Shownotes
For this week's chat, I tootled off to the Edge hotel School at the University of Essex to meet comedy genius (And Deputy Head) Adrian Martin. Adrian brings a wealth of experience from both the hospitality industry and academia, making for a fascinating conversation.
And Adrian is engaging from the get go as we delve into his unexpected journey into hospitality, which began with a nudge from his grandmother and led him to a successful career in hotel management before transitioning to academia. Adrian shares his insights on the invaluable hands-on training that students receive at the Wivenhoe House, a four-star country house hotel on campus, preparing them to transition from operational roles to management positions seamlessly.
We also explore Adrian's ground-breaking research on customer behaviour highlighting the use of AI and social media to predict and improve customer service experiences. Adrian discusses the moral and ethical implications of such technology and emphasises the importance of building personal connections with customers.
Join us as we uncover Adrian's journey, his impactful research, and his passion for teaching the next generation of hospitality professionals. Whether you're in the industry or simply curious about the world of hospitality, this episode is packed with valuable insights you won't want to miss.
The Guest
Adrian Martin - Associate Professor and Deputy Head of the Edge Hotel School at the University of Essex
LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/associate-professor-adrian-martin-8a2ab133
The Sponsor
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RotaCloud lets managers create and share rotas, record attendance, and manage annual leave in minutes — all from a single, web-based app.
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This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
Podcorn - https://podcorn.com/privacy
Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy
Transcripts
And a huge hospitality meets. Welcome to Adrian Martin. Thank you very much. Thank
Speaker:you for having me. How are you? Yeah, very good, actually. We've had a great
Speaker:day today, haven't we? It's been lovely, yes. And actually my first ever experience of
Speaker:the edge hotel school, which is actually quite ridiculous that it's taken me this long
Speaker:to get out here. I think this time of year is my favorite time
Speaker:of year because the students are sort of finding jobs and then they come and
Speaker:announce it. But I've never thought to bring someone from recruitment
Speaker:into the mix and it's been a no brainer and they've gone down really, really
Speaker:well. So we've got lots of companies that come in and
Speaker:sell their jobs in their companies. We've never had someone who can do the whole
Speaker:lot in one go and there's kind of tips that you gave them have been
Speaker:really useful. Well, we'll see. It's too early
Speaker:to tell, but. Yeah, well, I mean, tell the world who you are and what
Speaker:it is that you do. Sure. So I'm Adrian, I'm the deputy head of the
Speaker:Edge hotel school at the University of Essex. So our students,
Speaker:they work in the webinar house, which is where we are currently as part of
Speaker:their course. And so my side is to kind of organise the
Speaker:teaching to make sure the students have the kind of business acumen and
Speaker:knowledge. And then the Wivener House, which is our partner, which is the hotel
Speaker:on the campus, a very nice four star country house hotel, trains the
Speaker:students on how the hotels and events operate and gives them industry
Speaker:experience. They kind of come in in the first year, they don't really know very
Speaker:much, a lot of them some kind of can of beans and they go
Speaker:in each different department for the first year and become sort of operationally
Speaker:competent and they become a bit more confident. Then the second year they go back
Speaker:in and they, they supervise, so they get a little bit more confident, they get
Speaker:to boss around the new students and now they know what kind of know what
Speaker:they're doing. In the third year, they either do an external event or they
Speaker:duty manage and night manage, and that means strutting around the place with the walkie
Speaker:talkie like they own the place right now.
Speaker:Right now they're probably about as confident as they're going to be with us, as
Speaker:competent as they're going to be with us, and they are ripe for industry. I
Speaker:remember Michael Voigt at the Gorin said that our students are uniquely
Speaker:oven ready and I love that phrase because they are ready to go straight out
Speaker:into managerial positions. And I don't necessarily think that's true of graduates
Speaker:at other universities, but the three years that they spend in Wyvern House, they can
Speaker:put on their cv, and it just gives them that extra little bit of confidence
Speaker:for when they do go out to the big wide world. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is
Speaker:that an oven ready deal like the Brexit deal? Still
Speaker:waiting, but there we are. That's the podcast for another time. Yeah. Well,
Speaker:I mean, before we get into your story, I kind of wanted to understand because
Speaker:your profile also says associate professor. Yeah. What is an associate professor
Speaker:professor? It's like a half professor, really. Half a demi professor. Not
Speaker:quite good enough to be a proper professor, but on the way. Right. Okay. And
Speaker:what does. How do you become a half professor then? Just get the other half.
Speaker:You need to do research. I think for me personally, the bit that I'm missing
Speaker:is to do research that has an impact on industry. And maybe I'll get a
Speaker:chance to talk about that later in the podcast.
Speaker:I think we're kind of getting close to that now. Dream for me, obviously, is
Speaker:to become a full professor, but we will see. Yeah,
Speaker:every time I hear the word professor, I just see Snape from Harry Potter. Not
Speaker:that I'm saying you look like Snape, but there we are. Yeah. Right. Well, let's
Speaker:go back then to the beginning. And how did you get
Speaker:into hospitality in the first place? So, I mean, I
Speaker:listened to quite a few of your podcasts, and they all seem to start the
Speaker:same way, that they didn't intend to go into hospitality. And I was kind of
Speaker:the same. So I was 18. I didn't have a clue what I wanted to
Speaker:do, so I thought I'd do a management degree in Manchester, which I did, and
Speaker:I got to be graduated, and I still don't have a clue what I wanted
Speaker:to do. And then my grandmother got involved. My grandmother's quite a formidable woman.
Speaker:We were very much a matriarchy in our family. And she phoned me up and
Speaker:she said, well, you know, you've got this degree. You need to do something with
Speaker:it. So I found you a job, and you're going to go and work in
Speaker:a hotel in London. And I was like, whether you like it or not.
Speaker:Exactly. And I was like, oh, man, do I have to?
Speaker:And it was just so ridiculous to me now. But she said, you're going to
Speaker:get a call from Beverly in about an hour, which is Bev King, who's
Speaker:now CEO of Zhotels. Back then, he was a front office manager at a Cumberland
Speaker:hotel, which is like a big four star hotel, a huge hotel,
Speaker:800 bedrooms overlooking marble arch. So the next thing I know,
Speaker:he's on the phone to me and I'm so embarrassed to say that. When he
Speaker:phoned me up, he said, I hear you want to work in my hotel. And
Speaker:I was kind of like, well, yeah, I guess, I suppose. Not really.
Speaker:And he said, do you want to work in my hotel or not? So
Speaker:I had to kind of win him round a little bit. And if he ever
Speaker:listened to. I'm so embarrassed. I'm so sorry. So the next thing I
Speaker:know about, literally a week later, I'm dropped off, kicked out the car with my
Speaker:bags in front of this huge hotel right opposite marble arch. I went round to
Speaker:the back to the staff accommodation, which is nice enough. I was
Speaker:told, you've got three meals a day and no rent to
Speaker:pay. I thought, this is great. And then I went into
Speaker:my job the next day and I was just basically chatting to people
Speaker:all day and making them laugh, and I just had to time my life. I
Speaker:literally loved my time there. I was gonna say that was actually in the job
Speaker:then. You didn't just go out on the street in London? Not randomly, no. No.
