality, so how can you embrace them, how can you help them, how can you train them and bring them into the culture as quickly as possible?”

Which positions are first in line when it comes to redesigning work?

Barnes: “I do think that housekeeping, in particular, is one of the biggest areas in our hotels from a staffing perspective. If you look at the contribution that those team members make in terms of the guest experience and the amount of time they take in preparing a room, that experience is important.”

Lakhani: “Some of the most severe labor shortages are in housekeeping or in the back of the house – where we can’t create hybrid work.”

Barnes: “The more information we can gather ahead of the arrival of the customer, the more we can infuse that into the actions that our team members take in delivering that service and experience. Technology is playing a big part in making sure that it’s seamless, that it’s fast, and that the preferences are known.”

What are the influences of AI and other technologies on hospitality management?

Barnes: “We’ve incorporated AI from a training perspective in our ability to use virtual reality in helping team members understand what their duties are, how to personalize services, the sequence of steps and things like that. It’s really interesting for us to think about how we’ve morphed training across some of our hotels.”

Slaugh: “I think we completely miss frontline service work as a domain for analytics. There’s a lot of opportunity for growth. In recent years, I’ve worked on a hotel’s housekeeping scheduling problem. And that’s just a new model for our field.”

Barnes: “Things like text messaging recruiting. A lot of this AI technology is coming in here. Being able to schedule a candidate and say, hey, come in three days. We’ll be able to interview you in person. We’ve got to modernize a lot of that approach to recruiting.”

Grass: “Just even the diversity on the language front when you are managing departments: There can be a dozen languages spoken, so how does your software in real time translate conversations for them? We ensure that we do inline and real-time translations so that if a team leader is communicating something in Spanish, everyone is receiving that in their (preferred) language. All those communications are happening in real time. It’s giving that sense of community and ensuring that everyone has a voice and can make that voice be completely understood.”

How can leaders in hospitality increase the industry’s appeal?

Lakhani: “We’ve seen innovation. We’ve seen compensation go up. But I think there’s still work to be done in terms of changing the perception of what it means to work in hospitality.”

Grass: “When you have this personal connection and personal interaction, (you ask) how can the technologies help me eliminate or simplify the rinse-and-repeat that gets a bit monotonous, especially for people who are new to an industry and step in and say, ‘Oh, this is really kind of same-old, same-old every day.’ How can you smarten up and remove that monotonous bit to allow people to have more quality time to interact with the guest in better ways?”

Barnes: “The greater desire is for us to continue to emphasize that life doesn’t have to fit into work, that work should fit into your life. And so enabling that functionality, enabling that choice and control for our team members across all our hotels. It’s also the flexibility of allowing that choice and control for the team member and for them to inform us about what works for them.”

Explore Cornell’s hospitality certificate programs to gain an edge in today’s transforming industry and prepare for the workforce of tomorrow.

This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity. Experience the full webcast “The Next 100 Years: Hospitality Workforce of Tomorrow” here.

Nolan School graduate champions global social change

Brian Kaufman, ’08, leads asset management for the U.S. hospitality portfolio of Blackstone Real Estate – the world’s largest owner of commercial real estate. A graduate of the Cornell Nolan School of Hotel Administration, his time in the program prepared him not only to manage this enormous portfolio, but to strengthen the underlying assets through strong operational interventions. A recent example: last December, Kaufman received the Peter G. Peterson Award ‒named for one of the firm’s co-founders and given to just one of the company’s more than 4,000 employees each year ‒ in recognition of his efforts to drive progress on Blackstone’s goal of 2,000 refugee hires across its global portfolio companies and real estate properties.

“At Blackstone, we build diverse teams because we believe they make stronger companies,” said Kaufman. “We want to use our resources and scale to provide new opportunities to thousands of courageous refugees around the world. I’m honored to be on the team leading this initiative.”

At the time Blackstone announced its refugee hiring commitment, Kathleen McCarthy, Global Co-Head of Blackstone Real Estate, said, “Blackstone’s advantage lies in our deeply integrated approach to building resilient companies and properties, and doing so at scale. Today’s commitment to 2,000 refugee hires across our portfolio reflects tremendous focus on this effort from our team and allows our portfolio companies and real estate properties to welcome a powerful spectrum of backgrounds, identities and experiences.”

Blackstone is no stranger to setting and hitting ambitious targets. Their refugee hiring target builds on the success of both their Veterans Hiring Initiative ‒ which hired more than 100,000 US veteran, veteran spouses and caregivers across Blackstone’s portfolio ‒ and their signature Career Pathways program, which aims to recruit, retain and advance diverse and historically underrepresented talent at Blackstone portfolio companies.

Cornell has also benefited from Kaufman’s commitment to social change. In addition to serving on the Dean’s Advisory Board at the Nolan School and the Advisory Board of the Nolan Center for Real Estate and Finance (CREF), he helped establish eCornell’s social impact program for students attending Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Supported by Blackstone and CREF, directed by Nolan School Professor Steve Carvell and authored by Nolan School faculty, the program has awarded more than 100 students from eight institutions eCornell’s Commercial Real Estate certificate. It gives students the guidance and tools to manage project planning, investment and financing decisions, real estate assets and more.

