Cornell Hotel & Restaurant Administration Quarterly: The science and practice of persuasion: from business owners to busboys, the ability to harness the power of persuasion is often an essential component of success in the hospitality industry. (Marketing).

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The science and practice of persuasion: from business owners to busboys, the ability to harness the power of persuasion is often an essential component of success in the hospitality industry. (Marketing).

Robert B. Cialdini

Research reveals that there are six basic principles that govern how one person might influence another. Those principles can be labeled as: liking, reciprocation, consistency, scarcity, social validation, and authority. (1) In the pages that follow we elaborate on each of those six principles and highlight some of their applications in the hospitality industry--for instance, how a restaurant manager might reduce the reservation no-show rate by two-thirds; how to influence the size of the gratuity patrons leave for their servers; how to encourage customers to order additional food when they do not really want it; and how to get customers ...