Speaker:So I was waiting in one of their restaurants there and
Speaker:they kind of threw me in at the deep end. I absolutely loved it. I
Speaker:was just chatting away to people and I had to get the food and
Speaker:take the orders as well. But the weird thing was, that shocked
Speaker:me at the time was that if I did this well, they just left me
Speaker:a ton of money at the end of the meal. And this seems like a
Speaker:dream come true for me. So I was earning more money in tips and back
Speaker:then than I was in my salary. And my salary was pocket money
Speaker:because I had no food, no bills and no rent. And I
Speaker:just thought, right, this is it for me. I finally found my calling. This is
Speaker:what I want to do for my career. So I thought, if I'm going to
Speaker:do this, I need a qualification or some sort of training, because at the moment
Speaker:I know absolutely nothing. So I did it for a year and I managed to
Speaker:save enough money to pay for a master's and pay my year's rent.
Speaker:I did my masters and I found that if I went
Speaker:anywhere asking for work, I just said I'd worked at the Cumberland
Speaker:for a year and I had a bit of experience and they snapped my hand
Speaker:off. So I worked as a student and so on, and then I did a
Speaker:grad program with thistle hotels a long time ago. They moved
Speaker:me here, there and everywhere, but taught me all about hotels and
Speaker:management. I ended up as an assistant manager in Bedford somewhere,
Speaker:and then I saw this job as deputy manager of a Bournemouth hotel
Speaker:and I can remember having this. The pause where I thought, can I do this
Speaker:job? Should I apply for it? But I've always been a bit, kind of
Speaker:jump first, think later. So I just kind of went for it and I got
Speaker:the job and I trundled off to Bournemouth thinking that I kind of. I was
Speaker:24 years old and I thought, it's just incredible. I'm 24 years old, 100
Speaker:bedroom hotel in Bournemouth overlooking the sea, and I'm deputy manager of it. To
Speaker:my horror, on the first day I met my boss
Speaker:again, he deposited me. Thought you were going to see wafer. And,
Speaker:yeah, he was. He was completely clueless. He had no
Speaker:idea how to run a hotel. He thought his job was to kind of
Speaker:just sit at a bar getting drunk with the regulars, which he did on a
Speaker:regular train. Yeah. And so all of the staff started turning to
Speaker:me almost on my first week, and this hotel had a
Speaker:lot of problems with it and was losing a lot of money and the owners
Speaker:were kind of exasperated by it all. And so I ended up kind of
Speaker:semi running the place and then almost actually running the place
Speaker:with my boss in the bar, kind of getting. Just drinking every day.
Speaker:And then after a year, the owners of the hotel kind of.
Speaker:They'd seen a turnaround. A lot of the problems that I identified got fixed
Speaker:and it started to make a small profit and so they kind of rewarded me
Speaker:by sacking the manager and giving me his job. So now
Speaker:I'm 25 and a general manager of a hotel.
Speaker:25? Yeah. And I'm looking back, I must have been mad to do it, but
Speaker:again, I jump first, think later, but
Speaker:if anyone ever asks me why should I go into a career in
Speaker:hospitality, I always tell them this story. So my nan, remember my
Speaker:nan, she used to have these pictures on a mantelpiece
Speaker:of varying sizes, with the biggest one in the middle. Whoever had a
Speaker:grandchildren and children was the favorite in the family. And it was always my
Speaker:cousin lisa or my brother sometimes, or whatever, and we always shuffled
Speaker:in position, depending on how popular you were. Well, I invited
Speaker:my nan and my granddad down for a week to
Speaker:Bournemouth. No expenses paid, dinner, bed and breakfast.
Speaker:The staff made a fuss of her and she had the time of her life.
Speaker:Never paid a penny the whole time. She insisted and I wouldn't take any
Speaker:money. Next time I went to see my nan, I'm there, center stage,
Speaker:in the middle of the mantelpiece, the biggest picture of the lot. Now, normally, I
Speaker:was quite naughty when I was young. I was on the side table, out of
Speaker:the way somewhere, like a torn up photo. We've also got him as well, the.
Speaker:Black chief of the family. But all of a sudden, I was a fan. I
Speaker:do wonder whether there is any other trade out there where you can, with
Speaker:such perks, where you can treat family friends. It's a conversation
Speaker:starter at dinner parties. If you're an accountant and you tell people you're
Speaker:an accountant at a dinner party, that's kind of the end of the conversation. And
Speaker:I don't think my other cousin, who was a dentist, could have said, nan, come
Speaker:down to me and I'll drill your tea for a week for free. And had
Speaker:the same kind impact. That's off to the coffee table, that one,
Speaker:isn't it? And I loved that job and we had some success with
Speaker:it. We ended up selling that hotel. The owners gave me a share of the
Speaker:hotel and then we ended up selling it. And I kind of had enough
Speaker:money at that time to pay my mortgage off. And I wrote
Speaker:a book for a while. And then my wife, who was then my girlfriend
Speaker:at that site, saw an advert for a lecturer job at Bournemouth
Speaker:and Poole College. And I thought, I could do that. I
Speaker:think that'd be fun. So I turned up on Friday for the interview.
Speaker:They said, can you start on Monday? And I said, yeah, ok, I'm free at
Speaker:the moment, and your first lesson's on Tuesday. And I was,
Speaker:if anyone in the trade is listening to this, you don't actually need a
Speaker:qualification in teaching to start teaching at college and university
Speaker:level. You can do it as you teach.
Speaker:So I went into my first lesson and got absolutely murdered
Speaker:by these students. I didn't have a clue how to control them,
Speaker:how to teach as such. So I thought to myself, right, if I'm going to
Speaker:do this, I need to see who does this the best. And there was a
Speaker:guy at Balfour Paul College called Dave Boland, and he was
Speaker:renowned as the best chef lecturer in the country and was for
Speaker:30 years. And so I asked if I could go and watch him teach.
Speaker:And I sat at the back of his classroom and he just had a manner
Speaker:about him that commanded respect. But at the same
Speaker:time, he was teasing these kids. He was laughing a joke with them, but
Speaker:he could just silence the room with a look and it was just
Speaker:incredible watching him work. Well, what I took from that was
Speaker:he came and spoke to me at the end and he said, well, what did
Speaker:you think? And I'm like, four days into teaching and
Speaker:this guy, who's a legend in our industry, in education,
Speaker:asking me my opinion of his lesson. And I
Speaker:said, I just think it was perfect. And he said that
Speaker:there's no such thing as a perfect lesson, Sam. He said, if you didn't find
Speaker:a fault, you weren't looking hard enough. Yeah. And I thought, I suppose that's the
Speaker:same with anything, isn't it, really? Yeah. And I thought, oh, yeah, actually,
Speaker:that's why you're the best, because you will take feedback from
Speaker:anywhere and you're never satisfied with what you've delivered. You don't
Speaker:think you've ever delivered a perfect lesson. And I took a lot from that, so
Speaker:I will take feedback from anyone, no matter what. I always
Speaker:try and teach in a better and better way every time I can.
Speaker:So I carried on teaching there for quite some time. But
Speaker:after, like, a year, that just the maddest thing happened,
Speaker:that an ofstone inspector came to visit Bournford Pool College.
Speaker:And they basically said that. And they'd heard that the Bournfranpool College was the best
Speaker:place for hospitality, along with Westminster and Birmingham. And they wanted to
Speaker:see what was so different about these three particular colleges. And so they
Speaker:observed the best chef lecturers, and Joe Pearce was an amazing restaurant
Speaker:lecturer. And they saw practical elements and said, yeah, that we can
Speaker:see why. But your theory classes actually weren't
Speaker:that great. Can we see something tomorrow that is. Is great.
