2 months for a learning period at a hotel is pretty short term and I wanted to be able to learn as much as possible. So instead of sticking to bellhop and front reception I asked the GM if there was anything else I could do or at least try to do.
After some planning we decided that I’d get to participate in a few weddings and in an event held for children. I also got the chance to join some of the lessons they give to the new recruits and before going back to Finland I would GIVE English lessons to them in return. Oh and also some working in the western restaurant Rose and Japanese restaurant Yoshikawa. So exciting!
So Mito Plaza Hotel is a bridal hotel, meaning there are A LOT of weddings throughout the whole year. There is a total of almost 260 weddings per year at the hotel. The Japanese also love “maedori” (前取り）which is when the bride and groom have a photoshoot before their wedding, sometimes even 6 months in advance. It’s also traditional to have a “kaoawase” (顔合せ) , where the families of the bride and groom get together, give each other presents and get familiar with each other.
There are commonly two types of weddings, Japanese and Christian. Only 1 percent of the Japanese population is Christian (the state religion being Buddhism), but since western movies are a thing the Christian and western wedding concept has become quite popular in Japan. Mito Plaza Hotel has a chapel, so the western stylized weddings are held in either there or in the common area of Atrium Garden. There are two freelance priests that come to the hotel to do the bridal ceremony.
There is a Japanese wedding shrine inside the hotel that is commonly used, but some of the guests also want to use the actual shrine close to Kairakuen, the famous Tokugawa shrine.
The time schedule for a wedding is usually decided beforehand. The ceremony lasts approximately 30 minutes and the party after lasts precisely 2 hours and 30 minutes. In comparison a Finnish wedding ceremony could last from 30 minutes to 2 hours and the party could go on until midnight, meaning at least 6 hours of partying.
If you would like to know more about the bridal culture or concept at Mito Plaza Hotel, feel free to dm me about it!
Today I had 早番 (hayaban, ‘early shift’ or in other words, morning shift) as early as 6:20 am. The new employees had a training day and today their curriculum was all about the inbound, so it was I my job was to train them. GM helped but it was mainly me teaching them English and since it was their first time in the lobby I teached them English AND how to approach guests in the lobby, how to guide them to their breakfast table, how to make small talk and answer simple questions in English. None of them spoke English even intermediately, so they really depended on my examples and advices. They mainly watched me work and took notes when I gave them tips and made sure their pronunciation was correct.
Afterwards we all went to see the Taiwanese and Singaporean inbound off and I got to teach the newbies how to hold the national flag properly. We had a lot of fun and they were so enthusiastic and listened to me with so much adoration that I think I gained enough confidence to last me for the rest of my internship. I’ve always liked teaching and it’s even more fun when the trainees want to learn and ask a lot of questions.
We had review meeting with me, GM and the trainees and they all told us something they learned today. Here some of my favourites that made feel so proud of them:
It feels good to smile to the guests and see them returning your smile. Even though there is a language barrier, smiling is an international gesture.
I felt frustrated with myself for my inadequate English skills and am going to study more English to be able to communicate with people from different countries.
Facial expression and body language speaks more than any other language, so they’re like, important.
Inbound again! We made some adjustments with GM and decided to pay more attention to my Japanese learning than the fact that my English is immensely better than all of the other staff combined. In contrast with all of the other days, today morning my task was to practically ignore the foreign guests and focus all of my attention to the Japanese guests. GM even teached me some greetings and topics to use to initiate a conversation with the guests.
First, I was to check their meal coupon for their name and if it was easy enough, use it to start a conversation. Here is how I approached the guests:
ご朝食でございますか？ ‘Go joushoku de gozaimasu ka?’ - You’re going for breakfast?’
ご案内いたします。’Go annai ita shimasu’ - I’ll show you the way / guide you there.
ご朝食権をあつかりいたします。’Go joushoku ken wo atsukari ita shimasu’ - I’ll collect the breakfast ticket.
・・・様、今日いい天気でございますね ‘Ms./Mr./Miss ・・・, it’s a nice weather today.’
昨日どちらかお出かけにされましたか？ ‘Sakijitsu dochira ka kankou wo saremashita ka?’ - Did you go sightseeing yesterday?
Today and yesterday were the last days for Nemophila in the Hitachi Seaside Park, so a lot of the guests went there yesterday or were planning on going there today, so it was a waterproof way of initiating conversation successfully.
At first I was a bit tired and afraid of making mistakes, but after several (and I mean SEVERAL) try and errors I got the hang of it and the rest of the morning went smoothly. A lot of the Japanese guests complimented my Japanese and an encounter with me clearly lifted their spirits.
Later I went to work in the restaurant Rose for the rest of the day.
Dear diary: 4月19日! Meal coupons and inbound travel
The Japanese use a word ‘hitori kotoba’ ( 一人言葉) to describe people who talk to themselves. Most of my coworkers always talk to themselves while working in the office, so it’s pretty common to call them out on it! They know they’re being loud and always get flustered when I mention it haha.
Today was a busy morning, since we had over 100 inbound guests from Taiwan. They were from 4 different travel companies, so they had different schedules and departure times.
