Purpose

This is the training playbook we use at Borgo Santolina. Because we are a small, full-service property, we train for judgment, cross-coverage, and hands-on competence rather than narrow departmental specialization. The goal is a team that works hard without looking frantic: knowledgeable, calm, warm, observant, and able to create a sense of fun and connection while maintaining professional boundaries.

Training combines a clear service ethos with concrete role skills, checklists, scenario practice, observation, and repeated real-world rehearsal. We want people to understand why we operate as we do, then practice the work until the standard is dependable without becoming scripted.

Principles

• Work intensely, look calm. Guests should experience confidence and readiness, not our internal rush, staffing pressure, or recovery work.
• Treat guests like adults. Never condescend, lecture, shame, or make a normal request feel burdensome.
• Anticipate before the guest has to ask, but do not hover. When the likely need is obvious, act. When preference is uncertain, offer rather than assume. Guests should not have to chase normal service. They are always welcome to ask, and a request should never make them feel demanding or inconvenient.
• Build connections naturally. Look for opportunities to connect guests with the property, the place, the team, and one another without forcing social moments. We want genuine, peer-to-peer human interaction with a clear professional boundary.
• Teach judgment, not scripts. Examples and useful phrases can help, but team members should sound like themselves and adapt to the guest and situation.
• Cleanliness and readiness are everyone's responsibility. If a team member sees an obvious defect, they correct it when trained to do so or get it to the person who owns it.
• Outdoor presentation matters too. Grounds and guest-facing outdoor areas are held to defined readiness standards rather than treated as background.
• One team serves the guest. Cross-training and clear handoffs matter because guests should not experience departmental boundaries.
• Know the property and the region. Team members should be able to explain the Borgo, the local area, current activities, and relevant operating details naturally and accurately.
• Use guest knowledge discreetly. Learn and share useful preferences so the experience becomes easier, never to make the guest feel studied.

Roles & Ownership

Owners / Leadership

• Define the service philosophy, non-negotiables, authority limits, and the standard the training program is meant to produce.
• Complete the owner and management training week before broad staff training and use owner or practice stays to test the guest experience.
• Review recurring training gaps and resource the staffing, tools, and outside development needed to close them.
• Model attention to detail without creating a culture of fear. The team should know leadership notices the work, including excellent judgment and follow-through, not only mistakes.

General Manager / Managers

• Own the seasonal training calendar, role sign-offs, cross-training plan, scenario practice, and continuing coaching.
• Train from the current operating playbooks and checklists rather than maintaining conflicting copies of the same standard.
• Observe real work, correct misses quickly and privately, and explain why the standard matters.
• Use guest stays to improve the training plan. When a problem repeats, change the training, checklist, staffing, or operating system rather than repeatedly coaching the same symptom.
• Maintain a clear escalation path so staff can get help without guessing or leaving a guest waiting.

Workstream Leads

• Teach the current setup, execution, breakdown, quality, safety, and handoff standards for their work.
• Demonstrate the work, observe the employee doing it, and use verbal questions or scenarios to test judgment where a checklist alone is not enough.
• Keep role-specific training material aligned with the governing playbook and flag obsolete instructions.

Every Team Member

• Complete the required primary-role training and at least one useful area of cross-training.
• Learn the property, local area, current guest experience, escalation path, and safety basics relevant to the role.
• Ask or escalate when the answer is uncertain rather than inventing a policy or promising something the property cannot deliver.
• Participate in practice stays, drills, scenario coaching, and post-stay learning.
• Over time, experience the activities we offer so they can be discussed from first-hand knowledge rather than from a brochure.

What Everyone Learns

Service & Judgment

• The Hospitality Playbook and the guest feeling we are trying to create: attentive, relaxed, personal, unpretentious, and easy.
• How to recognize a guest naturally, read energy and body language, use names appropriately, and know when to engage or step back.
• How to anticipate needs, own requests, make a clean handoff, follow through on promises, and update a guest before they have to chase us.
• How to handle unusual requests, complaints, service recovery, intoxicated or belligerent behavior, extra requests, and professional-boundary issues without becoming argumentative or theatrical.
• How to protect privacy and use guest preferences appropriately.
• How to create small, personal moments of care when they arise naturally. These are examples, not scripts. A thoughtful reset of a child's belongings may be charming for one family and intrusive for another.