Speaker:But the theory side of stuff. So unbeknown to me, I
Speaker:get this phone call at 06:00 at night from my boss, Nick, and he
Speaker:said, sorry to do this to you, mate, but tomorrow at 10:00 I
Speaker:need to put an off state inspector in your class, and that lesson needs to
Speaker:be the best thing you've ever delivered. Sleep well? Yeah. I'll see you
Speaker:tomorrow. Pretty much. Yeah, pretty much. So. And I was like, who have I got
Speaker:to tell? Oh, my God. It's like 20 receptionists and a
Speaker:real handful. And I thought. So I had to sit down and
Speaker:I've got a bottle of wine out. And I just thought, right, what do these
Speaker:kids actually want from a lecturer? What do they want to
Speaker:learn? And it kind of just came to me that I've kind of been
Speaker:delivering stuff at them. I hadn't really been involved in them.
Speaker:And that kids like to. They're quite competitive. They
Speaker:like a game element to it, but they also want to learn stuff that is
Speaker:of use to them out in industry. And so by 01:00
Speaker:in the morning, I'd invented this game. And the game was based
Speaker:on the hotel that I managed. And that first week when I arrived,
Speaker:when I put my head in my hands and just thought, oh, my God, there's
Speaker:so much wrong with this hotel. Where do I even start? And so the game
Speaker:is about presenting this exact same scenario and then asking
Speaker:the students to decide these eight major problems with the hotel. Which are you going
Speaker:to fix first and how are you going to fix them? And then there's eight
Speaker:turns to the game and there's a winner at the end and a big celebration
Speaker:anyway, so. And I remember walking towards that lesson with the Ofsted
Speaker:inspector waiting for me and 20 receptionists thinking,
Speaker:you haven't tested this game, you don't even know if it works. And
Speaker:you tested it with the ultimate stress test, which is. Wait. Yeah, well, true.
Speaker:And at 01:00 in the morning seemed a really good idea. 10:00 the next morning,
Speaker:not so much, but again, I just dive in and think about
Speaker:it later. So I just, oh, hell, I'll just go for it. So I delivered
Speaker:this lesson and honestly, it was just incredible.
Speaker:So there were like four teams and they were all competing against each other. The
Speaker:offset inspector then joined one of the teams and started playing the game as well.
Speaker:And then without any prompting, when I was kind of built it up like an
Speaker:x factor delay, then the winner is long delay. They all started
Speaker:this impromptu drum roll and these kids were just
Speaker:so, their eyes were just lit up and I just knew
Speaker:I'd cracked it. And after I delivered that
Speaker:lesson, the officer inspector said, lots of nice stuff, but he also nominated me
Speaker:for a national teaching award. And about two months later, I get this
Speaker:letter invite and I went and won because I was nominated by an off stage,
Speaker:of course I won. Right. And then that kind of launched my
Speaker:educational career, really. So I kind of got promoted three times, I think, in
Speaker:the next four years, which is quite quick in education. And what would be
Speaker:the promotional position? So you start out as a lecturer?
Speaker:Yep. Then I was team leader. Then I was
Speaker:head of all hospitality for Bourn Pool College, and I finished with kind of
Speaker:a director of apprenticeships. So I had about 2000 apprentices across the whole
Speaker:college. It was a big old college and I was kind of running all of
Speaker:those apprenticeships in all different categories, not just hospitality.
Speaker:So that was fun. And we had a lot of success there.
Speaker:We won awards and all sorts. And then I just happened to see
Speaker:this newspaper. I think it was a caterer, did an article on the edge
Speaker:hotel school that this new place was opening up where students would work
Speaker:in the hotel as part of their course. And it's kind of based on a
Speaker:swiss hotel school, but it was in Essex. My wife's from
Speaker:Essex. And I just had this moment where I thought, yeah,
Speaker:this is my dream job. This is absolutely my dream job. It didn't
Speaker:take much convincing to move the whole family over here. And I knew Andy,
Speaker:who's the current head, I worked with him in Bournemouth, so that was always
Speaker:easy. I came and saw the hotel, just thought it was just amazing, this place.
Speaker:I mean, you've seen it. It's a hell of a standard for just
Speaker:to be trained in students in. And then I came
Speaker:over to Colchester for the edge hotel school.
Speaker:And I'm still here to this day, eight years later. Eight years. I was going
Speaker:to ask you how long. Yeah, so, I mean, we basically are
Speaker:sitting in a real live, working hotel. How does that work,
Speaker:then, in terms of the split between students
Speaker:working and I suppose, full time employees, as it were?
Speaker:So, I mean, a lot of people think it's a student hotel run by students.
Speaker:No, no, this is a. This is a very high standard hotel with a general
Speaker:manager, deputy heads of department, deputy heads of department. It's when you go
Speaker:to supervisor and sort of operational level
Speaker:where there are less staff, because the students are filling the gaps.
Speaker:So our students in the first year, take home, might do a wedding with
Speaker:twelve staff, and ten of them are students. And then in the second year, maybe
Speaker:one of them is leading the event alongside the supervisor. And then
Speaker:in the final year, they do the duty management side of stuff. So it is
Speaker:a fully up and running hotel. We prefer the customers not to
Speaker:know that there are students involved, so that they don't get this. Oh, it's only
Speaker:a training hotel. Most of our customers
Speaker:say 90 plus percent never know that they're served by students.
Speaker:Students get a realistic experience. Events go wrong.
Speaker:Sometimes customers get crossed, sometimes customers are delighted. Most of
Speaker:the time it's a true life experience. And I think
Speaker:industry has recognized that. They know that Ed that we were speaking
Speaker:to earlier said exactly the same thing, and I've heard that a hundred times, that
Speaker:when you get an edge graduate, you know, you can start them from day one
Speaker:straight into the job and they will be able to cope. Yeah, well, as
Speaker:Michael Veit has put, he's written your marketing plan, isn't he, for the future of
Speaker:oven ready students?
Speaker:Yeah. Or air fryer. Let's get up
Speaker:with the times. But I want to go back in your story just a little
Speaker:bit because I want to talk about this transition, I suppose, from
Speaker:being in operations and in the industry that way to moving
Speaker:into academia, I suppose, or education, at least.
Speaker:Was there a point whereby you thought because you started out,
Speaker:you still got your head very much in the hotel, as it were. But was
Speaker:there a point in that process where you thought I. Oh, actually,
Speaker:this could be the direction, actually, that. I really want
Speaker:to go in terms of teaching? Yeah. I think, to be honest, when I was
Speaker:younger, so the 18 year old in me did want
Speaker:to lecture at some stage, but you can't just become a lecturer at
Speaker:that kind of age. I need a specialist subject, really. I
Speaker:think I had a couple of teachers at school that were just amazing and had
Speaker:a lot that were terrible. And I think I was inspired by the great
Speaker:teachers that have taught me over the years to try and be great
Speaker:as well. And seeing. Seeing David teach,
Speaker:I think, was quite life changing for me because I just thought it all kind
Speaker:of clicked because I think a lot of teachers think that and a lot of
Speaker:presenters, a lot of trainers think that it's all about them.
Speaker:And you have to have this mind shift where you realize it's actually all about
Speaker:the audience. Because I watched another great
Speaker:teacher teach, Jo Pearson. She. She was teaching something
Speaker:and it was clear that a section of the room didn't quite get it. So
Speaker:she went back and taught it again in a completely different way.
Speaker:Unplanned. Just did it off the cuff. And I said to her at the end,
Speaker:I noticed that she'd done that and she said, well, that's because it's all about
Speaker:making sure everyone in the room is understood. And if
Speaker:they don't, then you go back and take them all with you. And I love
Speaker:that. So I always try to make sure that everything I teach is not
Speaker:about delivering all the content in the time that you've got. When I
Speaker:observe other people teach, sometimes I see that it's kind of rushing through to get
Speaker:to their PowerPoint in the time that they've got. You're wasting your time.
