Years earlier, we’ve been a favourite destination for the Round the World yachties and their more innovative America’s Cup cousins.
And so it should be no surprise that a couple of major highlights from the summer break saw us doing just that. Hosting major, world-class, sporting events.
The ASB Classic tennis tournaments in Auckland’s Stanley Street are now a staple of our summer. We’ve been running these tournaments, firstly the women’s, and then the men’s, annually for almost a lifetime.
The tournament has been going for most of the last 70 years. There may have been the odd year when it didn’t run in the days when the main sponsor was a tobacco company. But since ASB stepped in and took the naming rights it’s been a regular must-do for tennis fans.
The longevity shows. The organisation is smooth. People flow through the venue with ease. Every level of seating offers a terrific view of the matches.
And in a sure sign that we are doing things right, we see some of the world’s best players coming back year after year, despite the temptations of bigger tournaments elsewhere.
Here’s the thing about professional sports - even the “no-names” are amazing to watch.
The quality of the tennis, sometimes between one of the world’s best players and another ranked some two or three hundred places below, is riveting to watch. If you’ve never been, I cannot recommend it highly enough.
At the other end of the ‘tenure spectrum’ we had an equally brilliant event for the first time.
SailGP is the brainchild of our very own Sir Russell Coutts. You have to marvel at the vision and the execution of a new global sporting contest that is only five seasons old.
They talk about flying boats, iconic cities, and world-class athletes. We should feel privileged to be included. It’s million-dollar racing that’s fast, dangerous, and spectacular.
Hosting the event for the first time, Auckland’s harbour turned it on. The location was close and accessible, the arena perfectly set, with a grandstand full of flag-waving fans perched on the end of the dock completing the picture.
And it blew! That same wind that has troubled holidaymakers and tennis players over the course of the break, was perfect for the young men and women in their fabulous racing machines.
Of course, Kiwis love a good sailing race and we turned out in our thousands to make sure the grandstands were full and the event looked successful.
It helps to have a competitive home team. And although the Black Foils didn’t quite get it right on the day, there was no denying that the event was a massive and spectacular success. The racing was close and the television pictures did this city proud.
It was so good that my hope is that someone with some sway around the America’s Cup decision-making was watching and thinking, “let’s bring the cup home”. Wishful thinking perhaps.
But I’m already anticipating that, like the tennis, we get to do it all again next year, and the year after that. We need it. Our economy needs it. And we’ll be better next time.
You have to love what these events do for our hospitality industry.
After the last few years, it’s easy to feel sorry for those in the food and booze business.
The enforced closures during the Covid period, a slower tourism market, and an economic recession that has seen most of us become more cost-conscious, has made lives and livelihoods very tough.
And so the opportunity to suddenly see thousands of people, converging on a single location, sitting in the sun for hours on end, and emerging hungry and thirsty, must have felt like a dream come true for our restaurateurs and bar operators.
But in the aftermath of the big serves and the high-speed gybes, we need to get match fit again.
With a group of others, I went to a couple of bars after the events. Let’s just say that the world-class sporting scenes were not matched by the customer experience an hour or so later.
During the 2011 Rugby World Cup, I remember us being so good at this stuff.
The loss of talent will be a part of it. But like most businesses, we could simplify a few things too.
A similar event in Sydney or Melbourne would attract thousands of people standing three deep at the establishments surrounding the venue, reliving every moment and handing their hard-earned money across the bar to the person who was about to pour their drinks.
Alternatively, they might have been scanning a QR code and ordering from wherever they had managed to find a spot.
However, we’re not making it that easy. Admittedly I might be a case study of one!
But in my own experience, upon turning up at a large waterfront establishment with tables full and plenty of “standing room” available, I was asked if I had a booking, told that I had to be sitting at a table, and instructed that a person would come to my table to take my order.
That took 20 minutes. The delivery of the order took another 15 minutes. After 30 minutes in Sydney, we’d be standing three deep at a bar with 15 people working behind it, lining up for a third round.
Four people. Two beers and two wines. That’s $70 per round. Those first 30 minutes are costing our venues $140 in turnover.
An empty glass is an opportunity to make a $16 sale. Good operators will offer you a refill before you’re even empty.
Instead, the second round was as bad as the first. We waited at least five minutes after attracting the server’s attention before she came over and asked what we wanted. Another 10 minutes would see the drinks arrive. That’s 15 minutes.
Then there was my personal pet dislike. When the hospitality worker comes to your table and clears your empty glasses, you might think to ask that person for another round of drinks.
Inevitably the response comes: “I’ll send someone over”. It’s the same with the people delivering the drinks, who seem incapable of taking the empties away.
When we’re short of staff, it just makes sense to me to streamline this stuff. Let the customers do the walking, stand in a queue, and give them great service from a central point.
Elsewhere, a maitre d’ at one of our establishments has developed a way of complicating the customer experience to such an extent that he’s making his own life miserable while his colleagues stand aside, waiting for something to do.
At brunch before the tennis, we went to a large cafe that was admittedly very busy.
We saw that there were people waiting for tables, although it was clear that there were tables available.
Despite the fact that two or three servers were standing waiting for something to do, the maitre d’ took it upon himself to go and look for a table, clear some dishes and take a coffee order on the way back, and drop the order into the kitchen before returning to tell the customer, (remember the customer?) that their table was ready.
And that’s before he turned his attention to the other queue of people waiting to pay.
Needless to say, we went along the road.
Here’s the point.
These establishments have had a tough few years. Those that are still in business are paying massive rents and in many cases are only there by the resilience in their veins and the skin of their teeth.
When the good times roll, they have to be able to maximise the opportunity.
The last five years have wrought massive change. Whatever we were doing before needs a rethink.
Sure, a certain way of operating may have worked when we had hordes of skilled young service workers on working holiday visas. But that’s not the case anymore. It’s a different time. And we all need to adapt.
And so, at the risk of ganging up on the already hard-hit hospo operators, there’s a lesson in here for every business. The game is changing fast. We need to evolve.
As we look forward to another ASB tennis classic and hope that Sir Russell enjoyed Auckland as much as we did, let’s make like the Black Foils and aim to be better next time.
