A few weeks back I had a very insightful conversation with Roula Akl. We spoke a lot about the expectations of UHNWI in the sphere of travel and hospitality and one point that we returned to a lot was around Cultural Awareness.
It's unbelievable, but in this globalized world, where travel became so easy, and hotels are constantly welcoming guests from around the globe, we still don't conduct consistent sessions for our teams on Cultural awareness. And this is not only for the guests, but companies also have workforces with 30+ nationalities and even among team members there isn't much awareness.
We stay with basic things on perhaps, religion, certain customs, food, but there are many considerations that affect the way in which we communicate, engage and build relationships.
Inside the organization to name one benefit, fostering a DEIB culture starts with giving our teams the awareness and understanding of our differences and how they play in favor and against in different situations. This will not only help us communicate better, but in terms of employee satisfaction, engagement and contribution it influences greatly.
Now, externally to the organization and primarily with our guests, we need to understand not only the etiquette and protocol and the basic cultural nuances, but there are tons of behavioral aspects that shape guests' expectations and that as service providers inside the luxury industry we need to be able to gage and understand.
Conducting frequent sessions on cultural awareness, using every guest visit as an opportunity to share and learn, involving everyone in the team to share their experience, creating experiences with a diverse team, don't assume, be flexible, understand your context, talk about this daily, resolve conflict with a learning mindset, be empathic, make cultural awareness part of your culture.
Don't forget that small things have a lot of impact and if you wish to provide memorable experiences and service excellence you need to understand the person in front of you, and the more tools you have, the better you'll be equipped to connect.
Big renowned brands around the world make daily mistakes in marketing, communication, experience, service due to lack of cultural awareness and this is not only leaving a wrong impression with the guest, but this is putting at risk your brand equity and overall reputation. Most customers don't give a second chance.
I have never seen any organization so far really committed to cultural awareness. I'm sure there are some, so let me know in the comments if you know any organization out there truly fostering this kind of culture on a daily basis.
Or you can also share something about your culture that you wish people would consider when interacting with you
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