In hospitality, every interaction is designed to make guests feel welcomed, cared for and valued, from the moment they book a room online until the moment they leave. Hospitality professionals are trained to notice small details because details shape experience. A broken lamp, a delayed response or an overlooked issue can change how a guest feels about an entire stay. Schools, on the other hand, often invest the bulk of their time and energy into large initiatives and long-term outcomes, forgetting that small details influence perception in powerful ways. 

Let’s assume your district wants to enroll new students. Ask yourself: Is information on the website current and accurate? Are phone calls returned promptly? Is the campus welcoming and well maintained? Does every family receive a genuine greeting when they walk through the doors? 

Here’s a tip I picked up from hospitality that costs you nothing but a moment of your time: When someone asks for directions, say “Here, let me show you,” and walk them to their destination. You’d be surprised how positively people respond to that one small act. (Even if you can’t walk them, never point the way with your finger. Direct them with an open hand. It’s another tiny detail, but the first gesture makes people feel like an inconvenience while the second makes them feel like a treasured guest.) Paying attention to details like these don’t just make your community’s lives simpler; it communicates care and pride in your district.

Before you book a hotel, you probably visit the website, read reviews and compare it to similar properties. Families approach choosing a new school the same way. Their first impression may come from your website, a phone call to the front office or a social media post. By the time they enter your building or classroom, they have already begun to form an opinion of you.

Hospitality understands that the guest experience begins long before check-in. These early touch points matter, from the reservation process to pre-arrival communication to the greeting at the front desk. Just look at my Palmetto Bluff experience for proof.  

Schools should operate with the same understanding. For a family enrolling a child at a new school, the process can feel emotional and even overwhelming. How can you make them more comfortable? For instance, DPS’ enrollment process is entirely online. So to make it easier for families to find, we made enrollment prominent on our district homepage. We made sure the portal was intuitive, ADA compliant and available in different languages. If our enrollment process is simple enough that parents can complete it without calling the front office, we consider it a success—not because we don’t want to be inconvenienced, but because we don’t want to inconvenience them.

Once a student is enrolled, the handoff to the individual school building helps make the next first impression. Schools need to proactively provide easily accessible information and begin building relationships with new families immediately to ensure the student's first day is as smooth and welcoming as possible. On Day One, that should include greeting them warmly and walking them to their classroom. 

Providing clear, easy-to-understand information and a welcoming environment are not secondary details or extras. They are necessary in order to make a good first impression on families—the impression that you respect and value them. These early touch points lay the foundation for trust.

One reason people return to certain hotel brands is consistency. Regardless of location, guests know what to expect from that brand. The experience feels familiar, dependable and intentional. That consistency builds confidence.

Schools should strive for the same level of reliability. While every campus has its own personality and culture, families should encounter clear expectations and consistent service regardless of the school or department they interact with. This consistency across buildings reinforces professionalism and trustworthiness. 

Likewise, consistency in communication fosters trust. In hospitality, frequent, proactive communications reduce uncertainty and help guests feel supported throughout their stay. The best hotels warn you that the pool is under construction before you book a room. They ask you about your preferences during the reservation process. They send you parking instructions before you arrive. They check in with you often during your stay to make sure you have everything you need. 

I’ll give you an example of this type of proactive communication at work in DPS. My team developed a branded video series called "Dollars and Decisions," which guides the community through the district's entire budgeting process using transparent tools like a glossary and a budget calculator. Not only do we make the information as easy as possible to understand, we provide it on a continuing basis. We do this because the best communication anticipates questions, addresses concerns before they escalate, and helps people feel connected to their schools. 

Just a note: Communicating frequently is worthless if your message isn’t clear, though. When I’m evaluating messages, I put on my "parent hat," asking myself what I would need to know about this subject and how I would need to respond upon receiving the information. Do I know what next steps I would need to take? You never want to send messages that create confusion rather than clarity.

In hospitality, feedback is not viewed as a disruption to the work. It is part of the work. One of the most valuable lessons I learned working for a luxury hotel group came from managing guest feedback. Some reviews were encouraging. Others were difficult to read. But over time, I realized that honest feedback usually revealed something important about the experience people were having at our properties. 

Schools receive feedback constantly from families, students, staff and community members. Not every concern requires a major shift, and not every criticism will feel fair. But organizations that listen carefully and respond thoughtfully are far more likely to build trust over time.

At DPS, we used to gather feedback through a hodgepodge of different data collecting systems. In order to make the process quicker and easier for everyone, we recently began using ThoughtExchange to survey our community. Now all our surveys are issued from a single platform that is much more dynamic than, say, Google Forms or one of our other previous systems. On the spot, we can ask a roomful of kindergarten parents about their safety concerns and collect their answers in minutes. 