Spelman College alumna Amanda Kelley, now an analyst for JPMorgan Chase & Co., says the program helped launch her career and empowered her to negotiate a higher salary.

“I am grateful to have learned so much at such an early stage of my career,” Kelley said. “The program not only educated me on commercial real estate topics but allowed me to secure a salary commensurate with my worth.”

Laterrance Jackson, a Morehouse College senior and U.S. Navy veteran, earned the certificate in 2022. “The program gave me invaluable insight and real-world exposure to the field,” he said.

Significant as his impact at Cornell has been, Kaufman continually seeks out opportunities to make a difference beyond his alma mater and his workplace. He is a Board and Executive Committee member of the Altneu Synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, which helped relocate Ukrainian refugees and recently donated an ambulance to United Hatzalah, a volunteer Emergency Medical Service organization that provides free emergency medical first response throughout Israel.

Kaufman says he is humbled by the progress and impact of the programs at Cornell – and the support he has received along the way.

“The hotel business is a people business; it’s people serving people. There are no barriers to entry in pursuing acts of kindness or service to others,” he said. “As our school’s founding benefactors said, ‘Life is Service’. It is through service that our industry can be a leader of global social change.”

 

Joanne Troutman is director for social impact programs at eCornell.

Hospitality executives plan learning “sabbaticals” at Cornell’s Professional Development Program

With the pandemic hindering in-person convening over the last several years, the Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration is excited to be re-opening its doors to hospitality executives from around the globe for its annual Professional Development Program (PDP) this summer in Ithaca, New York.

For more than 90 years, PDP has provided professionals with a respite from their daily work lives and immersed them in an educational experience like no other—providing a personal recharge and a strategic refocus. This year, the program is offered June 13-16 and participants select one of five focused tracks, including:

· Hospitality Management Essentials
· Hospitality Strategic Marketing and Brand Innovation
· Hotel Real Estate Investment Management
· Hotel Revenue Management and Pricing Optimization
· Strategic Hospitality Leadership

“The hospitality industry is facing an unprecedented era of innovation, especially post-pandemic,” said Kate Walsh, dean of the Cornell Nolan School. “This program will equip today’s leaders with the skills, context and research-driven concepts to leverage the opportunity inherent in transformational change. The PDP program is an amazing opportunity to come together with other industry colleagues and engage in meaningful learning by our world-class faculty.”

The program is designed to serve a variety of hospitality professionals, from front line-level managers to senior executives. Attendees have the opportunity to engage with over 100 peers in formal and informal networking sessions to build relationships and exchange ideas. The program is entirely taught by Cornell Nolan School’s faculty, leading research-based experts who hold deep hospitality industry knowledge and are award-winning instructors.

“It’s all about sharing and networking,” said Florent Avella, founder and managing director of Silveroaks Asset Management and a two-time attendee of the program. “While there are many things that participants would not share with competitors, when we are at Cornell, we are on neutral ground and it’s the time to share with others.”
While some professionals attend the program nearly every year to refresh their points of view, others return to the program to sharpen their skills as their careers advance and their responsibilities evolve.

“Being here is almost like a sabbatical; you are able to completely immerse yourself in learning,” shared Gary Hoffert, regional vice president at Canalta Hotels in Canada who has attended the program multiple times. “You can assess the thought process of your business—it allows you to tear it down and rebuild it with some new ideas; and networking with professionals from all around the world gives me the opportunity to see what is happening in the industry and what others are doing.”

For more information, visit the PDP program Frequently Asked Questions.

At the Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration, we’ve been pioneering, reimagining, and perfecting hospitality education for a century. We push boundaries in the pursuit of excellence and define the future of our industry. The Cornell Nolan School experience combines world-class classroom instruction with hands-on experiential learning and is the only Ivy League program of its kind.

This holiday season, give the gift that keeps on giving

Looking for a great gift idea? Consider giving a gift that will stand the test of time.

The Wine Lover
This holiday season, focus on something everyone can agree on—wine. If you love wine and want to take your appreciation to the next level, you’ll benefit from this hands-on course offered by Cornell University. Take a journey through the winemaking process from grape to glass, learning how to taste and evaluate wine with guidance from world-renowned Cornell hospitality experts. Learn more

 

The Beer Enthusiast
With so many beer options out there, how will you decide? It’s a question restaurants and enthusiasts alike are asking. Discover the answer with the Beer Appreciation certificate program at Cornell! This program provides an end-to-end understanding of beer production, tasting, and selection for making educated decisions on your choice beverage. From ingredients and process to sensory analysis, you will expand your knowledge and appreciation of beers.

 

The Entrepreneur
Have a great idea? Master the skills needed to get it off the ground with Cornell’s new Entrepreneurship certificate program. Designed for both entrepreneurs and new investors, this program guides you from assessing your concept’s viability, to navigating the pitch process, securing the right kind of funding and maintaining key relationships. Don’t wait; turn your side hustle into your main gig!