Speaker:That last 20 minutes, nothing has gone into. The people that you're delivering to, they're
Speaker:not understanding, as you were talking about earlier, the people who use kind of high
Speaker:vocabulary and start pulling big words from
Speaker:nowhere, that's about them, that's about their ego. It's
Speaker:not about delivering what you. The message you want to deliver to the people in
Speaker:front of you, it's about making yourself feel better. So I think
Speaker:that I did have a desire to teach, but I
Speaker:mean, that first day, I literally had no clue what I was doing whatsoever. I
Speaker:can only imagine the Feeling. That's what first shift
Speaker:blues in any form, right, is still this kind of rabbit in the headlights moment.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah. But I think if you've got a trade experience,
Speaker:you've got a hell of a leg up. And I would say, because the degree
Speaker:I did in the masters, I did in Manchester, I remember we got so
Speaker:disappointed with it, really. We asked every lecturer, how much experience have you had in
Speaker:the trader? Not a single lecturer had any experience in the trader whatsoever. And this
Speaker:is on a hotel and catering management masters here, it's
Speaker:complete opposite. You can't work in a hotel school without industry
Speaker:experience. So there's guys here run cruise ships,
Speaker:there's people who run the Brits, there's people who run bars and restaurants and all
Speaker:sorts, all that are still academics, but they started their Life
Speaker:in the industry and I think that's a such a leg up.
Speaker:So for the first two or three days before I had a clue what I
Speaker:was doing, I just basically told stories about the trade just to keep people happy.
Speaker:But that time runs out sooner or later. Yeah. So that's what's known
Speaker:in the trade. There's blagging it, right? Absolutely. The blag only can last
Speaker:for so long before the integrity of the content
Speaker:becomes important, as it were. Yeah.
Speaker:I see similarities in terms of, basically, from what you've just said
Speaker:there around. If you're a hotel GM, you're doing
Speaker:everything you can, obviously, to ensure that your guests are having a great experience.
Speaker:It's the same principle, but just this time, your guests are your students.
Speaker:So it's about their experience. It's not about your experience, it's about the experience
Speaker:that you're giving them. Yes. And I think that that's a hard
Speaker:message for educators to hear, if I'm honest. In a lot
Speaker:of places that I've worked, they don't like to see students
Speaker:as customers. I think we're very good at it. At the edge
Speaker:hotel school, we listen and we respond and we adapt and we change the same
Speaker:way that the trade does. But I think there are a lot of educational places
Speaker:that are kind of. Well, they don't really. They don't know what's best for them.
Speaker:That might be what they want, but it's not what they need. I hear that
Speaker:sometimes in other areas, and they're quite stubborn
Speaker:almost, and not responding to change. This generation
Speaker:can be quite demanding. There's no two ways about it. And sometimes
Speaker:they don't know what they. They need. For instance, in here,
Speaker:the least popular department for students to go
Speaker:into tends to be housekeeping and the kitchen. And yet when
Speaker:you do surveys at the end of the year, the most popular departments is housekeeping
Speaker:and kitchen. They're terrified of going in the kitchen, but they
Speaker:love it. And they don't see the point of housekeeping, but then they love it.
Speaker:So sometimes you do have to do what you think is best,
Speaker:but at the same time, you should treat students like us, particularly at university, because
Speaker:they're paying a lot of money to study here. Yeah, yeah. I wonder
Speaker:if the perceptions, or where these perceptions come from in terms of your housekeeping
Speaker:and kitchen. I don't want to do that. I mean, I can kind of understand
Speaker:the kitchen thing because there's so, you know, rightly or wrongly, there's so much reporters
Speaker:about, you know, what a high pressure environment that can be. But, yeah, I wonder
Speaker:where these perceptions come from. I think it's because, you know, they
Speaker:didn't come here to learn to be a chef, but it's important for them to
Speaker:go into the kitchen so that they understand the impact of
Speaker:everything around them. So like the event guys, for instance, they need
Speaker:to know that if they miswrite a function sheet and get the numbers
Speaker:wrong, the absolute havoc and chaos that creates in the kitchen and
Speaker:a real pain and cost that that creates. And that means that when
Speaker:you're selling a booking over the phone, you make damn sure you get that function
Speaker:sheet right. So it's not necessarily learning, teaching them how to cook, although they will
Speaker:to learn a certain amount, but it is about how a function gets
Speaker:sent, how food gets counted in and counted out and so on.
Speaker:And the same with housekeeping, that sort of attention to detail and that teamwork
Speaker:and people checking and you going back to the room and recorrecting all of this
Speaker:is good stuff. But I think they also learn here to shine
Speaker:your shoes, correct uniform, be professional, give your best, be on time,
Speaker:ask questions, all of this. I think every shift they go into, they
Speaker:gain something. They might not realize it, but they do. But also, having three years
Speaker:on your cv, nice reference from me, nice reference from the general manager at the
Speaker:end of this three years of work experience, some places still ask for two or
Speaker:three years experience. Absolutely. Yeah. And plus,
Speaker:there's nothing more resilience or character building than chopping
Speaker:a bin full of onions as part of
Speaker:your life learning. I remember in the trade, I dropped a
Speaker:load of foie gras all over the floor, and people went nuts. And
Speaker:my punishment, because I was in the kitchen, part of my graduate thing, they
Speaker:made me cut and dice garlic, this whole huge
Speaker:amount of the stuff. That was my punishment. And I went on a train from
Speaker:Bristol to bath the same day. And I must have
Speaker:stank because I went onto this train packed train, and I stood in a corner
Speaker:and people started moving away from. And then these seats opened up. And I was
Speaker:thinking, oh.
Speaker:Yeah, well, I suppose that's the. That's the adult equivalent of lines,
Speaker:isn't it? When you get lines at school, you get. You have to go and
Speaker:chop your veg or chop your garlic or whatever. No. So,
Speaker:well, you're. We talked earlier in the chat
Speaker:about you're an associate professor. In order to become a professor, you need to do
Speaker:a body of work around research that
Speaker:affects the industry, or certainly is involved in the industry in some way.
Speaker:So what. And I know the answer to this, of course, because we've spoken about
Speaker:this, but what is it that you are doing? Because honestly
Speaker:speaking, when you came to me with this, my mind was blown.
Speaker:Okay? So I think this came from my time in the trade.
Speaker:There are two aspects to my research. So one was I would kind of work
Speaker:a table when I was a waiter because I knew that the tips would be
Speaker:great. And every now and again, a table that I thought I was going to
Speaker:get a huge tip from, I'd get nothing. And another table that I kind of
Speaker:neglected a little bit, almost would give me a big tip. And I thought that
Speaker:there's something going on here that these people just look, there's no
Speaker:distinguishing factor here. Some people just feel very differently about
Speaker:tipping and whether they tip or whether they don't tip. And in my time
Speaker:as a general manager, dealing with lots and lots of complaints because the building
Speaker:that I managed was kind of falling to bits, been a bit
Speaker:neglected. And I remember if the rain came in at a certain angle, the
Speaker:front ten rooms all leaked. And I can remember, like, two or three of them
Speaker:would come down and just go help the lever at the desk. Two or three
Speaker:of them would come down and just kind of mention it just in passing, and
Speaker:the rest would kind of never say a word. And you'd find a bin underneath
Speaker:the leak and a nasty review or a nasty letter in the post or
Speaker:nothing at all. And I thought, well, something's going on there as well. Why are
Speaker:people acting so differently to the same circumstance?