Property & Destination Knowledge

• Property layout, guest spaces, staff-only spaces, wayfinding, and who owns each operating area.
• The history of the property and enough regional context to answer common guest questions accurately.
• Current activities and experiences, what is included or extra, who leads them, and how guests access them.
• Current agricultural, landscaping, restoration, or property projects that guests are likely to notice and ask about.
• Practical English or Italian coaching where language support will materially improve teamwork or guest interaction.

Primary Role Competence

Training is hands-on. Staff learn the current opening, setup, service, cleaning, closing, inventory, safety, and handoff procedures for their role using the owning playbook and live checklist. Managers demonstrate the work, observe it being repeated, and question the employee on non-obvious situations.

A staff member is not considered ready because they attended training. Readiness is based on observed execution, sound judgment, and the ability to use the current references without constant prompting.

Cross-Training

• Every employee is cross-trained in at least one adjacent area that improves guest coverage or team resilience.
• F&B team members complete pre-season practice across non-management service positions. Our current plan calls for two to three shifts in each applicable position.
• The F&B program should keep designated bar and basic kitchen-prep tasks simple enough that a trained cross-functional employee can execute them. This does not mean untrained staff perform chef, food-safety, or specialist duties.
• Management should identify useful staff talents, such as fishing, tracking, gardening, or mushroom knowledge, and connect them to guest experiences only when the Activities Playbook confirms the experience can be delivered safely and well.

Seasonal Training Cycle

Department-Specific Pre-Season Training

Some teams need to start before the general staff. Our current Housekeeping & Property Readiness plan calls for the core housekeeping team to begin roughly two weeks before the broader staff when the opening calendar permits, using the pre-season deep clean as real training.

Owner & Management Training Week

Current working plan: one week of owner and management alignment before broad staff training. Department teams that start earlier, especially housekeeping, may already be in training during this period.

• Stay at the property and operate it as guests would experience it.
• Work through the F&B training program with the chef and service leadership so management understands the operation before training the broader team.
• Use the week to refine training material, align on the intended service style, and test operating timings and handoffs.
• Include early housekeeping practice and room inspections so owners and management can give direct input before paid guests arrive.
• Go through the experiences the team will later need to explain and support.

Pre-Soft-Open Week

Current working plan: one week with no guests for the broader team. Department training may begin earlier or extend beyond this week where the owning playbook requires it.

Food & Beverage

• Primary-role training: four days focused on setup, breakdown, service flow, cleanliness, readiness, beverage and coffee service, guest preferences, and the current Service Manual.
• Property and regional knowledge is taught with written material and conversation, then checked verbally. Our current target is at least 80% correct before soft open, with required operating knowledge closed to 100% by opening.
• Regular house service items, including cocktails and other standard beverages, are practiced before opening. Our current target is 99% accuracy, with house recipes executable from memory except for occasional reference.
• Alternate-role training: three days across designated kitchen prep, reception or host support, and a guided-activity exposure, subject to role and safety limits.
• Before opening, rehearse breakfast, lunch, aperitivo, and at least one full dinner service with realistic guest counts, as required by the Food & Beverage Playbook.
• Use informal scenario questions during down moments and pre- or post-service meetings, then continue varied quality checks once service begins.

The earlier training schedule separately called for a one-day staff activity experience in addition to four primary-role days and three alternate-role days. Management must confirm whether that activity day sits inside the three-day cross-training block or extends the pre-soft-open calendar.

Housekeeping

Housekeeping follows its dedicated Training tab and current Housekeeping Checklists. The current plan starts the core team earlier when possible, then uses owner or practice week and soft-opening stays to train cleaning around real guest movement, privacy, room entry, Perfect State setup, lost and found, maintenance reporting, public-area recovery, inventory, and escalation. The Team Training playbook should not duplicate those changing execution checklists.

