If you ever want to renew your passion for our industry, all you have to do is get involved with one of your local service award committees.

This past Monday and Tuesday I spent the days working with the Calgary White Hat awards. The White Hats are awarded for service excellence in many various categories and you must be nominated (either by your employer, co-worker, guest or anyone whom you have had a positive impact on) to be eligible. I should also mention that this award is for line staff – supervisors and managers are not eligible. I was very fortunate to be asked to be a part of the Interviewing sub-committee, and we are responsible to interview all of the nominees.

So picture this… you spend your day interacting with dozens of people who are considered the best at what they do. Person after person who live hospitality and service on a level that I have rarely seen roll in to be interviewed for the service they have provided. They are polite and passionate and most importantly PROUD about what they do and why they do it.

Some of the stories you here throughout the process are incredible. Some of them paid for peoples room with their own credit cards, lent guest their own cloths so they could make a business meeting, stayed after work and searched for a child’s toy for 2 hours then hand delivered it to the family at their hotel and the list goes on.

You can’t help but be inspired – we all were. And I should mention that we have a heavy hitting team of interviewers. On Tuesday morning alone we had 1 Hotel GM, 4 Human Resources Directors, 2 Front Office Managers just to name a few.

I suggest you discover who provides your local service awards and get involved. But not just you get your managers involved. You really can’t really lose! Not only will anyone who gets involved be inspired and proud about our industry, you just might take some of that back to work with you. If you have your managers involve, they might take it back with them. Your whole establishment might feel that pride and inspiration – wouldn’t that be amazing. Not to mention you will have amazing new service stories to your staff when you talk about service and going beyond.

Believe me; it is worth your time and energy!