Speaker:And so I wanted to, this is, this is what I wanted to. The question
Speaker:I wanted to answer is, what is different about people
Speaker:that makes them act in different ways? So I surveyed about 1000
Speaker:people, long survey, about an hour each with a
Speaker:psychological test on the end. And I've got lots of interesting data. I now know
Speaker:how often people tip, how much they tip, how often they complain, how much compensation
Speaker:they get, all the rest of it, which is all fascinating. But what jumped out
Speaker:was the fact that people who complain the most have a
Speaker:distinct personality set. They have three characteristics that make them more likely
Speaker:to complain and two characteristics that make them less likely to complain.
Speaker:And if they've got the personality, in the
Speaker:worst case scenario, they are a prolific complainer. And if they got the complete
Speaker:reverse, then they were a never complainer. And so I
Speaker:then used those five personalities and I tracked
Speaker:100 customers for a whole year everywhere they went. So like some mad
Speaker:stalker, every time you let out, you had to fill out a survey and you
Speaker:would tell me what was the meal like, was it good, was it better than
Speaker:you expected, worse than you expected? Did you complain, did you tip? And so on.
Speaker:And at the end of that it was very, very clear. And I did a
Speaker:full on psychoanalysis of all of the hundred
Speaker:with these five personalities in mind. And then it became incredibly
Speaker:clear that these personality sets will determine people's behaviour. So
Speaker:it's basically down to you. You have a certain amount that you're going to put
Speaker:up with, faults that you're going to put up with in a restaurant meal, that
Speaker:will be different to what I put up with, will be different to what somebody
Speaker:else puts up with. So I could work this
Speaker:into a formula and I could backtrack it and think, well, I've got the formula
Speaker:now. And if I go back and look at all the hundred thousand, I looked
Speaker:at how and it was very accurate and I'm thinking to myself, okay,
Speaker:I've got something quite cool here. I now can get into the head of
Speaker:someone who complains a lot and as someone who never complains and then goes home
Speaker:and complains on Tripadvisor. And that was kind of
Speaker:where I was going to leave it. But there was a bit of a breakthrough
Speaker:in psychology where people started to find
Speaker:people's personality scores via their social
Speaker:media and digital footprint. And so this is not my research, it's somebody else's research.
Speaker:They are basically now going through people's social media
Speaker:activity, coming up with scores of what they think their personality would
Speaker:be without ever meeting them, then testing them separately and comparing the scores, and they
Speaker:are getting really, really accurate. And what's even more,
Speaker:I want to say scary, but I'm going to say. Exciting, is that there's that
Speaker:fine line of progress. AI has
Speaker:just supercharged this, so now you can use AI to go through
Speaker:people's social media and digital footprint and come out the other end with scores
Speaker:that are becoming more and more and more accurate. So I thought to myself, you
Speaker:put these two things together, I now know what I'm looking for. These
Speaker:researchers can find it for me. Is it possible that at the point
Speaker:of making a booking, you could book into a restaurant and
Speaker:I take your details, your name and your mobile number or your name and your
Speaker:email? That's all the other researchers need to do this profiling, which is what you.
Speaker:Would hand over when you're making a booking anyway. Naturally. Yep. And throw it through
Speaker:the formula. Come out the other side with an indication of whether you
Speaker:are someone who regularly complains, never complains, or is
Speaker:making a judgment. Those would be the free boxes to effectively almost rag rate
Speaker:customers in advance of them coming to your business.
Speaker:And I looked at that and I thought, would that have been useful for me
Speaker:when I was in the trade? I thought, oh, my God, yeah. Oh, my God,
Speaker:yeah. Because, and I was thinking, what could I use it for? And when I
Speaker:go out and I do training now at all sorts of places, the Goring
Speaker:Cliveden house, and I tell them about this system and I ask them, what would
Speaker:you use it for? And they come out with things like,
Speaker:who works the table? The most experienced person gets the more
Speaker:discerning guest. Maybe we don't give the more difficult
Speaker:customer to the apprentice on their first shift. Maybe we flip the tables around,
Speaker:maybe we flip the order that the food comes out, we let the chef know
Speaker:that some food is prioritized over the others, possibly all sorts of different ideas
Speaker:of how we could adapt so that people get what they
Speaker:want. And I thought to myself, this is great. I've
Speaker:really invented something in. And I made a fatal error
Speaker:at this point because I went and boasted about it to my wife
Speaker:and she said to me, she went, well, do you want me to be
Speaker:kind or do you want me to be honest? Here comes a pragmatic approach.
Speaker:I have a very similar wife. In fact, I've
Speaker:learned from this that you'd
Speaker:be better off just saying honest, because you're going to get it anyway. So I
Speaker:just got out of the way. And she said, you're kind of treating people like
Speaker:numbers on arrival and then outcomes as numbers, but you're not really looking at
Speaker:the bit in the middle. What about how they were treated? And did that have
Speaker:an impact? And I kind of thought, well, no, I haven't really looked at that.
Speaker:And then she said, if it helps, this is how I do it.
Speaker:And this has stuck with me. And I tell my students this as well. So
Speaker:if instead of seeing people as people, she works in a special education school,
Speaker:all autistic children, some of them with quite extreme behaviors. And she
Speaker:says that if you treat people, don't treat people as people. Treat people
Speaker:like bottles of wine. I can get on board with this. That's a good start.
Speaker:I'm okay with this. And she said, but, and if you, when you interact with
Speaker:a bottle of wine, you effectively open a bottle of wine, drinking and seeing what,
Speaker:seeing what it's like. And said if, if your bottle that you're
Speaker:interacting with has been dropped or badly treated or something's happened to them
Speaker:during their day and it is a white wine or a red wine or
Speaker:whatever, you would never know. Or maybe a great sommelier would
Speaker:know, but nobody else would know. But some people have got a little bit of
Speaker:fizz. People with a little bit of fizz. When you open those, if you just
Speaker:open those the same way you open every other bottle of wine, they are going
Speaker:to explode in your face. And so you need to be a little bit gentle.
Speaker:The way we open a bottle of champagne at the table. So there's a hard
Speaker:ear little. And you open a bottle of wine in such a way that someone
Speaker:with that fizz just gets dealt with differently, treated
Speaker:differently, and doesn't end up exploding it. And I just thought, that
Speaker:is so cool. I can use that. So then I went back
Speaker:through all of the data, and I took a
Speaker:microscopic view then of how was that guest actually treated? And
Speaker:luckily, I asked these questions. Were you made to feel special? Did you build a
Speaker:connection? And I found that where some
Speaker:customers had built a connection with their server, they become a lot less
Speaker:likely to complain. And also those who never complain,
Speaker:actually, you can tease out of the problem and fix it there and
Speaker:then. And I was also able to prove that if you do fix the
Speaker:problem there and then, one, the tips go up. Two, the customer actually ends up
Speaker:happier than if they never had a problem at all. And so the training that
Speaker:I do now is trying to get even the best places, like the Goring
Speaker:hotel, to be on the lookout for tables that look like they're struggling
Speaker:and to proactively go in. Francisco at Clifton House, he
Speaker:encourages his staff to be on the front foot if there's a problem, that if
Speaker:you go to a table and say, we know the food's not coming out particularly
Speaker:fast tonight, so I'm going to do this for you, you take charge of the
Speaker:complaint, and that's a much better way of dealing with them, to wait for it
Speaker:to explode or not explode, and then they go home and they tell the
Speaker:world. So I kind of found that element.
Speaker:But the thing that seems to have grabbed everyone's interest is the
Speaker:pre profiling people with the AI and then using it
Speaker:through the formula to give people a pre warning.
