Up Front

with the editor

Outside appearances are not always the best yardstick for measuring the standard of service at a hotel.

YOU can remodel your old establish ment, or build yourself a new one with better bathtubs, but if your guests continually buy arguments with the drink waiter, get a surly reaction from the girl at the switchboard, and have to ask the front desk three times be fore a man arrives to take the bags, they begin to feel that their gold plated surroundings are mere dross.

The South Pacific hotel business is currently going through some growing pains of this kind.

In Fiji, where they are in the middle of a hotel building boom like Tahiti’s of a few years ago, hotels are rising at airport, bay and beach —superbly appointed and designed hotels which will make perfect props for the fashion models in those inter national glossy magazines.

Staff problems

But the problem is, where will the trained staff come from to make reality as satisfying as the expecta tions? Some managements are worried, and I rather think that it will get worse in Fiji before it gets better, for there will be some stealing of trained staff before shortages are over come.

In the meantime I hope that the hoteliers remember that while both efficiency and friendly goodwill from the staff are requirements for good hotels, goodwill will get them through while the efficiency is still being taught. If I can’t get both, I’d sooner stay at a friendly rather than efficient hotel any day.

As an example I give you the Kingdom of Tonga and its Inter national Dateline Hotel. The Dateline is owned by Tonga’s government, and it is the conception of King Taufa’ahau, who, when Premier, tried on many occasions to establish a hotel.

It opened at the end of last year after many vicissitudes, some of us

wondering out loud whether it woi be a successful business enterprise view of the fact that the then Prem was noted more for his enthusias than his business acumen. And wl standard of service could internatioi travellers expect from the easy-goi Tongans? we wondered.

As a business enterprise we s don’t know, because these are ea days yet, and Nukualofa’s overs wharf, with its tourist-pulling pr abilities, is not yet finished; yet il all very hopeful.

Five stars

But on service standards the D< line gets five stars in my private listi with a silver palm cluster for the \ people in it met the tidal wave coronation visitors in July. No So Seas hotel has had to deal with si an onslaught with such little exp ence, yet I can’t imagine how ; could have managed better.

Certainly, there are internatic hotels which could have done the more efficiently (but you won’t j them in this part of the world), the key to the Dateline’s success July is to be found in the words a small brochure put out just bei coronation week by the Dateli: manager, Kim Mahnkopf, and his tractive Australian wife and ri; hand, which said: “We trust your i at the Dateline will be comfort: and pleasant, and if our staff are so times slow to answer your summ and appear inefficient, we humbly your indulgence and hope you find that what they lack in efficic they more than make up for in t willingness to please.”

They wouldn’t put out such a nc from the Hotel Ritzes of this wc but would the staffs of the Ritzes J shown as much genuine eagernes help? Such as a drink waiter ■ went off to get change of a $lO i

returned an hour later (when hope been lost that he would ever be again) smiling apologetically so many Dateline tables had led to need him that he just dn’t fight his way back earlier.

Inch brings me to another ex le of my point—Mrs. Bella helmann’s Beach House, which is a hundred yards down the road i the new Dateline, but in design ndred years back in time, lis is the boarding house where of the Press corps for the corona were billeted. I hope Mrs. tielmann and Jean Robertson will se me, in the name of objectivity, say that my bed was lumpy, the ture spartan, the lighting im ble and the communal bathroom times awash. But there is no r table nor friendlier people in !outh Seas, and since the tariff is fed to the standard of the furni and not the food and friendliness, mstomers are decidedly on the ing side. e joys of living in the Reichel l establishment made amends for lustrations the Press suffered at ands of the coronation organisers e market place. And the Date vas the icing on the cake. is kind of welcome, it seems to s the secret weapon of the South hotel business. Governments are aually apprehensive of the im af tourism on their islands—they want to lose the good things ; e. The good things of Islands iclude a happy-go-lucky approach e world in general, and if this >e wedded to a reasonable, un sive competence in hotel man mt, the world’s tourists—who are bored by the same colour faceless efficiency you find in ; from Chicago to Geneva—will a path to their door, er all, if you can be made to in a lumpy bed and wait an for your change—and enjoy it n the South Seas has something buying.

Stuart Inder.