Three factors of feeling welcome
So many hospitality frameworks focus on the welcomer, but it's the experience of welcome that matters most
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”
—Danusha Laméris, from “Small Kindnesses”
Arts organizations thrive, in large part, on their ability to welcome – to notice, name, support, and honor their guests. As a result, arts managers can and do learn a lot from the hospitality industries (accommodation, food and beverages, travel, and tourism), who have deep pockets to understand and optimize welcoming.
But there’s a difference between altruistic and commercial welcoming. Blain and Lashley (2014), for example, suggest a continuum of hospitality arranged by motivation of the host – from ulterior motives to containing (monitoring the stranger) to commercial to reciprocal to altruistic. Each motivation suggests a different relationship between host and guest.
Arts managers have a particular challenge around hospitality, since they balance multiple motivations at once. Certainly, altruistic hospitality is an essential driver – welcoming for welcome’s sake. But revenue, return-visits, and meaningful donor relationships are motivators, as well – reciprocal and commercial intentions.
One way to manage multiple motivations to welcome is to focus on the experience of the guest, instead. And yet, such frameworks are few and far between. Pijls et al (2017) notice this in their review of the literature:
“The sparse research that does explore the meaning of the concept during the service encounter mostly examines hospitality from the viewpoint of the host, focusing on the appearance and behavior of employees.”
To fill the gap, they offer an “experience of hospitality” scale (EH-Scale) that centers the reactions of the visitor rather than the readiness of the host. They distill a long list of hospitality variables into a thirteen-item scale, clustered into three essential factors: the experience of inviting (open, inviting, freedom), the experience of care (servitude, empathy, and acknowledgement), and the experience of comfort (feeling at ease, relaxed and comfortable). All thirteen items are listed below.
Whether you are welcoming people to express your mission, expand your means, or some combination of the two, there’s value in evaluating through their eyes rather than your own.
p.s. The thirteen items of the EH-Scale are:
Inviting Factor (3 items):
Organization X feels inviting.
Organization X feels open.
During my visit I felt free to experience the space or event in my own way.
Care Factor (7 items):
Organization X provides support to me.
Organization X understands me and my needs.
Organization X treats me as a special guest.
Organization X does its best to take care of me.
Organization X relieves me of tasks or worries.
Organization X is interested in me.
I feel important at organization X.
Comfort Factor (3 items):
I feel at ease at organization X.
I feel comfortable at organization X.
I feel relaxed at organization X.
From the ArtsManaged Field Guide
Function of the Week: Hosting & Guesting
Hosting involves inviting, greeting, and supporting those who enter your circle; Guesting includes acknowledging, honoring, and listening in the circles where you are a guest.
Framework of the Week: Value Proposition Canvas
The Value Proposition Canvas encourages you and your team to explore and understand a set of customers, audience members, or constituents from their perspective: What jobs are they trying to do? What pains do they encounter in that effort? And what gains do they experience when they succeed?
Sources
Photo by Papaioannou Kostas on Unsplash
Blain, Matthew, and Conrad Lashley. 2014. “Hospitableness: The New Service Metaphor? Developing an Instrument for Measuring Hosting.” Research in Hospitality Management 4 (1 & 2): 1–8.
Pijls, Ruth, Brenda H. Groen, Mirjam Galetzka, and Ad T. H. Pruyn. 2017. “Measuring the Experience of Hospitality: Scale Development and Validation.” International Journal of Hospitality Management 67 (October): 125–33.