Why Empathy Should Be Part of Your Hotel's Communication Plan

This article originally appears in Hotel Business Review, a publication of Hotel Executive. 

The hospitality industry has long placed a priority on empathy as a foundation for quality service.  Empathy is a necessary skill for establishing the human connection at the heart of the hospitality experience.  It is empathy that helps transform the hospitality encounter from a mere economic transaction to a reciprocal relationship with psychological, social and cultural dimensions. 

Empathy is an important component of the SERVQUAL model widely used to measure strengths and weaknesses in the delivery of hospitality services.   By empathy, we mean the ability to identify with the thoughts or feelings of another as if they were one's own.  Anticipating the needs of others and acting to meet them is the essence of empathy in the hospitality environment. 

Empathy and how individuals and businesses express it has taken on new importance in light of recent events. Hotel leaders were called upon to relate empathetically to guests and employees throughout the pandemic, assuaging their concerns and acting to mitigate suffering from layoffs, closures and service restrictions.  In the midst of last summer's protests, hotel leaders were further challenged to demonstrate sensitivity to racial equity to both internal and external audiences. 

Many hotels were located in city centers where protests were ongoing.  Some leaders were called upon to address highly emotional and dramatic situations affecting staff and guests while trying to maintain operations to the best of their abilities. In our research, more than one hotel executive talked about the need to draw on reserves of empathy to have "courageous conversations" and provide moral leadership in the aftermath of these events.

There are multiple dimensions of empathy to be considered, and each delivers its own value.  "Affective" empathy refers to feeling other's feelings or experiences as if they were one's own; "cognitive" empathy involves taking in the perspective of another, seeing a situation through their eyes; and "conative" empathy involves actively working to reduce the suffering of another. 

Delivering hospitality exercises all three forms of empathy, but it is the latter form (conative empathy) that is most in demand right now.  The public is calling on business leaders to get off the sidelines and demonstrate empathy for marginalized groups in both words and deeds.  This is distinct from sympathy, which is usually expressed in the form of pity ("thoughts and prayers"), reflecting goodwill but stopping short of taking action to alleviate the other person's pain.

The longstanding inequities that became such a focal point in 2020 are likely to remain in the public consciousness through 2021 and beyond.  This is over and above the long-term trend showing a preference for brands that demonstrate ethical concern on issues such as climate change and human trafficking.  Hotel brands should be cognizant of the public hunger for transparent empathetic communication, particularly with respect to social justice.  This phenomenon was recently on display as more than 100 corporations, among them tourism businesses such as Delta Airlines and Starbucks, reacted to legislation aimed at restricting voting in Georgia. 

Accenture's Fjords Trend Report for 2021 asserted that responding to these forces, organizations will need to be empathetic and be seen to behave as such to their employees and customers, while striving to be profitable in their daily operations.  The authors further observed that brands carefully consider their actions and messaging as they attempt to communicate care and compassion to diverse audiences. 

Establishing a culture of empathy tied to core values and modeling behavior from the CEO and top leaders of the company is an important first step.   In the hotel industry, the global nature of our operations and the diversity of our employees and clientele make this a topic of urgent importance to leadership.  There are numerous examples that can be cited at the corporate level.  

For instance, Hyatt President and CEO Mark Hoplamazian has identified empathy as the foundation of its service design, talent development and guest engagement strategies during and post-pandemic.  This includes an increased focus on "leading inclusively and creating the right environment for colleagues wellbeing".  Marriott's corporate website makes it clear that "diversity and inclusion is fundamental to our core values and strategic business goals. Taking care of people and their well-being is our most precious cultural inheritance".

In his messages to associates and the larger community, the late Marriott CEO Arne Sorenson lived out this philosophy, modeling empathy and compassion in every word. In their tributes to him, other hotel CEOs remarked on his unerring ability to communicate kindness, compassion and commitment to social progress.  IHG's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Report sets out ambitious targets for 2030 that cut across such equity issues such as striving for gender and ethnic balance in leadership positions, creating culture of inclusion throughout the supply chain, prioritizing associates' well-being and promoting human rights. The goals are backed up with specific commitments to take action in multiple ways.   In the report, IHG CEO Keith Barr states :

"We've chosen to focus on equity alongside diversity and inclusion because we know how important it is to not have one without the others, and we recognise that society increasingly feels this way, too.  Equity means making sure everyone has access to the same opportunities, by recognising and taking action to address any barriers that exist for them. We're clear in our commitment as a company to ensure we're fair in how we treat, compensate and develop our colleagues". 

