AHA’s Winning Strategies: Serving with a Smile, the first authoritative handbook on building successful careers in aviation and hospitality management authored by Ms Sapna Gupta, Founder and Director AHA Air Hostess Academy Pvt. Ltd.
Dedicating the book to the students aspiring to build successful careers in the aviation and hospitality industry, Ms. Sapna Gupta says, “Through this book I have attempted to share the knowledge and experience that I have gained over the years with youth aspiring to carve a career in the booming aviation and hospitality sector. This career guide is also an attempt to bridge the knowledge and information gap pertaining to service sector in absence of any definite resource available for reference.”
The text book ‘Winning Strategies: Serving with a Smile’ by Ms Sapna Gupta highlights the aspects of soft skill training for the service industry with a specific focus on aviation and hospitality. The book published in an interesting and interactive format contains snap exercises, easy to do, self administered psychometric tools and survey instruments that help the reader gain a good insight.
Winning Strategies: Serving with a Smile’ gives a comprehensive overview of the entire spectrum of job opportunities in the service industry including the size, scope and growth opportunities in the aviation and, hospitality sectors. The unambiguous definition of soft skills and its varied aspects that are much needed for these sectors has been well presented in the book. The book throws light on rationale for acquiring right soft skills and their impact on placement and performance of candidates applying for a job in these sector giving them discerning tips.
Excerpts from the book:
That said, an airhostess has come a long way from the mid-forties. From being a polite hostess wearing her trademark smile, she has now matured into an immaculately dressed cabin crew member outfitted in sharply pressed, well-fitting jacket and skirt with a cap perched jauntily at an angle (Malaysian Airlines). She is now an expert manager of all on-board responsibilities, especially in a climate where passenger security and comfort have become key differentiators in today's highly competitive aviation market.
If you have visited Hong Kong recently, you'd be surprised to see the high status accorded to the Cathay stewards and hostesses, where friends talk in hushed tones about them and the hoi polloi looks up to them in awe and wonderment, besides a little envy. To generations fed on 1959 Chungking Express, Air Hostesses will continue to portray this glamorous, stylish and the romantic aspect of the profession.
Although today, air travel has become such a matter-of-fact aspect of our routine business travel that a frequent flier doesn't treat every flight as a special occasion, competition and the entry of new, highly aggressive airline companies are contributing to exponential growth that has raised customer demands to a level, where nothing but the best suffices for an air passenger.
This no doubt makes an Air Hostess's job a lot more taxing and demanding. To be sure, the pay packages continue to remain as good (if not better) and most still manage to make a bundle from their flight allowances, only a small portion of which gets taxed, getting into an airline company is not that easy anymore --- if there are more airline companies hunting for skilled, talented staff, there are also more candidates in the market, all vying for a single vacancy.
The rejection rate in this industry thus is quite high, often as high as 70 per cent, though this can be reduced for those who come with some training and prior exposure to the service sector. The knowledge of a foreign language and graduation also helps, especially with international airline companies.
Training indeed can prepare you for anything. At Air Hostess Academy (AHA) we take our students through intensive grooming sessions, teach them about etiquettes and effective communication, and frankly, quite a few of our students do eventually manage to turn into "Ambassadors of Hospitality' with aplomb. They are also AHA's brand ambassadors.
For the rest, there are plenty of other job opportunities in allied segments, such as ground staff, in hospitality industry and other customer care industries, where the skills in demand are almost the same.
Soft skills, I would however like to maintain are demanded by every industry. Be it a front office job or the job of a back end techie, if you are not pleasant to people, you can lose your job, whatever your other accomplishments may be.
Soft skills, to my mind are like the packaging of a product --- you may have all the other skills, but if your packaging is poor, no recruiter will touch you even with a barge pole. After all, in these days of total customer satisfaction, who wants to mix with a long-face lone ranger, when he or she can easily be replaced by someone who is more jovial; is always smiling; is easy-to-get-along with; and is always a team-player? |