Speaker:And whenever I talk about it, I get this look that you're giving me now,
Speaker:Phil, which is like a really, really, can you do that?
Speaker:Well, but these are the questions I suppose you have to answer, right?
Speaker:Especially if you're doing something that has not really been done before,
Speaker:people will automatically ask moral questions as well as
Speaker:all of the other questions. So you've obviously had them. So, yeah, unleashed
Speaker:your responses. The only way I can, and whenever I present this,
Speaker:the only way I can really prove that it works is to actually analyze
Speaker:someone. So that's what I've done, Phil. I've analyzed you,
Speaker:I've been looking through your social media content. Oh God, I'm
Speaker:gutted. That thing last week. Now, the photos that you've
Speaker:posted, there's ways to score them. I mean, I'm not an expert on this, it's
Speaker:not my research, but I've gathered enough from what they're doing to be able to
Speaker:score in an amateurish way myself. And it's things like your
Speaker:photo on Facebook, for instance. The problem is actually your dog and not
Speaker:you. So one of the things the dog. Actually dominates the fourth in all
Speaker:of them.
Speaker:And your posts are quite kind, actually.
Speaker:They're very supportive. And the fact that you're doing this podcast, to be honest, to
Speaker:get young people into the trade and help them make a decision on their career
Speaker:is another sign. So it was quite easy to analyze you
Speaker:in terms of four of the characteristics, but one characteristic jumped out of
Speaker:my, which is empathy. So you have a very, very high score for empathy.
Speaker:The charity work that you do, and some of the comments that you make, the
Speaker:likes, the shares, the photos, you ridicule yourself, for instance, you put
Speaker:somebody else in front of you dog in this case. So that shows a high
Speaker:level of empathy. Now, people with high levels of empathy find it very hard to
Speaker:complain, however, so I would guess
Speaker:from the formula. The formula is saying that you are unlikely to complain if you
Speaker:find a fault. If you came to Wyvernhausen, we treated you to lunch, which we
Speaker:didn't. Constraints university, you gave
Speaker:me food. I'm happy with that. You'd be unlikely to complain,
Speaker:however, if you were at the table with someone else and
Speaker:they were showing signs that they were distressed or unhappy about their
Speaker:meal, then your empathy starts to balance
Speaker:off against the empathy of the person serving you versus the person that you're with
Speaker:who's unhappy. So I'd add a caveat. I would say if you're out on your
Speaker:own or out with business with like minded people, you would be unlikely to
Speaker:complain even if there was a fault. But you would if there was, if it
Speaker:was a really bad fault. However, if you're with someone who finds a fault and
Speaker:you can see that they're distressed about it, you could be encouraged to complain. I
Speaker:would say that you were most likely, in my experience, of doing this a few
Speaker:times now, you would take charge of the complaint and deliver it in quite a
Speaker:kind way to avoid either the other person delivering it in a less kind
Speaker:way. Now, you could at this point, completely destroy all of my research
Speaker:by telling me that's totally wrong. This just dawned on me now that I kind
Speaker:of dive straight in without thinking yet again. But go on, Phil, tell me, how
Speaker:accurate was that? I have a massive smile on my face because you. I mean,
Speaker:you've quite scarily nailed that. Because actually the thing when you
Speaker:started there, talking about the fact that I'm high empathy, I think I've
Speaker:always known that about myself. That's not really a surprise to me. I have to
Speaker:tell you. It's exhausting being highly empathic,
Speaker:because exactly that situation that you then described about being with somebody
Speaker:who wants to make a complaint about something, of course I
Speaker:experienced the empathy for their situation as well. So
Speaker:you've absolutely nailed it. And I could. I could recount. Oh, God,
Speaker:I could recount so many examples of things
Speaker:exactly as you've just described. And the one that I always come, that immediately
Speaker:springs to my head is my wife and I were on holiday once in
Speaker:Greece, and we had booked a room based around photos that we'd seen on
Speaker:their website. We got in the room and the photos did not match the
Speaker:website. I would have been quite happy with the room that we had,
Speaker:but my missus, bless her, to her credit, said, no, that's not what we paid
Speaker:for. We don't have this. We don't have this. So then I have to. In
Speaker:my head, well, if we. If the only outcome here is that we complain
Speaker:about this, I'm going to be the one that does it. Yeah. Because
Speaker:I. I always feel. And this. Maybe this is a trade
Speaker:thing as well. Having been on the other side,
Speaker:of course, you know that it's not the individual you're about to speak to fault
Speaker:that that's happened. Yeah. And I always keep that in my head. And so I
Speaker:always. I just. I'm trying to. I just showcase some facts and say this is.
Speaker:This is what we paid for or this is what we thought we were getting.
Speaker:This is the difference doesn't really marry up. What can be done about
Speaker:it? I'll tell you what's interesting is I found that and this was part of
Speaker:the research and I need to do the number crunching on it. People who worked
Speaker:in the trade seem to go in two directions and they go in your direction,
Speaker:which is. I feel sorry for the person. I've been in the end of a
Speaker:few complaints myself. I'm just going to calmly tell you what the problem
Speaker:is. Another whole section of our trade, when they go out and eat
Speaker:or worked in our trade in the past, seem to. They spot errors that others
Speaker:don't spot. And they are quite. Almost
Speaker:like one upmanship. They tell you about it. It's almost like this wouldn't have happened
Speaker:if I was managing here, but here's the fault that you've made. So they
Speaker:can actually be lovely or quite difficult. There
Speaker:doesn't seem to be much in the middle. So people, when I've been going around
Speaker:these places, there are people in the audience that I'm training that
Speaker:actually go out and complain a lot. And that was quite a surprise for me.
Speaker:I thought I was going to be talking to people who couldn't possibly complain, but
Speaker:actually some of them do and quite a lot. Yeah, I
Speaker:mean, that's actually. I mean, it's thrilling in some respects
Speaker:that you've been able to nail that down just by doing a little bit of
Speaker:positive stalking at the end of the day, using that as a
Speaker:methodology. I think a lot of companies do that already anyway, in terms of trying
Speaker:to, I suppose, improve the experience. I remember, in fact,
Speaker:it was the pan Pacific. London was kind enough to be invited to their
Speaker:soft opening. We arrived in the room and they'd pulled some
Speaker:pictures off of our Facebook or whatever, and there was a picture of the dog,
Speaker:of course, next to the. To the bed and we thought, that's cool. I
Speaker:like that, you know, so that's when it's used for positive effect
Speaker:in terms of what you've done so far, because you're. You're not at the end
Speaker:with this, are you? You're kind of, you're still progressing the
Speaker:research. So I'm writing it up now. But there's, there's this.
Speaker:I keep hearing the same kind of questions back, and they're right. They're
Speaker:absolutely right, because they say, well, but you're only looking at the person who's made
Speaker:a booking. And what if the person who's made a booking has got seven people
Speaker:behind them that are avid complainers? So the next
Speaker:stage to this is to start using facial recognition
Speaker:and to start using cameras, which the technology is already there.