Managers at the property level must translate these directive into effective policy and communication for their teams and guests.  In whatever way a leader chooses addresses this topic, it needs to be transparent, respectful and above all empathetic.

To be sure, the hospitality industry is by no means without controversies of its own when it comes to how it treats its workforce and customers.  The history of low pay, insecure shift work, harassment and exploitation can make even the most heartfelt efforts by corporations to embrace empathy and equity ring hollow.  Until workers feel the same sense of safety and well-being as guests, the playing field will remain lopsided.  Moreover, there is strong evidence in the literature that employees' perception of organizational justice is correlated with relationship quality and by extension job performance (1).

These are just a few of the reasons that the first order of business should be to focus on getting our own house in order so that employees can believe our message of empathy and spread it beyond our walls as advocates and co-creators of the service experience.  If we are able to do so, empathetic and equitable treatment of guests is more likely to follow, minimizing some of the lapses that can occur during the millions of interactions between the givers and receivers of our services on a daily basis.  

There may even be potential for the hospitality industry to take a leadership role in helping to increase the degree of mutual respect and caring in society as a whole.  Hospitality is often equated with offering kindness, comfort, shelter and sustenance to the stranger.  "Breaking bread" is a metaphor for overcoming differences by sharing a meal.  Tourism studies suggest that the very act of creating a safe and friendly environment for all customers, treating them with kindness and respect, can in and of itself be a force for promoting cross-cultural understanding.   Tourism scholars have argued that "empathy can lead people from dominant ethnicities to become of aware of their privilege and thus open up the possibility for structural change" (2).   As a "moral encounter" hospitality can be an engine for social progress and a force for cross-cultural understanding, empathy and peace (3). 

On an educational level, the practice and study of hospitality can be a tool for increasing empathetic behaviors.  It has been observed that in service learning, engagement with the community makes it harder to maintain prejudices, stereotypes and narrow thinking (4).  As the world becomes more global and the nature of the service environment continues to evolve, it is incumbent on institutions of higher education to recognize empathy as a skill that should be purposefully cultivated in our hospitality management graduates through immersive experiences in diverse settings (5).  As no-touch service protocols and technology-enabled communication in the hospitality industry increase, it will be important to determine how human interaction and relationship-building can be retained as essential characteristics of the hospitality experience.

It may seem like a stretch to call upon an industry as large and as varied as hospitality to take on such challenges.  Certainly we have the training and opportunity to be agents for the greater good if we have the inclination.  Enhancing empathy skills in staff at all levels within the operation is a great place to start.  Hilton corporation is using virtual reality training modules to enhance the management team's empathy for frontline workers and guests (12).  In addition, hotels and other hospitality businesses will need to give strong consideration to how they will frame empathy and equity messages in their corporate communications and how they will ensure that associates live out those values in their interactions with guests and one another on the ground. 

References:

1. Chao-jun Li, Kuo-Kuang Chang & Shih-Ming Ou | Juan Ignacio Pulido-Fernández (Reviewing editor) (2020) The relationship between hotel staff's organizational justice perception, relationship quality and job performance, Cogent Social Sciences, 6:1, DOI: 10.1080/23311886.2020.1739953

2. Davis, K. C. (2004), 'Oprah's book club and the politics of cross-racial empathy', International Journal of Cultural Studies, 7:4, pp. 399–419.

3. Caton, K. (2014), 'Humanism and tourism: A moral encounter', in M. Mostafanezhad and K. Hannam (eds), Moral Encounters in Tourism, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, pp. 17–30.

4. Stratman, J. (2013). Toward a Pedagogy of Hospitality: Empathy, Literature, and Community Engagement.  Journal of Education and Christian Belief, 17:1 (2013), 25 – 29.

5. Dominguez, G.  and Herrera, F.A., (2020). Learning framework for the development of key skills in the hospitality industry. International Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Studies, 1(2), 127-139.