A lot of times it can be easy to forget that, at the heart of it all, the travel industry — especially the hospitality industry — is really about people. We don’t mean to, but sometimes, in the pursuit of efficiency and profit, we as an industry have forsaken our biggest and most important resource: humanity.
Two Roads Hospitality CEO Niki Leondakis reminded us of that when she spoke at the Skift Global Forum in September. She said that the real disruption and innovation in hospitality doesn’t lie in technology or constructing great spaces. It’s about the service, and the people delivering it.
“The basics of hospitality have been compromised to make room for innovation, but the best innovation comes from the inside out,” Leondakis said. “Creativity happens when our employees are empowered and they are not feeling any fear.”
And in empowering those of us who work in hospitality to be better at delivering genuine hospitality, we’d also do well to heed restaurateur Danny Meyer’s advice, too: “The only way to motivate someone is to give them a higher purpose beyond a paycheck.”