The Mole has a very revealing chat with Neil Houghton – the GM Crowne Plaza Hunter Valley

Visiting the Hunter recently and staying at the brand spanking new Crowne Plaza Hunter Valley, The Mole would have been remiss not to take advantage the opportunity of having chat with the GM of this fabulous hotel, Neil Houghton.

Interestingly, Neil has not worked in Australia previously, having moved here with the Intercontinental Hotels Group from The George Hotel in Edinburgh especially to take up this new job in the Hunter and he admitted that he accepted the job without knowing that there the hotel was surrounded by a golf course and that he would have to run it – life is tough sometimes!

Neil brings with him very extensive experience having has worked for the Intercontinental Hotels Group for 14 years, most recently as GM at the famous The George Hotel in Edinburgh for four and a half years, Neil telling The Mole that he had previously only worked in the UK and wanted to work somewhere else in the world.  He said, “My wife is American and really it needed to be an English speaking country and we looked at the options including the Middle East and there were opportunities there but the attraction of this was very strong for me as well, as being in a wine region”.  “It really hit some good buttons for me and of course then finding out there was a golf course here!!!”

Neil told me that the property was pretty well built when he arrived and in reality his job was taking over finished property and then the interesting stuff began, including recruiting his team, pulling together a strategic plan and getting everything in place, the all the furniture, fixtures and fittings, getting every detail and setting right, securing and training the right staff and most important, getting the sleep experience because that has to be good or everything else falls apart.

In terms of customer expectation it is the same, people want to be cared for in a friendly yet efficient and speedy manner with an expectation of quality of service and the expectation is getting higher so we have to raise our game above expectation.

Most hotels talk about customer satisfaction, but that is not good enough, we talk about customer delight and exceeding expectations – they are our aims and we hope that we deliver them.

The bottom line is that satisfied customers are promiscuous and will go elsewhere, but if they are delighted they will come back and that is something we need to inculcate in our staff and I believe we are doing so.

Business here in Aus is more relaxed than the UK, with not so many formalities and the English are bit more stuffy!  We had great debate about what the staff should wear, trying to balance what they would be more comfortable in, but also led by what the customer expects, we are not a cheap hotel and we think that the customers expect a bit of formality, a bit like when they walk into bank and you expect people to be smart because they are dealing with your money and it is a bit like that in a hotel.

We believe that the language corporately is to make it happen, which is a brand language with Crowne Plaza, but has to start with me and my senior staff, because this a partnership in success right across the whole team.

We say rather than they are my senior management team but they are my senior leaders, because I believe that managers restrict, while leaders of course lead, but they encourage and motivate, which I believe is a key to our success.

I empower my staff and while many people in management talk about empowerment, I prove it by giving everyone in my staff a ceiling of $500 to recover an issue, whatever it is to ensure customer delight and exceeding of expectations.

Of course I do not want them throwing $500 at every little thing, because often a genuine apology may do it or around or round of drinks or a dessert in a restaurant can defuse the issue and resolve everything.

The fact is simple, the customer is pretty well always going to be right and if it is a complete mess then just do what it takes to fix it there and then.  That is the power that I have given my team and after the event, we then hold a post mortem then to see what went wrong.  Interestingly, the reality that the staff member will give away less than I would!

In terms of quality of staff here compared to Sydney or the UK, one of the things I was concerned about was recruiting over 200 people, but we set the parameters, which were smile, energy, attitude, wanting to better themselves, wanting to learn, wanting to secure promotion and better themselves – that innate inbuilt X factor that makes the difference!

We had our own recruitment open day and I recruited everyone myself, with 668 people turning up for an interview of 5 mins, with a quick decision made – Yes, No and maybe!

We had so many people come along and meet with us with their CV and they there were so many keen and enthusiastic people, with Cessnock selling out of white shirts that day, hair dressers snowed under, mobile phones shops busy and so on.

325 people went in the Yes box and had a full interview to and then we made job offers and took 200 on.  We were way over subscribed and what was critical was their attitude so we took people from outside the hospitality industry – basic principle?  If you did not smile you did not get in.

We have a sense of fun here with some good practical jokes, even jokes of the day, with fun being one of our cornerstones – the team want to come to work and enjoy themselves and absenteeism is correlated to people who are unhappy. 

We are of a size in the Hunter that that is unique and with purpose built facilities on site – not temporary, with state of the art technology – our wireless broadband even works on the golf course!

In twelve moths time I would want to be saying that things on the agenda in no specific order that we have achieved are that I want to have created positive local economic impact and created local long term employed and really want that to happen, in addition to secondary and tertiary spend in the local community whether it petrol, chocolates, wine etc the list goes on.  That is critical to me.

We believe that we have brought to the Hunter some clients that would otherwise not have come here because of our size and therefore we are growing market share for the Hunter.  

I would also hope to have been successful in attracting residential conferences and I want to exceed my target for next year and also achieve that magical staff and customer delight, because I believe that with those in place profitability follows.

If our customers are delighted, our staff are delighted, our stakeholders are delighted then the owners will be delighted and so will my bosses in Sydney and Singapore and be delighted and ultimately – I will be also be delighted!

Thank you Neil and very best wishes in your new post.

Report by The Mole on the road in the Hunter.