The Day WOW Wasn’t in the Manual

Over the years, I’ve seen many service recovery stories, some routine, others remarkable.

But one particular incident aboard a luxury cruise ship stayed with me. A guest had been trapped in an elevator for several minutes. She was claustrophobic, anxious, distressed, and understandably shaken when the doors finally opened.

What happened next turned a frightening episode into an unforgettable memory. Waiting outside wasn’t just the engineering or guest services team.

 Standing there were senior leaders, the Hotel Director, the F&B Director, and a few key crew members, holding a bouquet of roses, a platter of chocolate-dipped strawberries, and a glass of chilled champagne.

No protocol dictated that gesture.

No manual suggested that response.

It was pure instinct, empathy in motion.

As the guest regained her composure, she smiled and said something that captured the spirit of true hospitality: “It was terrifying… but with a gesture like this, I almost wouldn’t mind being stuck in an elevator again.”

That moment wasn’t about fixing a problem. It was about restoring emotion.

And that’s where training for WOW begins.

Too often, we train teams to deliver standards — polished, precise, predictable. But “WOW” isn’t born from predictability. It emerges from presence, when people respond with heart, not habit.

As L&D professionals, our role isn’t just to teach “what to do when things go wrong,” but to build the mindset that allows teams to humanize the unexpected. Because luxury, whether at sea or on land, isn’t about what happens when everything goes right. It’s about how gracefully we respond when it doesn’t.

WOW isn’t scripted. It’s sensed. It’s not about being perfect. It’s about being personally invested. And the finest training cultures I’ve seen don’t just create compliant employees, they nurture emotionally intelligent professionals who instinctively turn moments of stress into stories of care.

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