 

The Techie
Python is one of today’s fastest-growing and in-demand programming languages. The Software Development in Python certificate program follows a rigorous, real-world approach to developing proficiency in Python programming and software development. Don’t hesitate to add this skill to your resume!

 

The Health Guru
Striving to be the healthiest version of yourself? Earn a Nutrition and Healthy Living certificate to get an in-depth, contemporary scientific look at nutrition, exercise, weight loss and disease prevention. You’ll come away with a holistic view of how biochemical pathways work together with physiological systems and behavior to determine nutritional health and overall wellness.

 

Certificate program develops understanding of beer selection

The craft beer industry is exploding. Consider this: New breweries open at a rate of more than one a day, giving people access to a broader selection of ingredients and flavor profiles to taste and explore.

This presents a challenge for restaurants and bars, which must reevaluate their beer offerings in order to stay relevant to the expanding taste buds of their clientele.

In response, the School of Hotel Administration has launched a Beer Essentials certificate program to help hospitality industry professionals develop the end-to-end understanding of beer production, tasting and selection necessary for establishing an effective beer program.

Applicable to anyone with ties to craft brewing, this program will provide in-depth knowledge of the beer industry, including how to analyze and make informed decisions regarding beer selections.

“Customers expect more diverse choices now than what they’ve traditionally been given,” said Douglass Miller, faculty program author and lecturer at the Hotel School, who has more than 30 years of industry experience.

“This program will provide a comprehensive look at developing an effective beer program,” Miller said, “from ingredients and process to sensory analysis, to serving, training and sales.”

The Beer Essentials program consists of four two-week courses:

  • Beer Ingredients and Production
  • Beer Styles
  • Establishing a Beer Program
  • Beer Sales and Training

After completing the courses, participants will earn a certificate from the Hotel School and 40 professional development hours. Visit the eCornell website to learn more about this program.

Bailey Karfelt

7 expert tips for creating a great beer experience for your customers

Today there are over 15 million restaurants and bars in the world. Add in the booming winery and brewery industries, and the average consumer is over-saturated with choices when looking to grab a drink.

With so many options available, hospitality businesses are hard-pressed to elevate the experience they are providing guests. What’s the solution? Doug Miller, a lecturer at Cornell University’s Hotel School with over thirty years of experience in the industry, offers his best-practice tips for running a successful beverage program and enhancing the overall customer experience.

Consider your audience. Different people have different expectations. It’s important to understand who your customer base is, and where their interests lie. If you’re opening a new business, do some research. Visit successful businesses nearby, sit at the bar, and observe. Ask yourself, “What is the atmosphere? How are the customers responding to it? What’s on the food and beverage menus? What’s on tap? What are people ordering? What size pour is preferred?” If you’re an existing business looking to take it to the next level, do the research again. Study the differences between how your business operates versus the successful ones around you. Compare those to your ideal, and determine ways to bridge the gap.

Be strategic. Armed with information about your target customers, choices must be made. If you have a tap beer program, will you offer beer tastings? If you do offer tastings, you can work the cost of the tastings into your pricing model. Is your audience beer-centric? If so, maybe you don’t need to offer as many options for the wine lover. If not, you may need to consider alternative beverage offerings. Does your target audience enjoy craft, imported or domestic beer? Is there a popular beer being produced locally? A common mistake businesses make is putting thought into creating a local food menu, but then offering no locally sourced beer or other beverages to accompany it. If the local element is important, then it should be represented in all aspects of the menu and business.

Also consider how your beverage program complements your food offering (if you have one). If you’re serving seafood, are you offering a wheat beer or white wine to accompany it? If you’re serving red meat, do you have an ale or Cabernet Sauvignon on the menu? Some businesses may choose to forgo a food offering altogether. If you’re choosing to not serve food, consider your business hours and location. Do your hours of operation cater to an after-dinner crowd? Is the location near popular restaurants?

Cultivate an atmosphere. Atmosphere is one of the most essential components of any business. A beer program can be wildly impressive, but if the atmosphere doesn’t appeal to the clientele, the business will struggle.

Sit down at the bar and imagine the ideal experience of your clientele. Ask yourself questions. Is the bar and glassware clean? Is the lighting soft and inviting? Does the decor fit the vibe? What music is playing, and at what volume? Is it easy to carry on conversation? Should there be a television, and how often should it be on? If it’s not on, can it be covered or moved out of sight? Is there adequate seating for singles, couples and groups? Are there smells coming from the kitchen? Is there a draft from the front door? Is there space for bartenders to move behind the bar, and servers to move around the tables? Are the seats comfortable? Is there a place to hang a jacket or purse? Is a server readily available? Considering the customer experience from start to finish is an opportunity to spot aspects that may not be up to par.

Be efficient. Establish a strategy for success. Perhaps most vital to this is equipping your service team with the knowledge they need to serve any customer. Take time to ensure they understand the customer experience they should cultivate. Consider creating cards on each beverage so that your servers can access detailed information on the history of a specific beer, including alcohol content, IBUs, OGs or FGs as needed. Encourage them to be proactive in offering a second drink to guests — a best practice is to ask “What would you like to select next?”, not “Do you want another?”