Feedback is also an opportunity to improve the employee experience and ultimately build a better culture. Earlier this year, our superintendent, Dr. Anthony Lewis, reached out to school leadership with a request for honest feedback. He issued a survey asking principals and assistant principals to evaluate various departments on metrics like communication and responsiveness. The results provided a clear look at our district's strengths and where we have room to grow. 

If our own colleagues don't feel supported, it's a strong indicator that our families might feel the same disconnect when they interact with those parts of the district. That survey has become our benchmark as we work to scale a culture of service across our schools and community. Remember: The most important part of gathering feedback is what you do with the information you collect. 

Dr. Lewis sought that employee feedback because he understood something that is fundamental to good hospitality: Internal culture matters just as much as external perception. When educators and staff feel respected, supported and valued, that culture naturally extends to students and families. 

At DPS, we have taken several steps toward improving internal communications to better support our staff. For one, my office prioritizes informing staff before making information public. When it comes to items like administrative updates or payroll issues, we try to get that information out as quickly as possible. Similarly, we strive to provide immediate responses to staff emails and phone calls. If our employees are distracted by administrative uncertainty or cannot get the answers they need to do their jobs, the district is ultimately failing our students. 

We also began branding and organizing our internal communications. For instance, staff used to get emails from a single person in communications—not the department. That wouldn’t really stand out in someone’s inbox. Now, emails from the communications department are branded “Spark Mail” in the header, signaling to our staff that this message is worth paying attention to. More urgent information regarding things like closures or weather delays comes out as a “DPS Alert.” Staff know to open those immediately because action will likely be required of them.  

But we don’t just want to make things easier for our staff; we also want to treat them the way we might treat a valued guest. To show our staff how much we appreciate them, we began sending a monthly employee newsletter. With it, we also created awards for Employee of the Month and Teacher of the Month.

Finally, you might think additional training is the last thing your employees want from you. But when I worked in hospitality, every department began each shift with a 10- to 15-minute stand-up meeting that included “Practices and Promises”: the standards we held ourselves to as an organization. Every day, one person on each team was responsible for picking a practice or promise and demonstrating how we would use it to be of service. So on a daily basis, every person in the organization was asked to renew their focus on what mattered most: the guests. 

Frequent check-ins are a powerful tool for keeping people motivated and connected to the mission. Every school district employee would benefit from remembering why we’re all there—the students, of course. Yet the people who most often interact with students rarely get any hospitality training. Ultimately, my goal at DPS is to scale hospitality training across the district so everyone from central office leaders to teachers to bus drivers to custodians receive it. 

As consumers, our families have come to expect personalized service. When I shop on Amazon, for example, it gives me, “Sheena,” curated recommendations: items it thinks I might like or products I might want to buy again. Because families are trusting schools with their children—their greatest investment—they are naturally going to expect the same level of personalized service from school districts. 

But in hospitality, unlike in online shopping, brand reputation is not built solely through advertising or marketing campaigns, but through daily interactions between people. Every employee contributes to the guest experience, whether they work at the front desk, in housekeeping or behind the scenes. To personalize a guest’s experience, employees must ask themselves: What can I do to increase our guests’ comfort during their stay? How can we make them feel special?

For example, a hotel might ask a guest if they are celebrating a special occasion when they book a room. In conversation with the concierge, the same guest might reveal their favorite color. In hospitality, if you learn that a guest is celebrating their birthday and that their favorite color is purple, you send purple balloons to their room. That's the difference maker.

While we strive for personalization in district communications, there are more opportunities for personalization at the building level than at the district level. For example, some days my son comes home from school on cloud nine—because his teacher, who knows he loves Spider-Man, has given him Spider-Man stickers. This may be the result of one thoughtful person’s actions, but making hospitality a priority in your district means enabling more moments like these to happen. It’s about intentionality and it’s about scale. 

Schools can create similar moments for students and families with a few simple touches: learning names, celebrating achievements, recognizing personal milestones. These small, intentional details carry immense weight, especially for someone who isn't expecting that level of care.

In the hospitality industry, guests don’t talk about towel brands in their reviews. They talk about how they felt during their stay. Likewise, families may not remember every policy or presentation, but they remember how they were treated. They remember whether someone took the time to listen, whether they felt welcome and whether staff members genuinely cared. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in the day-to-day and the mandates and the scores that we can miss the little moments that make all the difference in the world to a family.