TRENDING
LOOKINGUP
Anantara Kihavah Maldives Villas earlier this year opened the “ first and only observatory ” in the island nation — a 16-inch telescope with 360-degree movement . Minimal light pollution and its location just north of the equator allow the telescope easy viewing of the 100-billion-star Sombrero Galaxy , more than 29 million light years away , and the star cluster of Omega Centauri .
“ Sky guru ” Ali Shameem , who selected the telescope and offers several private stargazing sessions per evening , declines to name its cost or its ROI , which perhaps can be measured in moments : A selftaught astronomer who studied physics , Shameem shared his first glimpse of Saturn ' s rings in a 4 a . m . viewing session with a London couple who were resort regulars . “ We all had tears in our eyes and exchanged hugs ,” he recalls . “ As a Maldivian it is almost a given that you will end up working in the hospitality industry … I consider myself very lucky to be able to merge my job with my lifelong passion .”
SET THEMFREE
Grace Hotels took a counterintuitive approach to building employee loyalty . The private company , through a strategic labor agreement last year , connected 11 seasonal employees of Grace Mykonos and Grace Santorini — a tenth of its total workforce there — mostly at Soneva hotels in the Maldives , Thailand and Megève , France , from November to March . It ’ s expanding the program this year . Grace ’ s group HR director , Tim Williams , talks about what the company learned .
The big question : Did all 11 come back ? ( That ) was absolutely front of mind when we were talking about this ... If we ended up losing good people who would otherwise return to us , then it would be an unsustainable situation , and that we didn ' t want to be a recruiting house for them to cherry-pick our — well , any of our people … As it happened , none of them stayed on as permanent employees of the hotel they were working for over the winter .
Did the cohort come back with improved skills ? Their confidence is higher , their capabilities are greater , they ' ve seen and absorbed new and different ways of doing things , they ' ve added to their skill sets , their professional skills and to their personal capabilities .
What have you learned ? It ’ s important to have an alignment of expectation . As you can imagine , the role that the people do at Grace was not necessarily exactly the same role that they would do in Soneva .
How would you advise companies considering this ? I think a project like this is a way to ensure that talented people stay in our industry and stay in our group … It ’ s very important to pick your partners . It ’ s counterintuitive , because we were , if you like , letting them go , in order to build loyalty to get them back . They were going to go anyway because they ' re not employed over the down season , so by creating an opportunity , while there was a risk , of course , and that risk will never go away , and in future , one or two people might stay and that wouldn ' t be a deal-breaker for me . It would only be a deal-breaker if the parties weren ' t actually in good faith and a significant number stayed ; I would have a problem with that .
14 hotelsmag . com July / August 2018