Property Operations / Grounds

• Train property and regional knowledge, current landscaping or property projects, guest-facing comportment, and the escalation path for questions outside the employee's authority.
• Train the materials and backup-supply checklist used by the role.
• Train the guest-area handoff around the pool and outdoor spaces, including removing or reporting abandoned service items and notifying Housekeeping or F&B when they own the cleanup. Technical pool operation remains with trained pool staff.

Activity Familiarization

We want staff to speak about our experiences from first-hand knowledge. Management organizes a pre-season activity day when practical and continues scheduling activity participation during employment until the team has meaningful familiarity with what we offer. The Activities Playbook governs delivery, safety, pricing, cancellation, transportation, and who may lead each experience.

Soft Opening

Our current plan is one to two weeks of shadowing and practice during soft opening, using friends, family, owners, or other low-risk practice guests when practical.

• Assign practice guests different areas to observe and ask them to report candidly on service, timing, cleanliness, ease, and staff interactions. This is feedback, not a game of catching employees.
• At the beginning of a shift or handoff, review immediate concerns, open guest issues, and the quality points that matter that day.
• During soft opening, review the selected KPIs at shift changes so the team sees the connection between the standard and the actual work.
• Reserve 10 to 15 minutes at the end of each shift for what went well, what did not, and what needs to change on the next shift.
• Correct small misses in the moment when it can be done discreetly without disrupting the guest. Otherwise, note the example and coach it at the end of the shift.
• Close any property-knowledge, recipe, setup, or judgment gaps before normal paid operations.

In-Season Training

• After each guest stay, or in the weekly debrief when stays run together, review clear wins, misses, unusual requests, and changes needed before the next group.
• Monthly, review the agreed KPIs, including F&B quality, housekeeping, service, timing, and personal presentation where relevant.
• Monthly, check the required safety measures and training items with the Safety, Security & Compliance owner.
• Continue short scenario questions, role drills, and spot checks rather than waiting for a formal training day.
• Use Guest Connection Appreciation in post-stay and monthly discussions: call out specific moments when a team member created a genuine connection or anticipated something well, so training reinforces good judgment as deliberately as it corrects mistakes.
• Invite staff to suggest improvements and new ideas based on what they actually see with guests.
• During owner or practice stays, have owners experience the activities and service flows that have changed since the prior review.

Quality Control & Readiness

Managers use a small set of observable readiness checks rather than relying only on a subjective sense that someone has been trained.

• Primary-role setup, execution, breakdown, cleanliness, and handoffs can be performed to the current checklist and visual standard.
• Property and regional knowledge reaches the current pre-soft-open target and required operating knowledge is complete by opening.
• F&B staff assigned standard beverage service can execute current house items to the agreed quality target.
• Cross-trained staff can assist in the alternate role without creating safety, quality, or authority problems.
• Staff can explain the experiences they have completed and know when an activity question must go to the Activities owner.
• Scenario answers show sound judgment on unusual requests, guest frustration, intoxication, boundaries, privacy, and escalation.
• Staff know how to get a manager or role owner involved quickly rather than guessing.
• Recurring guest or operational misses decline because the underlying training, checklist, or system is corrected.

Management Development

• Send managers to stay at properties whose service we admire with a specific observation brief, then require them to bring back concrete practices worth testing rather than general impressions.
• Use outside consultants when they can address a defined skill gap.
• Support continuing courses for chefs, bartenders, guides, managers, and other specialist roles where the learning will materially improve the guest experience.
• Managers continue refining training plans from real guest experience rather than treating the pre-opening program as finished.

Training Materials & Supporting References

External Inspiration

The Ritz-Carlton Gold Standards remain a useful reference for the idea of a short, memorable service ethos reinforced through training. We do not use the copied Ritz-Carlton principles as our script or operating standard. Our Hospitality Playbook and the practices in this playbook govern our team.

Open Decisions & Action Items

• Employee alcohol: define the workplace rule, including whether the earlier 'responsible one-glass-of-wine' idea is ever permitted, for whom, and under what circumstances. 7. Team & Management should own the final conduct standard.
• F&B self-service: earlier Team Training notes said guests should not self-pour, while the current Food & Beverage Playbook says guests may continue to help themselves after staffed dinner service ends at 11:00 p.m. Food & Beverage should define exactly what self-service includes so training does not teach a contradiction.