Engage your audience. The most critical element of a successful business is the customer experience. And while menu options and atmosphere can be major players in creating a good experience, the make-it-or-break-it factor is service.

The service industry can be challenging; you are serving a diverse clientele, with different needs and differing expectations. Some beer enthusiasts may expect a comprehensive history of their beverage from their server, while others may want no engagement while they enjoy a drink. Some guests may lack enthusiasm or interest in beer altogether, and be present out of necessity for a friend or group. Regardless, it is important to create an exceptional experience for each customer, and recognize their individual needs. Service is a delicate balance of managing expectations and trying to meet the needs of the guest. An establishment should consider how they can improve the experience for their clientele and make their visit memorable.

The best possible experience can make many forms; for some, it will be engaging with the server over the intricacies of their beverage, while for others, it may be minimal yet efficient communication. Asking simple questions such as “Why did you choose this beer?” or “What brings you out today?” can offer insight into the guest’s beer knowledge and expectations. The answer may have to do with the brand, hops, alcohol content or simply the name sounding good. Any information can help servers to determine the level at which to engage the customer.

Pro tip — don’t leave the engagement to just the bartenders and servers! A manager’s place is also engaging with guests. Don’t waste time retroactively trying to handle online perception in an office during open hours. The best time to manage perception is on the floor as it’s developing.

Don’t make assumptions. The biggest mistake a service team can make is to assume anything about a customer. A guest may not be there for beer or wine. Men don’t always prefer beer, and women aren’t always wine. Neither beverage should be considered classier than the other; the same descriptors are used for both pallets, and the tongue has a similar experience – bitter, sweet, salty, sour or umami. A glass should be provided for either beverage; similar to wine, the full experience of beer comes from pouring it into a glass (not frozen; even chilled is not usually worth the fridge space) and allowing the guest to enjoy the aroma of the beer. Don’t expect every guest to be familiar with beer or wine, and don’t insult their understanding, either. Make every attempt to engage the customer on their preferred level, and avoid creating any sense of chagrin or discomfort.

Be decisive. With so many considerations available, it’s easy to become overwhelmed and struggle with decision-making. The same atmosphere doesn’t appeal to everyone. You can only have so many items on a menu to appeal to your clientele, and an over-saturated beer selection will not accomplish any goals. To be successful, you must determine your business strategy, research your target audience, and then make decisions that align accordingly. A beer menu doesn’t need to be huge; it can offer only 6-7 beers, given they are chosen with the clientele in mind. Purchasing too much beer runs the risk of it going out of date in the storeroom — the average shelf life of an IPA is around 60-90 days. Some beer styles can have a longer shelf life, but for most beers styles, fresher is better. Tap lines should be cleaned every other week, and no business wants to waste money on a keg that won’t sell. It’s impossible to carry every type of beer, so don’t complicate your business by trying to establish a menu for all (but do offer that level of service).

At the end of the day, an enjoyable customer experience comes down to three themes: the environment, the service, and the engagement. Devoting time to regularly developing and re-evaluating your business plan, menu, atmosphere and service team is essential to creating the optimal experience that will bring your customers back over and over again.

To learn more about creating the optimal beer program, check out the Beer Essentials certificate program authored by Doug Miller.

Douglass Miller
Douglass Miller, lecturer at the School of Hotel Administration (SHA).

Everyone’s in the hospitality business, every day

In today’s competitive market, the customer experience is everything — and not just in the hospitality industry. From the very first impression until the customer walks out the door, there are countless opportunities for making their experience memorable.  As part of eCornell’s Keynote webcast series, customer service expert Elizabeth Martyn from Cornell Hotel School joined eCornell’s Chris Wofford for an interactive discussion on understanding the customer mindset, how to exceed expectations — and even when offering guests a warm cookie might backfire.

What follows is an abridged version of that conversation. Watch the full keynote here.

Martyn: I feel like I always have to tell people that I’ve never actually worked in a hotel, which throws people off a little bit when we start talking about hospitality. But I take a broader view and believe that hospitality is really everywhere. If you have clients, or customers, or patients, or anyone who buys anything from you, you’re really in the business of providing a service and therefore you’re in the business of hospitality.

Wofford: The two of us were talking a little bit about the modern tech-savvy consumer and their expectations.

Martyn: I think whenever I start to talk about these things, I ask people to think about themselves. Because I know I’m one of these people. I’ve got my phone attached, I’ve got my computer ready. And whether you’ve thought about it or not, we’re all becoming really highly trained by our devices and by technology to have information at our fingertips. You expect that you’re going to be able to get everything done on your phone. Now, not everyone prefers to do it on their phone, don’t get me wrong. Some people are more traditional. They want that phone call or they want to do it on their computer.

But that’s where we’re moving to, because we’ve been trained that we’re always going to get exactly what we want, and there’s so much on our phones that we can use to make it exactly how we want it. But it’s not like we’re all issued the same phone with the same apps or the same email provider. Everybody can pick and choose what’s going to work for them and to create a digital experience that reflects who they are as a person. But now that we’re so used to having this thing that’s like attached to our bodies all day, every day, these ideas, preferences and expectations start to come out of the digital experience and into everything else that we participate in.