Speaker:And the cameras could then pick out people in lifetime and
Speaker:know exactly who they are. And one, they can spot people who are
Speaker:struggling to voice their complaint. And they could flag to
Speaker:restaurant manager, for instance, you've got a table over in the corner that
Speaker:is unhappy and that he didn't
Speaker:even know, and a great maitre D, I guess, would know, but we're not all
Speaker:great Maitre D's and maybe he's completely unaware. I tell you, the terrifying thing that
Speaker:came out of this research is that I assume, like all good researchers, you should
Speaker:never come in with a pre misconception by did I assume that staff knew when
Speaker:a table was unhappy? Or rather, they didn't know and
Speaker:until they got home. But actually, they do know that a table is unhappy. They're
Speaker:just choosing not to tackle it. And because I interviewed staff
Speaker:as well as part of this research, and some of the staff, even in five
Speaker:star hotels, were saying things online, oh, if I know a table, I asked them
Speaker:questions. Can you tell if a table is unhappy in the restaurant? They'd say, yeah,
Speaker:yeah, yeah, we could all know. They all knew. But I don't tackle it,
Speaker:because if I go over there and ask them, they're going to complain at me.
Speaker:And I just thought, well, God, they do actually know. And another one said,
Speaker:I strategically wait until they've had a mouthful of food and then I go and
Speaker:ask. And that's the bizarre thing, because when I interviewed the customers, they were saying
Speaker:to say, it's almost as if they wait for you to take a mouthful of
Speaker:what some people out there are. And I wonder how many teams out
Speaker:there, even the best places, have got one or two people that don't like
Speaker:difficult conversations and they can see a table is unhappy. Or struggling,
Speaker:and rather go over and fix it. They stand back and watch. And do you
Speaker:know what? Statistically, they are right to watch, because the majority of customers
Speaker:won't actually raise a fault unless it becomes medium to
Speaker:major. In fact, a lot of customers never say a word, no matter how bad
Speaker:it gets. Someone in the research had a piece of glass
Speaker:inside a piece of chicken in the middle of their meal, so
Speaker:they ate around it. My life, that's someone who cannot
Speaker:complain. When I interviewed them, they wouldn't make eye contact, stared at the floor,
Speaker:and it was all, I don't want the fuss, I don't want the attention, all
Speaker:this kind of stuff. Somebody else in the survey complained 14
Speaker:times in 15 restaurant visits and got compensation eleven
Speaker:times, totally more than 300 pounds. And they complained. One of their
Speaker:complaints was about someone who served them, put two pieces of ice
Speaker:in their coke and they thought that a decent restaurant would have at least
Speaker:four. And they didn't complain to the person who served and they complained to the
Speaker:manager, and the manager gave them a free round of drinks, right? So
Speaker:I think there's a lot of compensation being given out unnecessarily and there's a lot
Speaker:of odd behaviour out there. So the next stage of the
Speaker:research is to. Is to use facial recognition so that we can
Speaker:now know what's going on at the table, but also know every
Speaker:single customer who walks through the door and what their profile is. Now, I'm not
Speaker:saying that this is imminent, but normally at this stage, people start talking about
Speaker:GDPR and do you have to get people to sign something? But all I'd say
Speaker:to those people is just think back to five years
Speaker:back when, if you just said to me five years ago that we'd all have
Speaker:a device that was listening to us in our own homes, which an iPhone does,
Speaker:it's in the terms and conditions. If you look hard enough, you can switch it
Speaker:off, but nobody ever does. Listening to you in your own home. And if you
Speaker:talk about things for long enough, you will get an advert as what's happened to
Speaker:me many times on Instagram in particular. Yeah, I'm looking forward to the greek holidays
Speaker:and my feed later. So
Speaker:that's already going on. And I think in five years time, there will be facial
Speaker:recognition everywhere. People's data will be even more wide
Speaker:open than it currently is and this will just be the norm. And I think
Speaker:we'll go into shops and there'll be like a little picture or hologram that pops
Speaker:up and says, Phil, you might want to look at this new jumper because I
Speaker:know you liked it last time. And what about this tie to go with a
Speaker:suit that you bought the time before? This is going to become the norm in
Speaker:the future. So my question back to people who say, well, hang on a minute,
Speaker:people aren't going to accept that. I think they will accept it. My question back
Speaker:to them is, are we going to use this technology? Because we're not great at
Speaker:picking up technology and using it. Are we going to use this and use it
Speaker:for some good or are we just going to watch all these other industries
Speaker:employee AI, employee facial recognition, employee profiling
Speaker:and just wonder whether we could. Well, I think we can use it
Speaker:and I think that in the future it will be acceptable use of it and
Speaker:we will have a method to. Somebody at the master in holders conference said
Speaker:technology enhanced service. That's what I think we could use this
Speaker:for. It's part of the training that I deliver. I mentioned that it's
Speaker:about people already do this. So if you watch first dates with Fred
Speaker:Cyriax, he talks to the camera as someone approaches him
Speaker:and he's telling the camera, oh, this person, this,
Speaker:that. And then when he welcomes them, he has a big ooh la la,
Speaker:welcome to French. Then I can't do impressions, ooh la la.
Speaker:That dress is fantastic or whatever. That's their welcome. The next one who comes
Speaker:in looks quite timid, quite shy, completely different body language, and he
Speaker:talks to them in a very calm manner and he takes them over to Merlin
Speaker:and he said, we're going to look after you. And it's all completely different. So
Speaker:we are doing this already with our emotional intelligence.
Speaker:What I'm suggesting is we employ AI, we employ profiling, we employ
Speaker:a bit of intelligence behind it to assist all those non
Speaker:Fred Ceriax who haven't susticed after 20 years in the trade so
Speaker:that they can do it as well, effectively. What we're talking about is
Speaker:taking something and using it for good. You
Speaker:know, there's nothing, nothing bad can really come of
Speaker:this kind of technology in a service environment. Because really all you're trying to
Speaker:do is enhance the experience of the guest.
Speaker:Because as we spoke about before as well, if you do get a
Speaker:red flag against somebody because they're a known complainer or
Speaker:their personality profile says that it allows you the opportunity
Speaker:to get ahead of it as opposed to waiting for it to
Speaker:all explode. And so what's not to love about that other than the
Speaker:fact that I suppose really maybe you're taking away the one thing
Speaker:that they live for, which is to complain.
Speaker:Yeah, it was interesting because when I was interviewing, I was asking,
Speaker:in the professional language, I was asking, are you out for compensation
Speaker:here? Because the staff are all saying that there are some that kind of complain
Speaker:because they want to help us and want us to be better and so it
Speaker:doesn't have to other people, we actually think they all want compensation.
Speaker:Nobody would admit to wanting compensation, but they did admit that they
Speaker:like it when it happens. So. And I don't think this is a problem with
Speaker:research. You're never getting someone to be completely honest with you. I think there are
Speaker:people out there that are looking for ways to get compensation. They see an error
Speaker:as a way to get money off their bill. I know for a fact that
Speaker:there are, because I've had conversations with people who have openly admitted it, that
Speaker:there are some people existed, you know, just to, I don't know, get back as
Speaker:much as they can. But what I'd say to that is if. If you
Speaker:build a connection with the person that you're serving, that
Speaker:these, these complaints go down and compensation goes down.
Speaker:So if I can get you and your wife to the table and I have
Speaker:a bit of a laugh and a joke with you and I give you some
Speaker:advice on the menu and I'll give you a top tip of what wines.
Speaker:And we start to connect, then those little errors that might wind
Speaker:up your wife, normally, she'll start to forgive.
Speaker:And if you do complain, it's, you know, Adrian, do you mind if you. It's
Speaker:this kind of way. So building a connection with a customer, I think,
Speaker:is far, far more important than we ever realized. And it starts with the greeting,
Speaker:the seat now at the Wyvern house here that we allow the students
Speaker:to do greet and see. And I kind of trained the wivener
Speaker:House staff as well. And I'm saying that's probably not. That needs to be a
Speaker:final year thing, because actually that position is far more important than we realise.
