TRAINING – MEGAN TORRANCE, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT AT FORBES TRAVEL GUIDE: “EVERY GUEST HAS A DIFFERENT DEFINITION OF EXCEPTIONAL SERVICE”
As the head of the famous’s learning and development programs, Megan Torrance reveals how its personalized training programs help teams understand that excellence is measured by how guests feel, with a focus on emotional intelligence and leadership.
TRAINING – MEGAN TORRANCE, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT AT FORBES TRAVEL GUIDE: “EVERY GUEST HAS A DIFFERENT DEFINITION OF EXCEPTIONAL SERVICE”
As the head of the famous’s learning and development programs, Megan Torrance reveals how its personalized training programs help teams understand that excellence is measured by how guests feel, with a focus on emotional intelligence and leadership.
Megan Torrance, Senior Vice President of Learning & Development at Forbes Travel Guide, has more than 25 years of experience in luxury hospitality. A career that has allowed her to build solid expertise in operational excellence, both in large properties and boutique properties like Relais & Châteaux Lake Placid Lodge and The Point Resort. Her experience was a natural stepping stone toward Forbes Travel Guide, where she has spent nearly nine years refining her knowledge of service excellence standards.
Megan plays a key role in supporting hospitality teams worldwide, helping them adopt the rigorous standards of Forbes Travel Guide. She stands out for her ability to turn guidelines into practical, customized training programs, tailored to each property, regardless of its location.
In this interview with Journal des Palaces, Megan shares her philosophy on training, explaining how Forbes Travel Guide’s programs are designed to elevate teams by focusing on emotional intelligence, leadership, and a guest-centered approach. She shares her insights on how training is adapted to the culture and unique expectations of each property, while also addressing global trends shaping the future of luxury hospitality. For Forbes Travel Guide, service excellence is reflected in how each guest feels, which requires a strong emotional connection, aligned with company processes, but most importantly, adapted to each team member.
Journal des Palaces: Each of your training courses is tailored to the hotel, its culture, its location and its guests. Could you describe how you complement the training already provided by hotels and hotel groups?
Megan Torrance: The beautiful thing about our training is that we are an outside source. We focus on what creates the most exceptional guest experience and not the policies and procedures or technical aspects. Of course, we respect the policies and procedures but our focus is on how we make the guest feel.
What are the strengths of Forbes Travel Guide's training courses? Could you give a few examples?
There are many strengths to our training courses. As mentioned above, one of the biggest strengths is that we focus on how we make the guest feel vs. the technical aspect which is often taught at the hotels. Another advantage Is that we bring a global perspective to the training room. We are able to speak to what is happening in the world of global hospitality rather than just the market the hotel is in.
How can you provide enough knowledge to imbue teams with Forbes Travel Guide excellence for any length of training?
The length of time of a training session varies. We have done everything from a one-hour session with a team to an eight hour workshop with the team. The real goal of the training is to motivate and inspire people to be the best hospitality version of themselves. This can be accomplished even if the session is an hour because we can show how to meet the expectation of the luxury traveller in a way that the team can execute and they see as not difficult but rather a different way of accomplishing the goal.
How are the skills of leadership, personal development and emotional intelligence taught in your training programmes, and why are they essential for luxury hospitality professionals?
Our sessions primarily focus on emotional intelligence and how to lead and train emotional intelligence. The essence of this training is understanding that all of the standards have multiple ways of achieving the objective. We work with the teams to understand that every guest has a different definition of exceptional service and that team member’s job is to quickly identify the expectation of exceptional service of the guest in front of them and then how to adjust the standards to achieve that expectation.
Could you share the golden nuggets you instil in the teams? Could you give a few examples?
One of the biggest things we instil on teams is that as hospitality professionals we need to be solution oriented. It goes beyond offering an alternative if we have to say no. How do we get the guest to really feel like it is our mission to help them find a solution? So much of this is accomplished by thinking about the way we are delivering messages to a guest and not just what the message is. For example, instead of saying, “unfortunately we are committed and we will not have a table for you for one hour,” say, “We would love to have you as our guest tonight and thank you for thinking of us. We do have a table available in an hour, would you like to have a drink in the bar while you wait?”
How does Forbes Travel Guide integrate sustainable practices into its training programmes?
Sustainability is a huge focus for us and as well for the luxury traveller. We make a conscious effort not to have printouts and encourage note taking on team member’s phones rather than pen and paper.
How do your training programmes contribute to employee retention in luxury hotels, and why is this crucial to maintaining high standards of service?
The biggest value of a five-star recognition is the pride that employee’s have in working at a five-star property. This pride makes the employee more discerning when considering their next move as they only want to work at the best in the business.
Once training has been completed, what role does Forbes Travel Guide play in the development of teams along the way?
Forbes Travel Guide remains a resource once the training is completed. The hotels that have seen the best success reach out to their trainers on a regular basis to ask questions, get clarification on standards or get best practices from their trainer. That said, the real success comes from the leaders on property driving the service excellence that was discussed in training every day through daily training and on the floor presence to lead by example.
What are the emerging trends in luxury hotel training, and how does FTG wish to incorporate these to remain at the forefront of service excellence?
The emerging trend in luxury hotel learning is short micro learnings in an interactive format that are always available to the learner and not just available for the one-hour session. Forbes Travel Guide is staying ahead of this trend by introducing their Academy which is a learning management system platform which allows for digital learning. Courses are currently being designed to offer certifications to hospitality professionals in the future.
As a journalist and luxury hotel expert inspired by the men and women who embody it, Vanessa aspires to enhance and sublimate the beauty and elegance of palaces through her writing. "In a palace, simplicity serves the quest for excellence" she admires.
