InterContinental Toronto Centre Energizes Workers With Dance

Zumba dancing with Amanda Grant

If you’ve recently stayed at InterContinental Toronto Centre and accidentally ended up in a back-of-the-house area, you may have noticed a group of housekeepers having an early-morning party.  Your eyes weren’t deceiving you but it wasn’t a party.  The hotel employs a unique method of preparing its employees for a day of work: dance.  Each morning, the housekeeping staff dances to Latin samba music to get themselves energized.

Anil Datt, the director of housekeeping at the hotel, said that, since he thought of the idea three years ago, he’s used a daily regimen of five minutes of dance to help motivate his workers.

On August 14, Amanda Grant, a master Zumba instructor, led the hotel staff and some guests through a Zumba workout in the hotel lobby.  It was the first time the staff had danced in a public space and they embraced the opportunity to do so.

The dancing routine has proved to be so effective that, on an especially busy day when the team must forego the Zumba workout, it is, as Datt told Frequent Business Traveler, “like a day without sunshine.”

When asked about plans on incorporating the routine at other InterContinental hotels, a spokesman said that, due to the buzz in social media and news coverage as well as the observed positive effects on work ethic, other InterContinental hotels have already begun implementing Zumba dancing into the morning routines of housekeeping staff.  Others have plans to institute the routine in the future.

(Photo: Accura Media Group)