Your hospitality industry remedy to quell noisy customers

"We serve them the jungle juice, sometimes you have to expect they'll behave like Apes." So says a very successful hotelier friend Claude Wright.

Perhaps one of the major problems we face in our industry is noise and violence control in bars and taverns. This is particularly so when our customers are leaving at the end of the evening usually in the early hours of the morning. After providing them with loud and aggressive head banging and head butting music all night we expect (or hope) they will leave like lambs. This rarely happens, as I'm sure you know.

In the North of England the Police and hospitality industry operators have been conducting an experiment to endeavour to solve the problem. At the end of the evening the music switches to childhood music. Eg. Wizard of Oz and Mary Poppins style music. As well, the customers, as they leave, are given lollipops to suck on by the security guards. The thinking is that the childhood music winds down the aggression and the lollipop takes care of their hands and mouth. And guess what! It's working. If you decide to try it I'd love to hear from you. Email me at

Until next week I wish you, good luck, good life and good fun...in 2001

Max Hitchins

The Hospitality Doctor

Marketing, motivation and management magician

http://www.HospitalityDoctor.com

PS. In the Doctors Diagnosis and Discussion Room this week Dee-on Hodson from Broken Hill WA, poses an interesting question about suppliers forcing smaller margins on us. You might like to check It at http://fsplugins.com/talkback/hitchins and join the discussion.