Why the best guest moments aren't in your hotel’s SOP manual

Hotels spend thousands on training programs, compliance checklists and service standards. And those things matter. But the moments guests write about in reviews – the stories they tell at home – are rarely the ones anyone planned for. 

That's the argument at the heart of a recent conversation on Matt Talks Hospitality with Miru Schuurman, Guest Performance and Product Quality Manager at Amrâth Hotels. It's a role that barely exists elsewhere in the industry. And that, Miru suggests, might be exactly the problem. 

The SOP trap 

Standard operating procedures exist for good reason. They create consistency, protect quality and give new staff a foundation to work from. Nobody is arguing against them. 

But there's a version of SOP culture that goes too far – one that trains staff to follow steps rather than read people. Miru sees it everywhere, and she's been honest about experiencing it herself early in her career. 

"I'm also a big fan of SOPs," she says, "but I think nowadays we really are too much focused on structure and SOPs. And unfortunately, therefore, we are creating more robots instead of creating personal service." 

The risk isn't that staff do their jobs badly. It's that they do them correctly – and nothing more. A guest with a story, a connection, or an unusual reason for being there gets a standard check-in instead of a moment they'll remember. 

Seeing what's in front of you 

Miru tells a story from a recent visit to Amrâth's Amsterdam hotel. A guest was moving slowly through the lobby, looking up at the architecture with obvious wonder. She approached him. They talked. He explained he'd been an architect himself before retiring – and that he'd booked specifically to experience the building. 

What happened next cost nothing. She asked a porter who'd worked there for years to give the guest a private tour. 

"The guest was so surprised and amazed by the gesture, which didn't cost us any money," she says. "It wasn't busy at all in the hotel. So that's what I mean with seeing and creating those extraordinary moments yourself." 

The skill doesn't come naturally to most people. It develops through good coaching, the right management culture, and an organization that keeps the conversation alive day to day. 

Building a culture, not running a training day 

Amrâth recently launched a new training program, bringing in external experts for classroom-based sessions designed to genuinely shift service behaviors. Getting the budget approved took time and the right moment – but the impact is already visible, even if it doesn't yet show up cleanly in the P&L. 

"We definitely see the impact in the happiness of our teams," Miru says. "And I think that's for me the most important impact that we could reach because in the end, if they are happy within their daily job and they have the feeling that we as a company are investing in their personal growth, they will stay with us." 

Happy staff who feel invested deliver better service. That's not a radical idea. But it takes real commitment to follow through on, especially when the return on training is slow and hard to attribute. 

For Miru, reinforcing the culture means more than classroom time. She shares service inspiration videos on the company's internal platform. She delivers cakes to hotels when teams hit milestones. She tracks review scores for every property and celebrates when they move – one Amrâth hotel recently climbed from 8.0 to 8.4 on Booking.com, a shift that took two years of consistent work. 

What data reveals (and what it doesn't) 

One of the more counterintuitive points Miru makes is about the gap between what teams believe their problems are and what the data shows. Hotel staff tend to anchor on the most emotionally charged complaints – the guest who came down furious about a late room, the one who complained about cleanliness at volume. 

But those moments aren't always representative. 

Technology – in this case a review management system – gives teams an objective view. The loudest guest isn't the voice of everyone else. Review data, OTA rankings and quality scores all tell a more honest story than gut feel, and they're central to how Miru identifies where each hotel actually needs to improve. 

Her Amrâth colleague Kirsten, who leads ICT and applications, applies a simple test to any new technology under consideration: does this give our team more time to connect with guests? If yes, it's worth investigating. If not, it's probably in the way. 

A role the industry needs more of 

Amrâth's investment in a dedicated guest experience role is relatively rare. It shouldn't be. 

"There are not many hotel chains who have a position like I have," Miru says. "And I think that that's really a shame, not only because honestly, I think it's one of the best jobs that you can have within the hotel industry, but also because it will really get you the results that you want." 

As the industry talks more about AI and automation, the case for freeing up human attention – rather than eliminating human roles – gets stronger. Systems can handle check-in queues, reservation management and preference tracking. What they can't do is notice a retired architect pausing in a lobby and decide to make his afternoon. 

That still takes a person. The question is whether your organization has built the conditions for it to happen. 

There’s plenty more inspiration from Matt and Miru in their half-hour conversation.  

Watch the full episode