I attend a week-long management seminar entitled ‘Management through emotional competence’. It is 8 o’clock in Bavaria and I enter the seminar hotel where the event is due to begin at 9 am. At the reception desk, I introduce myself and explain that I will be participating in the seminar. ‘Your room isn’t free yet,’ the receptionist says, though I haven’t even inquired about my room. ‘Actually, I just wanted to ask where the seminar is being held.’

‘Let me look that up for you,’ the employee says. She is dressed in a uniform in the colours of the hotel logo, and she begins to hammer away at the keyboard of her computer. While she is doing this, I look around the lobby, and my eyes are drawn to a board on which all the events taking place that day are listed. The last entry but one reads:

Seminar: Management through emotional competence. And on the line beneath it says:

Franz Josef Room.

‘In our Franz Josef Room,’ I hear the receptionist say. Well done! She has now managed to find the information that is plain for all to see on a board not 15 yards from where she is sitting.

The seminar has begun and I look down at the notepad in front of me and see, in elegant lettering: ‘We recommend our hotel for seminar events of all kinds.’

Strictly speaking, I think to myself, it should be the guests who recommend a hotel and not the hotel itself singing its own praises, but that’s another story. At 10.30 am, the drama ‘Coffee break, part 1 of 10’ begins. In a badly lit, stuffy corridor, we find the following arranged for us on a little trolley:

1. a thermos flask of coffee;
2. a thermos flask of hot water for tea;
3. orange juice;
4. spring water;
5. tea bags;
6. croissants;
7. milk, sugar and sweeteners.

At 4.30 in the afternoon, we find almost precisely the same refreshments, only this time, there is cake instead of croissants.

The reason why I describe this as a drama is that in that week, we had a total of 10 coffee breaks, all with exactly the same refreshments and served in exactly the same location. The hotel is situated in such beautiful surroundings, and yet none of their overworked employees thought of serving the refreshments outside in good weather, or in one of the suites (which would at the same time have been good advertising for the hotel), in the hotel kitchen, as a power break with various fruit juices, as a chance to taste different teas, etc.

You don’t have to be a creative genius to come up with 10 different ideas. All you need is a little more customer-orientation. The problem is that the seminar manager of this hotel hadn’t taken part in a seminar himself in years and so had no idea what his seminar customers might appreciate. The same can be said of the chef, who served up threecourse meals with Bavarian dumplings every day, meals so heavy that we were in danger of falling asleep during the afternoon sessions. Seminar participants would much rather have a lunchtime buffet where they can choose individually how much and what they would like to eat.

On the second morning, still reeling from the chef’s concerted attack on our digestive systems, we meet at the breakfast buffet. In a prominent position over the table, there hangs a carved wooden sign that reads:

A very good morning to all our guests!

We hope you enjoy our rich breakfast buffet.

We exchange looks and think to ourselves that we would rather have a more balanced breakfast than a rich breakfast buffet.

Amazingly good!

In a country hotel I once stayed at, an apprentice sliced and served exotic and local fruits at coffee time. This very welcome vitamin shot served two purposes: on the one hand, it was a valuable training exercise for the apprentice, and on the other, it guaranteed a pleasant and animated coffee break. Another hotel has made catering for coffee breaks its speciality. The hotel team ensures that the participants in a seminar are served different refreshments in a different location in the hotel at every break. And so you will sometimes find top managers sitting cross-legged in the children’s clubroom, playing with Lego and eating their cake.