Elevating the happiness and love quotients in the hospitality industry

A unique, energizing, fun, playful, and meaningful workshop will take place at the Regal Hotel in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, on May 4, 2010 by the two hilarious gentlemen who rocked the ITB convention (

A unique, energizing, fun, playful, and meaningful workshop will take place at the Regal Hotel in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, on May 4, 2010 by the two hilarious gentlemen who rocked the ITB convention (International Travel convention in Berlin, Germany) with their inspiring โ€œHappy Hour Workshopโ€ that ended ITB on a joyful note.

Hands-on management and precision execution of SOPs are already perceived as a given for luxury hotel guests. Todayโ€™s guest has a higher expectation, namely that โ€œyou will take care of me and make me feel special.โ€ Most of us can feel the difference between a fake smile and one which comes from within. This is relevant not only to the frontline staff who deals with guests, it also affects the success of the sales team. Short-term success in delivering numbers is an illusion. What works over time is building sound genuine relationships that are based on care from the heart.

GMs and owners are looking for ways to increase consistency in rendering authentic/genuine service from the heart to guests and business partners. โ€œUntil we had introduced EDtSยฉ training technology, which inspires leaders and managers to take ownership of their own happiness and then extend it to others, the hospitality industry used mostly traditional logical training methods, which are limited in their influence,โ€ said Avi Liran, the founder of www.ha-p.com. โ€œI bet that you remember mostly the teachers who engaged you emotionally, good or bad; you remember them and what you learned from them more than the boring โ€œtalking headโ€ teachers. Humans are not logical in many of their decisionsโ€. For example, economic studies show that we are very bad in statistics. This is why many of us fill the lottery slips and also why we tend to panic instead of doing the opposite during times of crisis. We make a large part of our decisions emotionally. Change is difficult, but when you fall in love, suddenly the gray sky makes a perfect day.

EDtSยฉ helps individuals and teams in their search for the desired breakthrough to create long-lasting and sustainable positive change. People will forget what you say, and even forget what you di,d but they will never forget how you made them feel.

Many GMs, Operations and F&B Directors report difficulties in dealing with Y generation expectations. As one F&B director of a famous hotel chain stated during the ITB: โ€œFresh graduates from Cornell feel that after 6 months at the hotel, they are ready to become a GM. We all lose talented people and incur significant cost for recruitment and retraining.โ€ Another GM said: โ€œGen Y is not satisfied with the impact and purpose that my generation was after. They want to be happier at the work place and to access their social networking lifestyle that defines them. They are also very bad in taking straight forward constructive criticism. We have to change our management skill to tune into their frequency.โ€

EDtSยฉ helps executives in practicing parental care leadership and to learn acceptance, which builds trust. The program demands role modeling of care leadership from the top. The work starts right after the workshop and the tools learned there are to be practiced immediately thereafter.

Marriott Singapore, which had embarked on the program since 2008, had reported the lowest turnover and highest โ€œBoomerang Rate.โ€

Lenny Ravich, a humorist and author of the platinum awarded book โ€œA Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Enlightenmentโ€ and a โ€œblack beltโ€ in Gestalt has joined forces with the fun and funny VC investor and laughter therapist who changed his career in order to help people regain their happiness. Most recently Lennyโ€™s essay โ€œHeaven on Earth is a Choiceโ€ was published in the best seller โ€œHow to achieve Heaven on Earthโ€ together with contributions from Barak Obama, Tony Blair, Al Gore, and more.

Together Lenny and Avi have created a program called โ€œEasier DONE than Saidยฉ .โ€ In the past 4 years, Lenny and Avi have reviewed hundreds of books and researches in the fields of positive ssychology, laughter therapy, neuroscience, and learning technologies. Their program EDtSยฉ has been extremely successful in hotels such as the Marriott Singapore, which has won, during the years of working with them, the Best Employer award twice in a row. You can watch the GM on TV, explaining how the EDtSยฉ program had helped to elevate the famous amazing Marriott culture: http://tinyurl.com/GregSV .

Lenny said: โ€œAs a Shakespearean actor and an educator, I know that people who play at learning not only remember what they have learned, but find it also easier to change when they are connected to their emotions rather than being lectured to or reading. Fun, humor, and the ability to express true feelings work much deeper and faster than any other training program. When we started our quest to bring happiness and love to the workplace, we were afraid to say it because budgets are more in the resources rather than the human side of HR.

โ€œNot surprisingly, we managed to positively influence engagement more than any other logical program. There are an increasing number of researches from positive psychology that confirm the connection between personal and team happiness to engagement and productivity. How do you measure engagement anyway? Many of the questions refer to subjective happiness levels.โ€

Progress-U has always been a pioneer in bringing the best practices in training and coaching technologies to Asia. Charlie Lang, the managing partner who brings EDtSยฉ to North Asia said: โ€œI was skeptical like many others, however, I was invited to participate in a workshop that Lenny and Avi had conducted for one of the biggest private companies in Singapore. I was amazed to see the transformation that the program managed to achieve. I had some personal breakthrough moments myself, which I will carry with me for a life-time.

โ€œI invite decision makers to participate in this workshop http://tinyurl.com/EDtSHK4 and experience with their body, mind, and soul the tools that can help them to elevate their people culture one notch higher.โ€

About the author

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Linda Hohnholz

Editor in chief for eTurboNews based in the eTN HQ.

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