Project Type

People

Country

Switzerland

Case Study Title

The Capra Switzerland Culture Coach Pre-season Training

The Client

Private owners and avid skiers who have purchased an old ‘sport’ hotel in Saas Fe (Europe’s highest Ski resort) to develop into a luxury wellness boutique lifestyle hotel. 

Background

As the start of the 2022 winter season approached, Hotel Solutions Partnership (HSP) proposed a condensed version of a Culture Coach program to provide a robust foundation for building a strong new culture of service that can then be driven by the General Manager and leadership team.

Culture Coach is a signature Hotel Solutions Partnership program designed to help businesses create a culture of world class service excellence.  It is typically run as a 10 Phase planned program over the course of a year and includes leadership workshops, customized service training programs and much more. 

Client Need

The owners sought to improve levels of service at the property to bring them up to par with the luxury quality of the resort product, especially since they had just renovated the property, adding 30 rooms and expanding their spa offering in 2022. 

Scope of Work

HSP member and creator of our Culture Coach program, Donald Bowman, worked with members of the hotel Management and Ownership team during several virtual online sessions to understand where their service and culture stood and to build a consensus on how they would like it to change.

Donald then took the work and findings from these sessions and created a customized training program for all employees. The programme’s aim was to instill a sense of pride and passion in their work as team members of this unique luxury resort. The following training was delivered;

Three leadership training sessions were facilitated covering the following topics

• Train the Trainer and the Importance of SOPs
• 10 Key Pillars to Create a Culture of World Class Service Excellence
• Lessons in Positivity

Three training sessions were held for all team members covering the following topics

• An Introduction to Excellence, Quality and Service
• Empowerment and Problem-Solving Techniques
• Your Personality for Service.

While on property, Donald also worked with the departmental teams to review and train their departmental SOPs and to seek improve the service experience by enhancing them.

What did Hotel Solutions Partnership achieve for the client?

In addition to facilitating the training above, Donald spent time with the departmental teams including Front Desk and Porters, Food and Beverage Service and Housekeeping during their various SOP training sessions and role-plays.  Supplementary work-sessions were also run to complete additional operational SOPs.

We identified ways to improve communication throughout both the main hotel and their mountain restaurant.  Additionally, we made a number of recommendations on the format and cadence of regular meetings to improve communications, and to establish Routines and Rituals that will continuously improve operations.

Finally, a standard-of-the-week training program was implemented to ensure that the training and enthusiasm was kept alive. The team were left invigorated, more closely connected, and well prepared for the launch of the season.