Delivering top hotel service to athletes at Vancouver 2010 Olympics
Photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/timfarley/2654073113/
Vanoc hopes to embrace a resort mentality where one call will lead to any service.
So when athletes begin checking in to the Vancouver and Whistler villages, Vanoc’s vice-president of services and villages wants them to know they will only have one number to call if they need anything.
One number for a wake-up call. The same number for laundry service. And for any kind of help. He doesn’t want them distracted from their efforts on the field of play.
It is a concept that has never been used before at the Games, he said. In the past, organizing committees have used an old style of multiple employees for single needs that wastes resources and increases the possibility that important tasks will get overlooked.
Sarp knows what he’s talking about.
Before he came to work for the Vancouver Organizing Committee three years ago, he spent much of his career managing properties for high-end hotel chains, including Intercontinental, Hilton, Pan Pacific and Mandarin Oriental.
He’s lived in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, the U.S. and Turkey.
He brought in Service One at hotels in Yokohama and Singapore, he said, and it will work at the Olympics.
“It’s a hotel resort concept, no question. That’s been our vision from day one.”
Last week, Sarp wrapped up a 10-day observation tour of the Beijing Games. He came over after the Olympics to watch how the Beijing Organizing Committee converted the athletes village and food services for the Paralympics.
What he found, he said, was a smooth operation that quickly sorted out accommodation issues for nearly 6,500 athletes and coaches from 148 countries.
Bocog put massive amounts of young manpower into making the Games work but didn’t use the Service One concept.
Beijing’s model is one he says he can’t afford to use in Vancouver, where he wants to deliver the same service with less staff.
“We won’t have the sheer numbers that they have here. In the villages, for example, they have more than one-to-one, one workforce for one guest. There is no way in hell we can do that in Vancouver, nor do we want to do that in Vancouver.”
Sarp said the key for him is to have one employee deal with many areas of responsibility.
“Our style of delivery is going to be very different, and the reason it’s going to be different is because we are going to need to work in a multi-functional approach.
“That way, unlike most hotels where you have a room service button and a housekeeping button and a front office button and a bell desk button, you call one location with one button and all your needs are channelled through that concept.”
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