The second that your organization or your business doesn’t have a digital experience that allows people to get at those commonly asked questions with key information, or your digital information is out of date, that starts creating some conflict really quickly because now people feel disappointed. Because if other companies can do it, why can’t yours?

Wofford: As service providers, the next question that comes up is: well, what can we do about that? How do we manage these expectations?

Martyn: Start by paying attention to the questions people are asking. If you’re hearing the same question over and over, you should be thinking, “Whoa, this is a trend. We have an opportunity here.”

Wofford: If something comes up time and time again, it should really be searchable information on your website, right?

Martyn: Exactly. You should be thinking about how to make it more present on our homepage, whether that’s in the FAQs or the About section. You want to have that information available. I think a lot of service organizations tend to make the mistake of thinking that high-quality service is high-touch service. The second that you make the mistake of thinking that the only way to provide high-quality service is to force me to interact with someone on your team, you’re missing the mark because that might not be my preference.

You want to offer a choice by putting things online for the people who are going to go to your website and navigate there. It should also be easy to get ahold of someone who’s going to talk to me and engage with me maybe over the phone or in person, if that’s my preference. But you don’t want to choose for your consumers what’s going to be best for them. No one likes being told what they like.

Wofford: I really relate to that. Sometimes when you’re out to dinner and the server has come to you twenty times unnecessarily, it gets to be a little bit much. I understand that it comes from a genuine place of wanting to help, but it can be a little much. Now, let’s take on the idea of establishing operational systems. When you come to an organization and start working with a hospitality group, how do you get everybody up to speed and on the same page?

Martyn: You cannot climb the mountain the first time you ever go on a hike. It’s really important to identify your core problems and tackle those first. What can you put in place right away that will impact at least some guests?

Oftentimes, it’s an issue of bandwidth. You can’t see really great solutions if you’re behind the curve all the time. So start with a triage approach and identify the fast and easy things that will impact some folks and give you a little more space to start to then tackle the next, maybe more sophisticated, version of this solution. Don’t feel like you have to solve everything perfectly right away.

Wofford: What are the greatest opportunities that you can see with technology being able to help?

Martyn: I think it’s so easy to think that technology is going to solve it. That’s really not the right viewpoint. The viewpoint should be about how it supports us and supports anyone who’s interacting with our clients, our customers or our guests.
We talked about getting information up on your website, making your FAQs more available. What are those common questions that you’re hearing several times a day on the phone or over email? You need to get that information more quickly into the hands of your consumer so they can find it and move on with their day. That way, your frontline teams have more time and space to provide really meaningful interactions to the guests who really need it rather than anxiously trying to rush them through the conversation because there are ten people in line or the email inbox is filling up. You want your workers to feel like it’s acceptable and appropriate to take more time to work through those more complicated solutions. So it’s not only solving problems, but also making those investments to grow the relationship between your organization and your consumers.

Wofford: How do you see big data and analytics helping face-to-face interactions?

Martyn: You have to understand who the person is you are interacting with. Can you get a jump on some of that through the use of profile information? Does this person have a family? Are they a single business person? Where are they based? The faster I can get at that, the more sophisticated my engagement with them is going to be.

But there’s one thing I want to caution everyone against – and I feel very strongly about this – and that is that I’m a different person every time I interact with your brand. I am not the same person from my first purchase to my last. Travel’s a really great way to illustrate this. I’m a very different person with different needs and different expectations when I’m traveling alone for business than when I’m traveling with my husband for a getaway. It’s still me, so my profile’s going to say all the same things, but what I’m looking to get out of the service interaction really shifts depending on the context of my trip.

Wofford: What’s the takeaway on that?

Martyn: I think that’s one of the values of human interaction. The thing that’s emerging out of all the technology advancements is that there is still a very, very important place in the world for the human-to-human component of service delivery. And that’s true regardless of what industry you’re in. So, how do you take out all the perfunctory pieces?

Checking in or checking out of a hotel is a classic example. The process can be very perfunctory, focused only on the room number, the key, getting the customer to sign the waiver. But what if that interaction could be about something else entirely, and the room key and the waiver signature and the credit card are more like afterthoughts? What would be most helpful for the guest to have a wonderful stay? If there’s one thing the property could do for them over the next two days, what would it be? In my case, when I’m a business traveler, I might say that it’s providing bottled water. When I’m with my husband, I might say it’s letting us decide when housekeeping should come.

Wofford: Let’s say you’ve inherited staff who have worked for twenty plus years under one brand and they now find it difficult to follow a new training plan under a rebranded hotel. What do you do?

Martyn: Change is so hard for everyone. I think with all things, everybody wants to be a little bit in control. As an employee that means they want to know what their job is, how to do it well and how to do it in a way that is well respected. What’s really hard about what you’re going through is you have new expectations that maybe haven’t been completely explained to your team. And you’re probably sitting there going, “But I’ve said it ten times.” But that doesn’t mean that they’ve understood it or that they’ve bought in.

