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Changing the golden rule
The difference looks small, and it changes whose preferences count. The traditional rule starts from your own. The hospitality version requires putting yourself in the other person's shoes and asking how that person would want to be treated in this situation, which treats each guest as an individual.
Service versus hospitality
That is where service and hospitality part ways. Service is one size fits all: how a business does things for everybody, all the time. Hospitality is one size fits one: how it does things custom, just for you.
A reservation for four
Take a reservation for four at 8:00 on a Friday night. Booking it faithfully is service. Learning enough about the guest that the notes reach the maitre d', who then has those dots to connect when the party walks in, is hospitality.
Why did Shaw object to the golden rule?
George Bernard Shaw took aim at it in Man and Superman, published in 1903. In the maxims at the back of the book he wrote that one should not do unto others as one would have them do unto you, since their tastes may not be the same. The line has become a standard objection in discussions of the golden rule.
How do hotels remember what guests like?
Luxury hotel chains, Ritz-Carlton among them, keep guest-history records that staff add to after each stay. Entries can include a preferred room, a type of pillow, or a favorite newspaper. When the same guest books another property in the chain, those notes are available before arrival. Hotels typically call these records guest profiles, and many keep them in the same system that handles reservations.
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