African hospitality must not copy the world but build its own excellence
By Arthuro MAYANGAImporting a standard is never enough. Rigour holds when it is written into the context, culture and real resources of the continent.
The temptation is an old one: adopt an international group's manual wholesale and hope the level of service follows. It almost never does, and the failure is then blamed on the teams.
A standard is not a text. It is a text plus the conditions that make it applicable. Supply chain, energy costs, availability of skills, attitudes to time and authority: none of that travels with the manual.
Adapting is not lowering the bar
Adapting a method to the realities of the continent does not mean asking for less. It means reaching the same outcome by a route that holds, and often surpassing it, because the route was designed rather than copied.
- Start from the outcome the guest expects, never from the imported procedure.
- Check what each standard assumes: equipment, supply, skill.
- Rewrite the procedure with the people who will carry it out.
- Measure the outcome, not compliance with the original manual.
African excellence will not be a successful copy. It will be built on its own terms, demanding and, in turn, exportable.
Rigour that can be passed on
International best practice remains our raw material: we study it, break it down, then rebuild it with the organisations themselves. What emerges belongs to them, and that is why they uphold it.
