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COTHM hosted a webinar on ‘Importance of soft skills in hospitality industry’ in collaboration with a notable hospitality expert Khem Lakai.
Whilst sharing his personal experiences, Mr Lakhai said, “A hospitality workplace demands skills like problem solving, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, maintaining professional and ethical standards, and leadership”.
ospitality skills are the essential skills needed to succeed in hospitality or any service-related industry. They include:
- Hospitality Hard skills
These skills are specific to a function or necessary to accomplish technical tasks, such as operating a reservation system. They are also called technical skills. - Hospitality Soft skills
These are the social behaviors needed for the multi-cultural environments typically found in hospitality businesses, and for delivering outstanding customer experiences.
According to the Institute of Hospitality, the world’s leading professional body for hospitality professionals, the key to a successful career in the hospitality industry is to be able to effectively utilize the hard skills learned and apply the organic soft hospitality skills into your management style to be an extraordinary leader.
The perfect combination of hard skills and soft skills would result in a team that has vast industry knowledge to expertly perform their job tasks while also being completely aware of their co-worker’s and client’s emotions and needs. In other words: IQ +EQ = SUCCESS!
He further said, “If there was any specific tech skill people were motivated to learn, they could learn that very quickly,” he said, pointing out that softer skills are harder to learn and are often not included in courses.
Khem Lakai also said that softer skills such as leadership and the ability to draw people together are definitely harder to develop.
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