Companies have things like mission, vision, and values that help explain why they are doing the things that they are. In your re-flag situation, the answer can’t just be because the new brand says: “This is what we do.” If that’s the answer, or if that’s how it’s presented, there’s no incentive for employees to make an emotional investment into that adjustment.

Hypothetically, let’s say you re-flagged because the hotel wasn’t performing financially under the old brand. It’s important to explain that you were at risk of closing and ended up moving brands to better align with where you’re located, what your amenities are or whatever, so that you can keep the hotel financially viable and keep everyone employed. That’s a level of trust and transparency that also helps people understand why are they being subjected to this change. But how do you gain an emotional buy-in? And how do you work toward understanding what’s important to people in terms of what they’re really looking to get out of their job? Those are really two critical components in driving any change.

Wofford: What do you feel is more important, recruiting new employees or continuing to train existing ones?

Martyn: People say that you can’t train attitude. I actually don’t believe that. I believe training is incredibly valuable. I think that so often folks get written off as not caring or having a bad attitude, but I feel like you cannot say that that’s the case if you haven’t talked to them about the issue. I like to say “No one’s trying to be the worst.” It’s a bit sarcastic, but it means that until you feel 100 percent confident that you’ve sat this person down and explained what they’re doing, how it impacts other people, or how it’s being perceived, you can’t know that they are aware the problem exists. Until you’ve told them what they’re doing is wrong, you can’t assume that they know it.

My experience with a lot of training is that there are some people who are terrific with guests. I’m sure you have your rock stars and your people are amazing and everyone feels the love when they work with them. But if you ask them, “What did you do with Mr and Mrs So-and-So to make them so happy?” They’re going to give you a really bland answer because they don’t know what they’re doing. They’re just being themselves and fortunately for them it is perceived really well by the people to whom they’re providing service. But for people who don’t have that innate ability and want to do their job well, someone has to tell them. And some of the things that I think often go untrained are the things that don’t fall into the book of standards.

I’m sure at your property you have standards or guidelines about how you do certain things, what the rules are, how often you reach out to guests, how you communicate with them, or how many rings are allowed before you pick up the phone. All of that stuff oftentimes is documented. That’s like the ‘what’, the technical aspects of delivering your service. But the part that’s a lot harder is the ‘how’, which is actually what service excellence training is all about.

Wofford: What are your thoughts on maintaining an appropriate level of guest service when much of your staff is provided by third-party employment agencies? There are conflicting loyalties in terms of employment and focus.

Martyn: A lot of people have this, and if you have any kind of third-party contracts, or you have a management group interacting with an ownership group, it can be very, very complicated. But it goes back to what we were talking about before: getting people to understand the ‘why’.

Now, there could be a situation in which you are giving one set of directions and then the other manager that the employees technically report to is directly contradicting you, and that’s tricky. But that’s a technical piece that you have to work out between the two managers to make sure that the messaging is really consistent.

What is helpful is to make it less subjective and not about one person’s opinion versus another’s, because there’s not one person on this planet who isn’t going to say that their opinion is better. That’s just human nature. So you need to make it more objective by creating a rather vanilla, opinion-free approach to the decision-making process.

So with your different stakeholder groups, I would encourage you to go back and figure out those things that everyone is in alignment on. Maybe it’s financial incentives, maybe it is about guest experience. Once you figure out what the common point of departure is, you start to look at every situation and scenario through that common lens.

Wofford: How do you communicate metrics to frontline staff and turn it into something actionable?

Martyn: First off, hopefully everyone out there is measuring their guest experience. If you’re not, make sure you’re collecting those post-experience surveys. Consumers around the world are well trained, so there are pretty reasonably high response rates. So if you’re not yet doing a post experience survey, that’s a huge opportunity for you.

So, how do you take that information and make it into something real? Something I’ve seen done really effectively is figuring out a way to provide accolades to the people who are your stars. You might have to write questions into your survey like, “Was there any member of our staff who was particularly helpful to you?” Once you start getting that information, make a point of celebrating that Anna got three comments this last month or Sean was mentioned five times. So first off, make it personal. The scores themselves are hard to connect with and quite frankly, they’re really arbitrary benchmarks. We can’t even be sure they’re interpreting our questions correctly. But if you start to look at your qualitative data, your open-ended questions, then you have this opportunity to really raise up employees that are doing well.

Wofford: Do you have an example of a recent service interaction that really blew you away, that we could sort of look to as an example to follow?

Martyn: You know, I really see a lot of examples of great customer service, but for me I’m not really looking for some sort of special gesture. I don’t want anything comped. I don’t want a complimentary dessert. I really don’t want any of those things because so often they are a sign that the basics were not well executed. The best experience for me is when everything just happens. I don’t need anything special. I just want to pay for the thing or service that I wanted, and it all just happens smoothly so that I can pay my bill and leave. That is truly the best experience. As soon as you get into talking about ‘surprise and delight’, which is a common industry term, or these ‘above and beyond’ gestures, they actually don’t hold a lot of value for me.

