Hospitality Skills: Foundation For Higher Emotional Intelligence (EQ)
What are Hospitality Skills? According to the Institute of Hospitality, the world’s leading professional body for hospitality professionals, the key to a successful career in the hospitality industry is to be able to effectively utilize the hard skills learned and apply the organic soft hospitality skills into your management style to be an extraordinary leader
The perfect combination of hard skills and soft skills would result in a team that has vast industry knowledge to expertly perform their job tasks while also being completely aware of their co-worker’s and client’s emotions and needs. In other words: IQ +EQ = SUCCESS!
The Skills Gap in the Hospitality Industry
While travel and tourism is up, the industry is facing a shortage of qualified people to work in the hospitality field. Since the hospitality and tourism industry are all about making people feel warm, welcome, and appreciated, it is crucial to have qualified employees with a “people-pleasing” attitude that starts with your relationship with co-workers and extends all the way through the customer experience.
To be successful in the industry, it is essential for employees to have the positive personal interaction skills that are essential to their role played in the everchanging business. The lack of qualified employees in the hospitality industry could cost over 14 million jobs and an estimated $610 billion in loss of GDP
The Rising Need for Emotional and Social Intelligence Skills
While soft skills and EQ may seem more like personal traits rather than business ones, these are the precise skills needed to deliver outstanding customer experiences in the multi-cultural environments typically found in hospitality businesses.
The demand for a better guest experience that exceeds expectations is not only wanted but expected in hotels and restaurants today. To achieve this level of experience, hotels will need to embrace innovative new programs and technology that helps to create more memorable experiences for guests.
Hospitality Skills are Transferable Skills
Whether you plan to have a long career in the hospitality industry or are using a position in the field as a stepping stone to other opportunities, the variety of skills, customer service knowledge, and EQ gained in the hospitality sector are transferable and can be used in your personal life as well as in other career industries.
Employers are impressed with the skill set that hospitality students bring to the table, which is obvious since half of the graduates of the world's top hospitality management school were hired by non-hospitality-oriented businesses that are not guest related at all.
Tips for Learning Hospitality Soft Skills
Acquiring soft skills to improve your EQ is always a work in progress and can make you a better candidate for your dream job. Instead of the traditional way of learning via books and relevant material, learning hospitality soft skills means having to examine and analyze your personality and people skills.
Leaders in the industry as well as hospitality professors at respectable hospitality management schools, agree that those who are looking to excel in this field should set out to improve these hospitality soft skills to better prepare themselves for a service-oriented career.