Olympic Hospitality Sweet – Have fun and work like Hell during the Olympics

For those in the restaurant, hotel and retail sectors, the next 75 days are surely exciting and nerve wracking.  Hundreds of thousands of guests will descend on Vancouver, Squamish and Whistler and everyone will be spending money.  How will you serve them?  What will you do to standout?  What if it’s too busy and you can’t handle the rush?

In 2002 I was so fortunate to help manage a Roots store in Park City Utah during the Olympics.  This retail location (1 of 5 in the area) was small, under 1500 square feet, but due to a smash hit product; we had lineups of about 500 people waiting to get into the store from 10am daily until close at midnight.  The store was processing over 5000 shoppers each day, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in receipts, which lasted for more than two weeks!  How did we manage all those shoppers and what did we do to make the Olympic spirit come alive?

1. We made it Fun!  Since 300 to 500 people were standing outside at any given time, in the cold, we decided to make it enjoyable. Using a bullhorn we told jokes, sang songs, and handed out hot chocolate.  I would page lost shopper “Hugh Jass” or announce that the Official Olympic Thong underwear had sold out.  Sure it’s sophomoric and off-color, but people loved it.
2. We Celebrated being Canadian.  Since the store was sort of a beacon for Canadianness we embraced it.  We taught Americans how to speak Canadian: add eh to the end of your sentence, how to pronounce toque, what a toboggan is.  Again, you may think that’s sophomoric and stereotypical, but visitors told us repeatedly that our store was a highlight of their Olympic experience.
3. Put Athletes First. If an athlete came by we went out of our way to let them know how much we admired their competition at the games.  We invited them into our store, gave out gifts and made a fuss over their families.  I heard at other venues athletes were shutout and/or families were given a hard time. Why?  Isn’t the whole point of the games ultimately for the athletes?
4. Innovate, Innovate, Innovate.  Our smash hot product was a hat. We were selling tens of thousands of units daily. There was a no-fly zone around Salt Lake for private aircrafts, so we hired a Learjet and packed it full of Garbage Bags filled with hats (you can’t put boxes on a Learjet, the small fuselage limits capacity, but you can stuff it full of bags). We landed the Learjet 2 hours north of Salt Lake in Ogden Utah and trucked the bags of hats in after midnight. It worked very well.
5. Acknowledge screw ups, apologize and move on.  If something goes wrong, and it usually will when you’re trying to host a world class event with hundreds of thousands of guests, then just apologize and move on.  People are amazingly forgiving but hate to be ignored.

That’s it. Have a terrific Olympic Games and remember to have fun.