How to Deal with Guests, Visitors, and Passengers Well? : Describing Facilities

The writer teaches his students prepared for airline staffs

Working in hospitality industry is interesting as well. You will encounter people in diversities. It is your experience to know each other. Furthermore, it is quite possible that a glance of world is on hand.

It is a reciprocal thing that your guests should know a glance of you (i.e the profile and world existing in your hotel, travel agent, airline, and so on). Mostly, this job is handled by public relation and marketing managements. So, do other staffs (e.g waiter, bartender, ticketing, flight attendant) just carry out their job descriptions only?

No, they should know too. As long as those staffs are able to master their working place, it affects to their professionalities.

The first thing they should master is the way of describing their working place (note: it is possible for other occupations as well). What is the right way to express company description?

Along with its function, be prepared to encounter description text. This kind of text has social function to describe particular person, place, or thing. It is not just for written, but also spoken discourse.

What are the contents of speaking[1]? Gerot and Wignell (1992: 208) write the generic structure of description contains:

•  Identification: Phenomenon to be described
• Description: Parts, qualities, characteristics

Together with the structure above, the thing you need is by expressing relational process. Halliday (1990) classifies the process into two types: attributive and identification[2].

First, relational: attribute process requires you to express something and attribute something by saying its quality, nature, or character. Here is the example,

“Good morning, Sir. Welcome to the Vilya’s Hotel. This hotel has two hundred rooms, three swimming pools, spa, and two conference halls. This is a five-stars hotel which will grant your pleasure. With well-known restaurant and bar we have, you have good quality spending your holiday here.”

On other side, relational: identification process tries to reflect or refer something. This way is good for describing facilities. Here is an example by flight attendant.

“This stuff is an emergency device. It contains whistle, float, and flashlight. By opening the cover in front of you, there is a multimedia device. It provides entertainment facility in your flight. If you want to eat or drink, the button next to the multimedia device acts as the caller. The staffs are ready for you.”

Describing something is easy, but should be understood surely. As hospitality industries provide facilities, all involved members need to encounter well.

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[1] We focus much on speaking, because hospitality industries tend to exploit this part.

[2] The term “identification” here is different with what is meant on the generic structure.