KarryOn caught up with Michael Gray, General Manager at Hyatt Regency – The Churchill in London to discuss the importance of leadership, staff and customer service.
Whilst on a recent trip to London we spoke to Mr Gray about the importance of motivating staff, how to stay competitive and how to make guests ‘feel like home’ in a traditional yet contemporary hotel.
A British national, Mr Gray has been with Hyatt Hotels for over 30 years.
In 1987 Michael Gray relocated to Australia and was promoted to General Manager of Hyatt Hotel Canberra, a Park Hyatt Hotel, where he was responsible for the opening the 249 room property and he later went on and became the General Manager for Grand Hyatt, Melbourne and he speaks fondly of his time in Australia.
“The highlight of my career was spending three years in Australia when I opened the Hyatt Hotel Canberra and Hyatt on Collins which is now Grand Hyatt Melbourne, I really enjoyed my time there.”
Michael Gray, Hyatt Regency – The Churchill GM
“I also pay credit to Australia for being a catalyst for chainging the service culture in this country, many Australians came over a couple of decades ago with a real Australian ‘can-do attitude’ and with their friendly an enthusiastic spirits they really changed the service culture here.”
Since 2014 he has been General Manager of Hyatt Regency London – The Churchill and in 2007 he was awarded ‘Hotelier of the Year 2007’.
Michael J Gray, General Manager, Hyatt Regency London – The Churchill
How long have you worked for Hyatt?
I’ve been with Hyatt for 30 plus years now and I’ve always enjoyed my time in this industry. I never really wanted to to anything else.
What are some challenges you face in your role?
I suppose one of the issues, apart form the practicality of recovering from a fairly major indecent which occurred about seven months ago when we had to close to the hotel for several months, I think that one of the big challenges is to never miss out on any opportunities that come our way.
If you look around in the hotel we for example have the Saatchi artwork on display (a vibrant exhibition of the Saatchi Suite) and the Boyarde Messenger handbags display – all these things are things we take advantage of to set ourselves us apart from the competition.
Another challenge is to attract more local people in order to depend less on the international market. Not everyone looks at the hospitality industry as a favourable career path but we would like to see an increasing interest amongst UK people in the hospitality industry.
In order to attract local talent we work very closely with ‘spring boards’ which is a program encouraging younger people from disadvantaged backgrounds to join the hospitality industry.
What we’ve seen is that if we can get an interest from students from an early age from when they come in doing work experience for a few weeks and can fire their enthusiast then hopefully they get a passion for it and will consider the hospitality industry as a career path.
Also, we are not looking for academics, we are looking for people who has a personality and a friendly smile. It’s a great industry however not all teaches and parents would agree.
Is the GM important to the daily life of your front-line employees?
The Saatchi exhibition in the background.
A General Manager’s role is absolutely vital, the GM sets the ethos for the entire hotel and it’s a heck of a responsibility.
I’ve always thought that how a GM behaves, basically how the boss behaves sets the tone for how the rest of the staff behaves, it’s almost like you’re not allowed to have a scale on your face because people will say ‘what’s wrong?’.
Personality wise it’s important that the GM is visible. It’s important to be seen out there, being involved and committed.
What does a normal day look like?
I’m not the most organised person and I always try to pack a lot in during the day and you can just be pulled from pillar to post, but you just have to smile about it and go ‘hey lets carry on’.
I think that’s the the buzz you get from working in this industry, things happen all the time and most importantly you are dealing with people.
For example, this morning I had a scheduled meeting and then one of our regular guests show up with a bunch of papers, which means that I can’t leave and I will be late for that meeting, but hopefully that means I’ll please that guest.
It’s simply a balancing act on daily basis.
How do you keep your employees motivated?
The Churchill Bar & Terrace
Communication is the key.
We do a lot of social activities here including employee parties, one at Christmas and one in the summer. We also highlight staff performance with monthly service awards.
We also have regular staff meetings where we encourage a member of staff from each department to meet with myself and HR to spill the beans and share what’s making their lives difficult and of course what they are happy about and what’s working well.
We are also involved in a major program – ‘Care and Purpose’ and our mantra is ‘We care about people, so they can be their best’ and this has been rolled out globally led by the General Managers.
