Introduction

How to Create Heart-Based Hospitality: The Future of the Hotel Guest Experience by Peter McAlpine

In the future, the guest experience will be strong in loving-kindness, compassion, and heart-warming care,

and it will be created by working with energy and by developing spiritual capacity.

Introduction

A. The Purpose of the Course

• This course is about how to create a spirit of hospitality, which is impossible with the pervasive quality standards-based concept of SOP-Customer Satisfaction, which is the global norm. “SOP” refers to the operational Standards of Performance. I call the level, Heart-Based Hospitality, because it is created by knowing how to work with human energy, especially with the electromagnetic energy of the heart; by tapping into the heart’s intelligence; by increasing heart coherence so as to open the heart to experience ever-stronger emotions of love; and by developing spiritual capacity, which increases the desire to show love, kindness, heart-warming care, and compassion from the heart to others.
• These activities and many more enable hotels to transform the emotionless and mechanical SOP-Customer Satisfaction style of hospitality into hospitality that is soft and gentle; strong in the energy of loving-kindness, compassion, and heart-warming care; hospitality that changes the energetic feeling of the hotel property and facilities, and which makes the employees and guests feel happier.

B. The Reason for Creating This Online Workshop

• SOP-Customer Satisfaction is the dominant hotel industry guest experience concept throughout the world. Even though in my experience hoteliers know that something is wrong with the concept, you don’t see anyone other than myself pointing out openly like the boy in the fairytale, “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, that the Emperor is naked, meaning that the concept is obsolete owing to its inability to meet the increasingly important unspoken emotional, spiritual, energetic, and wellness needs of human beings.
• SOP-Customer Satisfaction is an operational service standards-oriented concept. It is disconnected from genuine hospitality, which is a spiritual and energetic path that is trodden with practical feet. The foundation of this path is love, and in particular, loving-kindness, compassion, and genuine heart-warming care. Love is the essence of genuine hospitality.
• While high standards are of course important in Heart-Based Hospitality, the focus is on creating a hospitality experience that is dripping with the energy and spirit of loving-kindness, compassion, and heart-warming care. The concept uses the science of the heart; knowledge about the spiritual nature of human beings and energy that can be found in ancient cultures, in the monasteries of Tibet, Egypt, and the Andes, and also in mainstream religions; the discoveries of quantum science about the energetic nature of our world and the power of our thoughts, feelings, and emotions to influence the world around us; and so much more, all of which is ignored by the hotel group corporate offices who must surely know that they are mercilessly flogging an obsolete concept with new brands and technology in order to try to keep it going.
• Heart-Based Hospitality is the future direction of hotel hospitality. As the hotel industry moves more and more into the area of wellness it will embrace energy and spirituality, and hoteliers generally will realize that SOP-Satisfaction just isn’t suitable anymore. It is then that the hotel industry will look around for a new direction. Heart-Based Hospitality is the only direction that the industry has never looked at.
• Energy, spirituality, and love are not yet acceptable words in hotel group corporate offices, and it may take a whole generation before they are. This online workshop will be available for when the time comes. In other words, this online workshop has been made for the future of the hotel industry when the spiritual and energetic essence of hospitality is finally understood and accepted.