So often, these gestures are nice and thoughtful, but they’re not really what I want. As an example, let’s say I’m unexpectedly delivered a cheese tray. Well, okay, that’s nice, but I’m not hungry now and I’m checking out at six am tomorrow, so I’m not going to eat it. I think it’s so hard to get gestures right in a way that’s actually very meaningful and relevant to the individual because what they need at any given time is constantly shifting. For me, I’d really rather have that energy and time invested in just doing what I originally asked for extremely well.

Wofford: Do you have any thoughts and strategies on first impressions?

Martyn: Picture this. You’ve just driven eight hours with your children and they were crying for the last hour of the journey. How do you feel when you get to that hotel? Do you feel great? No, you feel exhausted and at the end of your rope. The same could be said after a day of air travel or even a long day of work. So you’ve got a guest who is coming into what’s supposed to be this restful thing or happy thing. But so often we as guests are carrying our own baggage, or maybe we really need to use the restroom because we haven’t stopped for hours. Whatever. Then you arrive and you’re given the check-in information, the Wi-Fi password, and all that. So the guest is already feeling tired and overwhelmed and the warm cookie just isn’t going to be as effective as it would be when the guest is relaxed, isn’t lugging around their 50-pound bags and so on. Then all of a sudden the cookie would create a much larger impression because the guest has more bandwidth to absorb it.

So I would say that it’s important to really think about those first impressions. There is so much already going on during that arrival experience, so how can you take the non-necessary things out of the experience so it feels less overwhelming?

Wofford: Has your research revealed any meaningful generational differences when it comes to employees delivering amazing guest experiences?

Martyn: The research I’ve done hasn’t focused on that directly, but I can offer some of my impressions. I think generationally, what is different, goes back to the beginning of our conversation, when we talked about identifying ‘the why’. Why should I care? What’s in it for me? That’s what’s really different generationally.

Your oldest group and cohort in the workforce might not be super comfortable with tech but they have a ton of experience. They used to think customer service just meant smiling, and now you’re trying to tell them it’s all these other more sophisticated things. You have to be able to really help them understand how the changes that you’re recommending are actually going to impact the guests. Oftentimes that group in particular is so emotionally invested in the guests. They just want them to have the best time. They are so committed to that, so you have to be able to connect the dots for why that’s important.

The younger employees are going to find the tech part so easy. They’re really flexible and nimble and they want to learn. They have a different ‘what’s in it for me’ reason to adjust what they’ve already been told. On the other hand, the younger employees might need help making better connections with the guest base, who might not be just like them. Trying to better communicate with 40, 50 or 60-year-olds can be a struggle because those people aren’t like them. So although I don’t have formal research on this, what I would recommend is kind of stepping back and thinking about the different groups in your workforce and what’s important to them in terms of feeling satisfied with their job and like they’re doing the right thing and then helping to connect the dots between what you’re asking of them and the values that they hold, because they could be very different based on generation.

Wofford: Beautiful advice. A big thanks to Elizabeth for joining us today.

Order Out of Chaos: A How-To for Hospitality Planners and Developers

While project management is important in many occupations, for some it is especially crucial and can be a determining factor for success. Brad Wellstead, professor from Cornell’s SC Johnson College of Business, has over thirty years of experience in architecture and project management and has seen first-hand the importance successful project management means for planners and developers. He sat down with eCornell’s Chris Wofford to discuss the importance of leadership and management abilities in hospitality today.

What follows is an abridged version of that conversation.

Wofford: If you’re getting started in this field, what are the particular skills and ability that would benefit one most?

Wellstead: Good project management skills include understanding and getting your hand around scope of a project and being able to schedule and budget and build teams and so on. But then that works into the characteristics where you, as the leader of a project, it’s about team building and significantly excellent communication skills. You have to be a motivator and you have to be a coacher.

Wofford: Budget creation seems like it would be a particular challenge. Any advice on how to deal with that?

Wellstead: Real estate development is interesting because there’s usually one team that comes up with how much money we have to spend on a project. Then, it’s handed over to the group that has to actually execute the project. They say, “Okay. Here’s your budget and your scope, and, oh, by the way, a schedule and make sure it happens in all those conditions.” That handover, that nexus right there, is always a challenging one, particularly if there were any last-minute changes based on feasibility or needs of the project or so on. That gets smoothed over by having the involvement of a project manager who is running it throughout the entire project so, when in fact you are creating budgets, they are able to contribute and add-in the necessary factors of contingency, both time and money to incorporate those so that they’re in as part of it from the very beginning.

Wofford: When you’re involving stakeholders, what are the expectations as far as presenting the state of the project?

Wellstead: When you’re in the implementation stage, when you’re spending 60, 70% of your overall budget, design fees, and construction, that’s when the real money is getting spent. There should be often weekly meetings between the owner and the architect during the design phase and the project manager, of course.

That keeps them up to date and/or the project manager keeps the owner up to date on a weekly basis that way. As you move into construction, typically weekly, sometimes biweekly, meetings of the owner, architect, and contractor. Again, with the project manager representing the owner. That keeps everybody up to date with what’s going on.

Wofford: Tell me what somebody might get out of your course as it relates to what we have been discussing today?

