Pros say hospitality jobs and trends are all about attitude

The PowerPoint slides flash by. We see a group of people sitting in the stands at an exciting hockey game. Then a group of people at a mouth-watering banquet. Then a just-married couple in bed on their wedding night.

Each scene makes the audience gathered in the auditorium laugh a little harder - because they all have one thing in common. No one is paying attention to their surroundings. They are all busy texting their friends, even the back-to-back and apparently naked bride and groom.

Professor Sacha Stocklin of Les Roches Jin Jiang International Hotel Management College isn't showing these funny scenes just to entertain the crowd at the recent Young Hospitality Professionals Summit in Shanghai. The point: Young people in the hospitality business have to focus on the customer in front of them, not their phone. He concedes that it's not easy to modify what has become normal behavior today - especially for the millennial generation - while at work.