We are right at the early stages with this program, but basically it’s about teaching us all to care about everybody – each other.
The GM should also hopefully get to know what’s causing any potential staff problems, it’s important to know the employees personally and be aware if they have a sickness themselves or if a family member is unwell, it really isn’t rocket science, it’s just trying to have that intelligence and information.
And I think actually showing that we care about them.
What’s the career path at Hyatt Regency – The Churchill?
Statue of Sir Winston Churchill.
From a formal point of view Hyatt has a corporate leadership program where we take graduates from hotel schools for a 6-12month program where they work across every department of the hotel. From there we find out what their desired path is and then we try to place them in those departments.
For people joining the hotel for a particular position for example in front-desk or as a clerk, they also have the opportunity to move up the lather pretty quickly by being noticed and by us noticing their particular skills.
The most important thing is their personality not their academic qualifications.
What keeps you motivated?
Through the staff, by what they do, they are a motivation to me.
Especially what they do off their own batch, when they come up against a situation and they can do something that makes a difference and we later receive lovely letters from guests saying “so and so has done this”.
Also, I think trying to take the hotel forward and put us on the map and be recognised as a hotel. For example tonight we will be part of an awards ceremony and we are hoping to win an award for our bar.
Plus I figured after all these years that I quite enjoy this industry, you have to be a certain character to work in the hospitality industry. When my friends from school found out what I was doing for a career they asked “How can you be nice to those people to all the time?”but that’s what you do, especially if someone is paying $7000 for a suite. I suppose it comes naturally to me.
Another thing that motivates me is when something has gone wrong and you are given the opportunity to rectify the situation. The relationship with many of our frequent guests started off as a complaint and now they are our most loyal customers.
What can your guests expect when staying at Hyatt Regency – The Churchill?
I think they can expect a very warm welcome, a feeling of friendliness, a lot of our guests actual say ‘it feels like coming home’.
I believe when it comes to hotels it’s not just about the brick and mortal it’s about the intangible factors such as the spirit, the welcome and friendless they experience which I believe is the most important thing and when people stop saying that we have a problem.
Hyatt Regency – The Churchill is a fairly traditional hotel but guests might be surprised by the edginess we have going here, for example the Saatchi and the Boyarde handbag exhibition we have on display, it’s a classic hotel with a contemporary edge.
Our guests will also receive a warm welcome and if something goes wrong they will receive an apology and the situation will be rectified.
What makes Hyatt Regency – The Churchill unique?
We are all under the Hyatt umbrella but each hotel is allowed to be run as it should be for that particular location. Hyatt Regency – The Churchill is ran as a hotel should be in London and for example Hyatt Regency in Waikiki, Hawaii would do the same for their destination.
Our unique selling point is the consistency of service, warm welcome and feeling of belonging to Hyatt that we offer our guests. We have an enormous number of Gold Pass members that chose to stay at a Hyatt hotel rather than at another hotel brand.
What are the current trends in the luxury hotel market?
Hyatt has done an awful lot of work over the last 2-3 years when it comes to innovation.
We’ve been working really hard talking to an awful lot of people including guests and employees.
We are trying to smooth the path when guests arrive, for example there used to be 25 steps for a guest checking in, now it’s only three.
Some of our guests would like to check in straight way and to meet their needs we’ve developed an app enabling them to use the app as a room key.
However leisure guests want to linger and chat and their check-in process is very different.
The key for us is to try to find out as much as we can about the guests before they arrive, just like airlines do, in order for us to be able to personalise the experience.
Technology is huge for us, trying to keep with up with can be a nightmare however within the last year or two we’ve stopped charge for wifi and we’ve just introduced a new service enabling guests to automatically access all Hyatt’s wifi connections once logged in at one hotel.
The complaints we receive in regards to technology are usually the internet not being fast enough and we have constant talks with the IT guys to improve this.
We’ve also seen an increasing growth of multi-generation travelling especially during holiday seasons, and if it’s someones anniversary or birthday they receive a cake and during Christmas the children will receive a Christmas stocking, these are the touch points that personalise the guests experience.
At our recent General Managers’ meeting in Orlando we discussed changing the concept from thinking that the guests are stepping into our world but rather look at it from another angel – we are stepping into their world.