Wellstead: It starts with the understanding of the project and getting your arms around it, the skills of creating a schedule and a budget and running through the whole impact management point of view with some … I don’t want to call them detours, but we talk about creating RFPs and team building and such.

And quality schedule and budget. I’ve never had an owner say, “You know what? Scope and schedule are critical thing. I don’t care about quality. Give me a bad project. It’s fine.” No, that never happens. It’s always come more down to schedule and budget.

Then, there’s this whole other part of that culture that we talk about in the course where it analyzes who the leaderships are and some of the things we talked about when we’re talking about contingency because it leads to understanding how you address contingencies. Is it white hot construction? Is it crazy municipality? Is it a community that’s going to be anti or for development? Is it a difficult site to work in and a whole lot of internal things that are happening as well as external things that could be happening so it gives you this really comprehensive, holistic view of the project that once having done that, you have a sense of how you’re going to move forward.

All of that pulls all that together. Those are the main things: the culture, schedule, budget and the team building and then the impact management aspects.

Want to hear more? Watch the recorded live eCornell WebSeries event, Order Out of Chaos: A How-To for Hospitality Planners and Developers, and subscribe to future events.

Customer Service Week Q&A with Cornell hotelie grad

In honor of Customer Service Week 2018, Cornell Hotelie grad Kelly To recently spoke with eCornell about the value of customer service from the perspective of a recent Cornell Hotel School grad.

Kelly is a 2018 graduate of Cornell’s Hotel School, with a degree in hotel administration and a minor in design and environmental analysis. Originally from Long Island, she now works in New York City as an events operation coordinator at a management consulting firm, and has experience in customer service, outreach, and hospitality.

What follows is an abridged version of our Q&A with Kelly To.

eCornell: Congrats on your graduation! As you enter the working world, how do you feel your education at Cornell has prepared you to be successful in your career?

To: My Cornell education definitely helped prepare me to be successful in my day-to-day work responsibilities. Right now, I’m working as an Events Coordinator which involves outreach, market research, negotiations, and project management—all of which I have learned and experienced in my courses.

I believe Cornell has provided me a very practical education that I’m now able to directly apply to my work. For example, I studied business computing, management communications, and negotiations at the Hotel School that provided really valuable skills that now help me in my daily responsibilities here in NYC.

I’m also so grateful for the community and support that the Hotel School provided me not only while I attended Cornell, but even today as a graduate.

eCornell: What do you enjoy about working in the customer service industry?

To: What I enjoy the most about working in hospitality is the people. While working in a customer-facing role, you are constantly meeting new people from all walks of life. You get to learn their stories and where they come from, and you have the privilege of creating and providing them a memorable experience. I have also learned that the people who choose to work in hospitality are some of the most hardworking and passionate people that you will ever meet.

Throughout my service roles, I’ve been able to develop strong communication, interpersonal, and leadership skills. I was able to learn the operations of hotels, clubs, and restaurants—but more importantly, I learned how to quickly adapt to different environments and people—and how to react when things went wrong.

eCornell: On the flip side, what do you find challenging about the customer service industry or field?

To: Really, the most challenging aspects of a customer service role are the same things that make it exciting. You can never please everyone, and there will always be difficult customers and situations. However, this serves as a motivation for me to always keep improving and innovating in order to continuously raise standards.

It can also be challenging because every single day is different, and you never know what’s going to happen at any given moment. However, understanding the operational standards and being ready to solve any problem that comes your way definitely keeps things exciting and keeps you on your toes.

eCornell: More broadly, why do you think knowledge about customer service is valuable across organizations and for all team members?

To: Hospitality is important because it’s in everything that we do. Wherever there are people and interactions, there can be (and I think there should be) a focus on hospitality and service. This is not limited to the hotel, cruise, or airline industry or customer service roles that are externally client-facing. You can think of your “clients” as your coworkers and teammates. There are always opportunities to be of service to others.

It’s been a new, exciting experience working in corporate events because I’m now on the “client-side” of the hotels and restaurants. The “customers” that I am now serving are the internal employees of the company, which is exciting in its own way because I am able to help create and cultivate the company culture.

Ultimately, my goal is to build community and an inclusive culture through curated experiences. I enjoy this field because I’m able to interact with many different types of people every day, and it’s so rewarding to see events come to life knowing that your hard work has led up to an experience that others can have, enjoy, and remember.

eCornell: Finally, as a Cornell Hotelie yourself, how do you think the Service Excellence training through eCornell could benefit team members, employees, or anyone who engages in customer service?

To: The Service Excellence training through eCornell has a very practical curriculum that I think you can apply directly into your everyday life. Elizabeth Martyn, the author, is also a Hotel School ‘07 alum and worked as an undergraduate core curriculum instructor at Cornell, so I can definitely speak to the value of that background and experience.

Understanding how to effectively communicate and collaborate with others is definitely an essential skill for people working in customer service and hospitality, but it’s really applicable to anyone looking for further develop themselves as a leader. I believe that having first-hand experience and training in service excellence is crucial in developing the problem-solving and “people” skills that are necessary to excel in any job in any industry.

Photo of Kelly To by Jason Ben Nathan