Beyond the Script: Rethinking Hospitality Education

In hospitality, we have perfected the process of teaching our teams what to do.  We’ve created elegant scripts, training manuals, and tight standard operating and brand procedures to provide guests with consistency. There is no doubt that they provide our teams with useful tools to serve our guests, but their usefulness also has its limitations. Even the best-laid SOPs can meet their match in the everyday situations hospitality has to offer.

In hospitality, we may plan and strive for consistency, but in reality, we deal with the intricacies of human interactions and the unexpected moments this industry offers. Through my years in hospitality, I’ve had the opportunity to participate in many training programs across brands and management companies. 

However, years of professional sports coaching in figure skating had left me wanting more from the hospitality training materials I encountered. In sports, we don’t just teach the “what”; it’s imperative that we teach our athletes the “why” to achieve excellence and mastery. It is never enough to tell a skater to just “go jump higher,” any more than it would be for us to tell our teams to just “go provide outstanding guest service.” While those are the outcomes we, as coaches or leaders, want to achieve, neither the skater nor the hospitality professional has been provided with the tools needed to adapt to real-time situations. They have a general understanding of what they should do, but not how to produce the results.

Sports training and the way we prepare our athletes have expanded beyond a simple “train harder” mentality to recognizing the importance of sports psychology, visualization, confidence, focus, resilience, and motivation. We have the ability to do the same in hospitality by training our teams to develop a deeper understanding of what they do and how they can achieve peak performance. 

So what is the equivalent of teaching the “why” behind strong technical skating technique?  In the hospitality industry, I believe that applied psychology and the study of human connection are the undervalued “why” behind hospitality education. Now you might wonder, “Why psychology?”

Hospitality is built around understanding and anticipating the needs of our guests, whether in hotels, restaurants, spas, or other hospitality businesses.  To serve and care for our guests at an elevated level, the ability to deeply understand human needs, decision-making, learning, and memory shouldn’t be underestimated. It is equally important for us to recognize that the industry is about serving people, and our greatest resource to do that is, ironically, also people. A deeper understanding of applied psychology principles can positively impact our guests, strengthen our leaders, and empower our hourly team members to think beyond the script. 

Understanding applied psychology doesn’t mean that hospitality professionals need to memorize concepts or become behavioral scientists. It is about giving our teams a deeper understanding of how human behavior already impacts the work we do every day. It could mean recognizing how guests form memories, understanding how emotions influence decision-making, recognizing how stress affects communication, understanding why different people respond differently to the same situation, and building the confidence and resilience to navigate difficult interactions. These are the kinds of tools that empower hospitality professionals to stand confidently on their own when no script exists. 

At the end of the day, the training and coaching we do on the ice all lead to one moment: a skater standing at the center of the ice, ready to perform alone.  When we take a look at the hospitality training we provide to our teams, can we honestly say we have prepared them to do the same?  What if hospitality education prepared professionals not only to follow procedures, but to understand the people they serve and the profession they've chosen? What if we equipped our teams with a deeper understanding of human needs, decision-making, memory, emotional resilience, communication, self-regulation after difficult interactions, and the psychological principles that shape every guest experience? 

If we better prepare our teams for the psychological realities of hospitality, we may not only strengthen guest experiences but also build more confident teams, more resilient leaders, and workplaces where people feel better equipped for the emotional demands of the profession. The goal in the industry is often to create the best guest experience, but it should be to create the strongest hospitality professionals possible to provide that experience.