By
Bill Becken |
This article first appeared in the Spring/Summer 2015 issue of International Cruise & Ferry Review. To read other articles, you can subscribe to the magazine in printed or digital formats
If you want the job done right, it is said, hire someone busy. Even better, of course, hire that person away from a corporate rival enjoying its own competitive advantages. Late last year, MSC Cruises did just that, hiring away Hans Hesselberg – with more than 40 years’ experience – from Costa Cruises.
At Costa, Hesselberg served as hotel director in the Genoa head office and, before that, in the field, as Costa’s VP Operations for the Americas. He had come to Costa from American Hawaii Cruises, where he was vice president of Hotel Operations.
Hesselberg now has responsibility for shipboard services and onboard product delivery on all MSC cruise ships that sail the Caribbean or may do in future. The line’s first such vessel, dedicated to the North American market, is the MSC Divina. His boss is MSC Cruises USA’s president and CEO Richard Sasso, for whom Hesselberg’s hiring is very strategic. The former’s role includes making sure that the distinctive programmes and onboard service of the MSC Divina develop around both her multi-season Caribbean deployment and her temporary summer deployment (beginning in spring 2015) to the Mediterranean. The ship returns to the Caribbean in autumn.
To say that Hesselberg appreciates that guests’ ultimate satisfaction with a cruise pivots on preparation and solicitude for their dining desires would be an understatement. Any restaurant experience worth the name is a mannered affair, requiring careful planning – such as staging and staggering seating, especially in order to make busy times less chaotic.
Restaurant management is an art, he says, “very much depending on the market that will be served to determine when we expect to be at capacity. For instance, in the US and Northern Europe, restaurants tend to fill up early, while in Southern Europe and South America, restaurants fill up during later sittings. Knowing who is onboard is key, although our top priorities do not change. Most important is that MSC Cruises delivers excellent service to its guests and that they feel neither rushed nor stalled while starting or completing a meal.”
To this end, Hesselberg says, communications among restaurant staff – particularly between the back and front of the house, so to speak – must be accurate and swift: “Using technology is critical, particularly the use of handheld devices, which allows the server to enter the order correctly and, more importantly, allows a resourceful chef to prepare à la minute as much as possible. This ultimately reduces overproduction and waste and more clearly and memorably identifies our service as a superior product for our guests.” Even galley design has been optimised technically, says Hesselberg, with a similar eye towards reducing inefficiency while maintaining product quality.
Still, the true test of a restaurant operation remains the ability to maintain quality at all times – whether expectant patrons are numerous and crowded or relatively few and sparse (and the service tempo commensurately rapid or more leisurely). “Since we know from experience on which nights we are likely to experience the greatest number of guests,” says Hesselberg, “we design the menus to ensure that we are able to serve the same high-quality items within the allotted time as we would on a slower evening.”