HFT2220 Thursday 4:30-7:20p.m.
Mizuki Abiru

Journal: Guest Speaker

I was glad to listen to her lecture.
Communication is important in hospitality industry. It can make guests happy or unhappy and satisfied or unsatisfied. In the other words, it depends on how to communicate with our guests. In my experience, I consider that they are listening to me if there are smile, body language, eye contact and reaction of other person. As she said, the percentage of words is 7 percent, that of tone is 38 percent and that of body language is 55%, it means that nonverbal communication is more important than verbal communication. I think that it is the same in the interviews that is, it is good to respect each other between interviewers and interviewees.
Shaking hands is also important. It shows our feelings that how to shake hands with the other person. In Japan, we hardly have opportunities to shake hands, so I had a lot of things to learn from her. I learnt it is good handshakes which have eye contact. If the other person would not have eye contact with me, I might be uncomfortable with the handshake, even if he or she respected for me. In this case, we could not be get along with each other. As another theme, she talked about relaters, thinkers, socializers and directors. Professor is not only thinker but also socializer, sometimes relater and director. I think hotel managers are socializers and relater, sometimes director and thinker, because they provide direction to their staff as a leader and they think how to deal with problem and how to manage their hotels, so I think these four parts related tightly.
In the near future, we are going to do job search and have interviews, and we will be hired, have responsibilities and we may lead our subordinator. We have a lot of things to learn how to communicate with others such as our employer, leader, subordinator and guests. The way of communication depends on who is the other person. If we can respect each other, the work environment is improved and employees and guests are satisfied with their experiences.