City's Training Program Puts The Hotel Customer First | Destination Worcester organizes 'Wonderfully Worcester'
For all the effort dedicated to attracting meeting, convention and tourist business to Worcester, the success or failure of that effort depends, in large part, on the experiences visitors have with doormen, valets, hostesses and other service employees.
During a recent seminar entitled “Wonderfully Worcester,” that point was delivered to a small group of Worcester service industry workers who may as well have been reminded of the old adage: A team is only as good as its worst player.
The Wonderfully Worcester seminar was put on by Destination Worcester and the Creative Community Connections, an events planning firm with offices in New Hampshire and Boston. The hospitality training program was modeled after the successful “License to Serve” national program, and according to Christopher Gasbarro of Creative Community Connections, “we all need to focus on doing the basics well.”
Five And Ten
To that end, Gasbarro began his presentation with the “five and 10” rule. That is, a service employee should stop what he or she is doing when a customer is about 10 feet away and should greet that customer by the time he or she is five feet away.
That’s really basic, but it is important, Gasbarro said. Guests who feel they’ve been well cared for are going to at least consider returning to Worcester. “They’re going to come back and they’re going to tell their friends and they’re going to tell their boss, ‘let’s have our meeting in Worcester next year,’” he said.
In many ways, the table has been set for Worcester. There are seven hotels with nearly 1,000 rooms in the city. It’s more affordable than Boston, costs about the same as Springfield, and a little bit more than Hartford, Conn., but is more centrally located than either. But Patrick Lynch, executive director of Destination Worcester, said it’s up to service employees “to make Worcester appealing for people to come to.”
Meetings and events are the third-largest employers in the state, Lynch said.
And as business-class entertainment like the Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts and the AHL gain in popularity, it will become more important that service workers see opportunities for careers, not just part-time jobs, in the service sector.
“I would predict,” Gasbarro said, “that in the next few years, you’re going to have a massive influx of restaurants around the Hanover Theatre. It’s going to happen.”
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