Where am I? Karon
The rise and shine call goes at 5am sharp, and we get our sluggish ass bodies into a shower and try to shake off that old bleary eye. I manage to prise open one good eye to take a peek out of the arch window of my room-which unfortunately reminds me exactly where I am; near Karon Beach in Phuket Thailand. This room is quite large, hardly what you’d call luxury-but then that’s to be expected for staff accommodation.
I am currently a staff member at this resort beach hotel, here on loan to study a bit of real life in the Thai hospitality business. It’s a paid holiday leave training seminar from the hotel I work for in the UK. Me, and a few others who’d thought it’d be a good idea to join this seminar week to tune up our skills were surprised at what we’d let ourselves in for. A few hours seminar a day, then off to the idyllic squeaky Karon beaches for the rest of the day-not to mention the nightlife we’d looked forward to.
NOT! One WWII Japanese POW camp in Thailand might be nearer the mark! We worked, worked heavy and hard. "This is how you are intended" explains Mr Su the hospy teacher. "Coming here to learn Thai hospitality-not of the western style you know, this morning’s lessons are the five rules of hospitality. Number 1 courteous, number 2 resourcefulness, number 3 punctuality, number 4 promises and delivery and least but not last number 5 extended service by going beyond the needs of CS having the genuine interest in customer knees. " (I presume he meant needs) " First we look at number 1�" . Mr Su drones on until his voice becomes an all but distant background murmur and my mind drifts back to a real holiday I had a few years ago.
Now I’d learnt quite a few things from that beach hotel-I thought to myself. For all the wrong reasons, five rules of how "not to". Serve the dishes by throwing them at the customers. Hang around hallways chatting and smoking with other staff. No terrible CS, but we had a ball anyway and you would if you weren’t after the luxury of five star hotels and excellent food and service. And then there was the holiday romance, the ugly head that rears itself into the form of temporary love and lust. "I promise, I will" we promised each other�"Over promising" shouts Mr Su "is bad because why Wendy? " he points his stubby finger at me, obviously caught me day dreaming. "um" I stumble with my words "better to under promise, then over deliver". I reply. "yes, yes, yes example please, Wendy" .
"um say that you were going to the beach and would be back in an hour, I say to the guest that I would start preparing his or her BLT and pina colada when they arrived back, this is what you would call under promising. There’s nothing special about my offer. However, what I do is, over deliver, by not only having his/her blt &drink ready by the time he or she gets back but actually delivering the beverages to his or her sunbed on the hotel Karon beach " I wave a nonchalant hand toward the beach outside the window "the customer will be very impressed with this hotel service".
"Very good!" replies Mr Su "So what if customer changes their mind or shoots off from beach to another place, then what would you do? Bloody problem there I see" He chimes on oblivious to the fact that his accent has just gone Australian. "Well it was just an example" I reply casually. Didn’t expect the Spanish inquisition and I try hard to ignore his sense of humour and get my mind back to my dreams of luxury hotels on idyllic palm fringe beaches, from where I wade into a turquoise sea of tropical fish- gold and yellow and blue. Places like Karon in Phuket, where we can enjoy real holidays away from places like this and people like these. Where am I again?