Speaker:Because I've kind of got these videos, I've got the students to act it out
Speaker:of what happens to an entitled person if they don't
Speaker:get recognized, if they're not known as a regular, if they're not given kind of
Speaker:a big welcome, they get kind of ushered in and forgotten about. They're already in
Speaker:a negative frame of mind. And what happens if a kind of a scared and
Speaker:intimidated person doesn't get calmly reassured to their table? Then they
Speaker:already tighten. And then where you sit them, you sit the
Speaker:entitled person in the center of the room because they want to be seen. You
Speaker:sit the timid person in the corner because they want a defensive position. This is
Speaker:all what I train in now, and it's kind of using a
Speaker:little bit of common sense, a little bit of body language training to do what
Speaker:I hope the system will be able to deliver in the future anyway. But I
Speaker:tell you what I love about this is I will train my
Speaker:students on a Monday, and then I'll go to the goring and train goring
Speaker:staff and exactly the same thing on a Tuesday. And how cool is that? That's
Speaker:very cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Well, and I've been lucky enough to meet some
Speaker:of your students today as well, and you very kindly invited me to give
Speaker:a little talk to them as well. Yeah, they all look oven ready.
Speaker:No, but there is definitely, there's a confidence about them, and
Speaker:obviously that's a sweeping statement. Of course, there's always the measured ones that don't maybe
Speaker:speak as loudly as others. But I suppose that to you that must
Speaker:be, and I've just assumed this within an inch of its life, but it
Speaker:must be quite enriching to see
Speaker:these people that you're basically training to be ready for the industry and then the
Speaker:feedback that you're getting from industry about what they're like. Yeah.
Speaker:And I would add to that, seeing them progress. I mean, I think. I think
Speaker:we're quite quick to put our industry
Speaker:down, if you think. I mean, I've listened to a few of your podcasts, and
Speaker:I've heard people talk about. Thank you. It was me, by the way.
Speaker:You're the listener. That's a standard joke that you have to make in the
Speaker:podcasting. So I heard a young lady talk
Speaker:about that. She was 23 when she took over beefy, and I've won 24. And
Speaker:they. But they're using the same language, and a lot of your interviewees use that.
Speaker:They were lucky in some way. We use this word, and I got fortune, I
Speaker:got no, we need to stop doing that. This industry
Speaker:is bursting with opportunities. I wasn't. I don't think I was lucky.
Speaker:When I became GM, opportunity presented itself and
Speaker:I took it. And if I hadn't taken that one, another one would have done.
Speaker:And that is not true in other industries. If you're in a car manufacturing plant,
Speaker:you might have to wait ten years for your boss to leave and take it.
Speaker:That doesn't happen in a hospitality. Hospitality. Opportunities pop up all over the place. So
Speaker:I think we to do ourselves a favor. We need to stop talking about luck
Speaker:and start talking. Talking about opportunities. And I see this with the students after they've
Speaker:gone. We did a conference at a Grosvenor and there was a young
Speaker:lady that she was a past student, she's been promoted six times in seven
Speaker:years, and that just does not happen anywhere else.
Speaker:So I think seeing them on the first day, where they can
Speaker:be low confidence, they can be a bit rough around the edges
Speaker:sometimes, a bit like Kevin and Perry and Vicky Pollard,
Speaker:and then they grow and get more mature and more confident, and then they start
Speaker:to think they get a bit mouthy in Wyvern house. Hang on a minute. I
Speaker:wouldn't do it this way. That's great. That's great. If they leave Wivenahouse thinking that
Speaker:they could do the job just as well as the people they've been working alongside
Speaker:them. Perfect. And they go out into the trade and then they just
Speaker:fly up the ranks. And we've had GM's within four or five years
Speaker:of graduating people all over the world and, yeah, that's great.
Speaker:And we do this event every year where we invite them all back again and
Speaker:some of them who are available come back and see us and we have this
Speaker:kind of big reunion. But I think, you know that there are lots of reasons
Speaker:why I went into education. I think, firstly,
Speaker:it's the older days.
Speaker:Secondly, I'd say that it's the freebies, so I
Speaker:can phone up a student and get a discount
Speaker:in lots of different places. That's nice, too. But I think what tops it
Speaker:all is just seeing someone quite nervous,
Speaker:quite intimidated on their first day, on their
Speaker:last day. Be very confident. I mean, you saw Lucy today. She's back
Speaker:chatting, she's totally confident, she's totally ready for the trade,
Speaker:and then I will thoroughly enjoy seeing her go out into the trade and fly
Speaker:up the ranks and rip it up. And I take absolute pleasure in
Speaker:that. That's the best part of my job. Yeah, no, that's. That's my kids. I
Speaker:mean, did you ever think that 18 year old kid didn't have a clue what
Speaker:he wanted to do and was forced into the world of
Speaker:hospitality by his nan, that you'd end up doing this?
Speaker:I think she and I thought that crime was my
Speaker:future.
Speaker:I had no clue. I had no clue. And, yeah, that's a generational divide for
Speaker:you, isn't it? That your nan phones you up and just orders you and within
Speaker:a week you're somewhere else. I mean, that just would not happen with. With this
Speaker:generation. They would kick back far harder than I
Speaker:kicked back and I just went with it. But no, I didn't ever think that
Speaker:I would end up in hospitality. I certainly didn't think that I'd be a hotel
Speaker:manager so young. And I never thought that I would be a
Speaker:half professor. You're quite tall for a half professor.
Speaker:No, that's great. Look, I wish you all the very best. With the
Speaker:continued research, I'd imagine there's more to do
Speaker:and more to try. Yeah. I mean, anything that we can do to kind of
Speaker:pump that message out. If you're looking for subjects and things like that, then.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah. I mean, at some stage, I probably will be looking for. To test
Speaker:what I've. What I found. People in the industry have been brilliant
Speaker:about that. So Sally Beck and Danny Pecorelli, all very keen to be
Speaker:involved. They want to see it. They want to see it in action. So I
Speaker:would. The first thing I did when I finished the research, I turned into
Speaker:a training package and I went back to the places that helped me with the
Speaker:research and I trained their staff, the goring and Royal Ancaster and Clifton house,
Speaker:for instance. And that package, now I'm delivering to everybody else,
Speaker:to anyone who wants it. And that is about everything we just talked
Speaker:about, emotional intelligence, body language and all of the data behind
Speaker:complaints. And I think what's nice now is that I get to see a room
Speaker:full of people from industry who are not in an agreement, which means that the
Speaker:research has hit the nail on the head. But also they sit back and they
Speaker:think for a little bit and the penny drops, then that actually, yeah, it's good
Speaker:to take charge of a complaint. It is good to proactively take charge
Speaker:and to do something about it. And we would have better Tripadvisor reviews if we
Speaker:did what this idiot at the front is telling us to do.
Speaker:Excellent. If people want to reach out to you, learn about this
Speaker:or anything else that you've got your head in, what's the best way for them
Speaker:to do that? Yeah, sure. So probably LinkedIn for some reason, it says associate
Speaker:professor Adrian Martin rather than Adrian Martin. Associate professor? Yeah. It's difficult to find you,
Speaker:actually. Adrian doesn't work. No, it doesn't know
Speaker:that. Or you can email me if you're interested in the training. For
Speaker:instance, it's a martil. So there's another a martin in
Speaker:the university, and I haven't got around to killing him yet. So it's amartill with
Speaker:an l at Essex ac UK. Great stuff,
Speaker:Adrian. Thank you so much for sharing your story. No problem. Wish you all the
Speaker:very best. Yeah. Cheers.