Gonna do some explaining here! When guests check-in, they get meal coupons either by purchasing them separately or get them as addition according to the accommodation packages they’re using. These meal coupons give the guests free passage for breakfast. Usually there is a bellboy or a front desk worker by the elevator, who will show the way to the designated breakfast restaurant. In the restaurant, the guests can choose their breakfast from three different kinds of options: Japanese breakfast (washoku 和食), American style breakfast (yooshoku 洋食) or a healthy continental breakfast. The Western stylized restaurant Rose is the main restaurant serving breakfast, but when there are a lot of guests, in addition the Japanese restaurant Yoshikawa serves breakfast. Yoshikawa serves only washoku though.
Ok, back to the inbound and the coupons! The main color for the meal coupon is GREEN. But in case we get inbound guests, the game gets a little bit trickier! The front reception adds different colors to the coupons it gives out, so it’s easier for everyone to tell the guests apart and ensure they’re eating with their group and a breakfast they specifically ordered. Today we had green, yellow, pink and purple coupons. Guests with purple and yellow coupons had their breakfast in Yoshikawa, pink coupons went to the Plaza Cafe, and lastly all of the green coupons went to Rose. The Japanese guests staying at the hotel also have green coupons, so the Taiwan inbound had an another additional coupon with a picture of their designated breakfast.
After the breakfast all the inbound guests took some photos with us (especially me haha) and then left with their buses to do some sightseeing etc. I was assigned to stay at the front reception until 12pm. One of my coworkers was training a new trainee and while I listened to her explanations I decided I wanted to make a post on how to read the hotel’s daily schedules. Gonna post that later with photos!
At 12pm I left with GM to Tsukuba to join a meeting with three other hotel’s general managers. They were from Okura Frontier Hotel Tsukuba, Kashima Central Hotel and Keisei Hotel. The meeting was about breaking cooperation with Keisei Hotel and just mainly general stuff about the hotel’s sales, bridals, inbounds etc. The meeting ended around 4pm and we were back in Mito a little after 5pm. Wrote this report so that means I had another 11 hour shift! Whew!!
Here some notes I wrote after work on 17th of April!
Today I started my shift at 6:45 am and participated in guiding the inbound Hawaiian and Taiwan guests for the breakfast. Compared to the Thai, Vietnamese, Taiwanese and Korean guests, the Hawaiian guests were early birds. And I mean EARLY, since most of the guests usually come to the breakfast one by one during a span of 2 hours. But the Hawaiians were patiently waiting behind the restaurant’s doors 15 minutes before the restaurant even opened!! There were 35 of them, and since their seats were decided beforehand, we needed a lot of staff to guide them to their seats. Since I was the only one speaking English, I did most of the guiding. I helped the restaurant staff with taking their orders and delivering the food to the tables. When all was dealt with, I headed back to the elevators to tended to the Taiwanese guests and helped the Chinese-Japanese translator Ri-san.
We also stood outside the main entrance and waved to the inbound groups when they left. Me and a restaurant staff member, Uno-san held the Taiwanese flag and took some pictures with the guests.
Next I was stationed by the main entrance and the elevators and greeted the Japanese guests. Today the hotel served as a place for the memorial of the Tokugawa family’s passed family member. All of the guests were wearing black and it was of utmost importance to remember not to smile too widely while greeting the guests. It was a sad day for them we had to respect that. The Tokugawa family in Mito are the descendants of Tokugawa Ieyasu, a Japanese ruler (shogun) who united the country in 1600 and shut down the borders. Other nations (except for English and Dutch trade) were out of the picture until the end of Edo period in late 1800′s.
After the memorial started I headed to the restaurant to help the staff with the lunch rush. Today was a quiet day and there weren’t too many customers, so I ended up doing some cleaning, setting tables and chatting with the staff. After 1 hour I headed back to the entrance to guide and greet the guests of today’s next baquet, Ibaraki Prefecture management quality (経営品質 keiei hinshitsu) discussion (協議 kyougi)
So first some vocabulary! There are three kinds of tourisms: inbound, outbound and domestic. In Japan’s case inbound tourism is when international tourists come to Japan, outbound is when Japanese people go abroad for leisure and domestic tourism is Japanese people traveling inside Japan. Got it?
So spring and autumn are Japan’s high tourism seasons mainly because of cherry blossoms and autumn colors. The weather is also doable since Japanese summer tends to be very hot and thanks to the four seasons winter is pretty boring. During spring Mito Plaza hotel has its peak with inbound guests and there are several travel and tour companies coming to the hotel every day. There is always at least one group of at least 20 people staying at the hotel, but at the highest we had 7 different groups and the total amount of inbound tourists was as high as 180 people. But 2-3 groups per day with 20-30 people is pretty normal.
The peak is mainly during April, since nationally April is the cherry blossom season.
The GM at Mito Plaza Hotel values omotenashi a lot, so be sure to memorize it!
The main thing to keep in mind in the hotel business is ‘omotenashi’, or hospitality. Customer service at Mito Plaza hotel is about service and hospitality, and it’s important to remember that one does not equal the other. Service is something that is ‘atarimae’, obvious and should be considered as mandatory. Hospitality is one step beyond that. Instead of executing standard customer service, hospitality makes extra effort to ensure customer satisfaction.
The English word ‘hospitality’ is derived from the Latin hospes, meaning "host", "guest", or "stranger". Historically in ancient cultures hospitality involved welcoming the stranger and offering him food, shelter, and safety. I could search for more cool meanings, but I guess that covers enough background for such an important word.
In a hotel hospitality is about reading the guests needs and answering to them before the guest even gets the chance to ask for anything. In Japan it’s all about opening doors for the guests, carrying their bags, putting surprise gifts in their rooms, remembering their birthdays and even playing with their kids.