C. The 11 Parts of the Course

1.         What is Heart-Based Hospitality?

2.         The Goals and Benefits of Heart-Based Hospitality

3.         Opening Your Heart Will Change Your Energy

4.         Understanding How People Really Feel

5.         Give People a Compliment

6.         Help People with Their Suffering and Help Them Feel Loved

7.         Sending Love Energy

8.         Use Thought Energy to Enhance Heart-Based Hospitality

9.         Make a Difference by Showing Loving-kindness

10.       Empathy and Compassion

11.       Near-Death Experiences

• This online course is not like a typical corporate office course about “The 7 Steps to Perfect Customer Service”. When you read the headings above you probably wondered what love energy, thought energy, and near-death experiences have to do with providing hospitality and creating the guest experience. You will discover their relevance as you work through the course and you will discover how Heart-Based Hospitality can revolutionise the hospitality industry.
• Please bear in mind that Heart-Based Hospitality is an energetic and spiritual concept and in order to create it you have to learn knowledge that is not normally associated with creating the hotel guest experience. You have to update your worldview to embrace the quantum worldview in which everything is made of vibrating energy, including we human beings. You also have to change your understanding of what it means to be human and of what we are capable of. Finally, you will also have to develop your spiritual capacity, and learn how to meditate and to work with energy.
• I ask you to be open-minded as you go through the course. Read the additional articles and watch the videos provided, and try out the meditations regularly. I assure you that the concept works in practice. If you find the concept of energetic and spiritual hospitality challenging, just imagine how challenging the concept is for corporate office folks who have spent many years in a corporate office environment. I have written three times directly to over 800 corporate office people and none has comprehended the significance of Heart-Based Hospitality for the future of the hotel industry.
• If you study the course slowly from start to end you will be a very different person at the end.

D. How to Use the Course

• Each of the 11 units (called Parts) of the course has a framework that includes the following 6 sections:

a)  The Topic of the Parts

• Each lesson (called Sections) starts with a PowerPoint slide with some basic information about the topic of the section. This might be in the form of text, a video, a graphic, or a photograph. The topics relate to the energetic and spiritual nature of Heart-Based Hospitality and how to create it.

b)   Comments

• This section discusses the contents of the PowerPoint slide and provides information and thoughts about it. Often there are questions for the reader to think about, and I ask the reader to think seriously about the questions and not to hurry past them.

c)   Further Information and Understanding

• This section enables the reader to go more deeply into the topic by means of relevant articles and videos. I encourage the reader to read all of the articles and to watch the videos. They will deepen the reader’s knowledge of the topic. Some videos and stories are based on the essential core values of hospitality – loving-kindness, compassion, and heart-warming care – and serve to touch your heart and to open it further so that you can provide Heart-Based Hospitality with ever-greater capacity.
• I encourage you to close your eyes for a few minutes and to visualize yourself applying the techniques and ideas in your work and personal life. Breathe in slowly and deeply as you do this.

d) The Message

• This section is usually short and provides a summary of some of the main points. It states the main takeaway of the section.
• I encourage you to close your eyes for a few minutes and to visualize yourself applying the message in your work and personal life. Breathe in slowly and deeply as you do this.

e) Application

• Here there are suggestions about how the reader could apply the knowledge in the section in their personal life and professional life.
• I encourage you to close your eyes for a few minutes and to visualize yourself applying the suggestions in your work and personal life. Breathe in slowly and deeply as you do this.

f)   A Final Thought

• At the very end of each unit, the reader will find a quotation, graphic, a short text, or even a video that encourages the reader to think more about the topic and to apply it to their personal life and professional life.
• I encourage you to close your eyes for a few minutes and to visualize yourself applying the idea or thought in your work and personal life. Breathe in slowly and deeply as you do this.

E. The Terms “Hospitality”, “Guest Experience”, and “Service”

• Hospitality refers to the energetic feeling and spiritual nature of the guest experience provided; the level of love, loving-kindness, compassion, and heart-warming care that the guests receive from the hotel staff; and the softness, gentleness, and grace of the experience.
• When used on its own the Guest Experience is not the same as Hospitality. It simply refers to the experience that the guests receive from the hotel staff, which could be at the level of SOP-Customer Satisfaction.
• Service refers to the performance of operational skills and actions, such as serving food and beverages, making beds, checking in a guest, etc., as in the SOP-Customer Satisfaction concept.

F.   A Final Thought

• Heart-Based Hospitality is a rebellious concept and direction for the hotel industry. Part 1 will introduce you to the reasons why it is. I hope that you enjoy the journey!