Comment: Mark Keith on hotel management
29 June 2010
A hotel tale
The 350-room City Hotel is fairly busy due to its central location, but the hotel’s bar and restaurant are almost always empty even though nearby bars and restaurants are packed. The current GM is leaving, and Frank wants his job. He gets in touch with the owner of the hotel, Luke, and sets up an interview. This is what happens next.
Luke: So, how would you fill the restaurant and bar?
Frank: Wow, that’s a complicated question. The first thing to consider is that in a hotel the waiter is the product, and so is the receptionist. Hotels can have the best interiors, the best marble in the bathrooms, the best linen, and the best equipment. However what produces the customer experience and makes people come back and tell their friends is the engagement of the waiter and the receptionist.
Luke: I get that, so what would you do if you ran this hotel?
Frank: Last night I had a drink and dinner in the restaurant. I also made a room reservation, which I later cancelled, and I checked the bars and restaurants nearby. What I discovered is your hotel is efficient, but boring. Staff are polite, but lack passion. I was greeted at the restaurant with the standard opener ‘How many are you?’, when I asked about the specials, the waiter responded ‘Just a minute, let me check.’ There was no genuine feeling, no spark. This is common in most hotels, and that’s why the free standing bars and restaurants do so well. The sports bar next door has a waitress called Sally, for example; she brought my wine in the wrong glass, but she was so friendly and related I didn’t care. Its loud, fun and a place I’d go back to…
Luke: So you are saying we shouldn’t bother with standards?
Frank: No, I’m saying that the priority has to be the customer experience, and the rest will follow. In your hotel the priority is the procedures. Last night I saw a guest checking in, and the encounter reminded me of the immigration desk at an airport. The guest was asked to produce his ID to verify his details, and instead of receiving a warm welcome, was greeted by a receptionist staring at her computer screen. After a couple of minutes, the receptionist said: ‘Ah here we are, Mr Smith I’ve found your reservation. Now I can assign you a room. How was your flight?’ The impression I got was that until she found the reservation, the guest was not welcome. The guest was then escorted to the lift and again asked by the porter ‘How was your flight?’
Luke: What’s wrong with ‘How’s your flight?’
Frank: “The thing is it has becomes a check-in ritual, it doesn’t move anything forward for the guest. It’s like asking about the weather. What I would suggest is a question or information that contributes to the guest. For example, ‘Here’s your username and password for your free internet access.”
Luke: Fine, but we don’t give free internet. We charge for access.
Frank: That’s another point. When you look around your lounge guests are all using their own remote WiFi connections and doing the same in their room. Charging for something like this irritates guests, and technology allows them to bypass your surcharge. It’s the same with your phone charges, they use their own mobile, and even with the roaming charge it’s still cheaper than using the hotel phone. If you charged for towels, guests would bring their own.
Luke: OK, I see that. What else?
Frank: How are sales in the mini bar?
Luke: Actually sales are not like they used to be.
Frank: These days guests want a refrigerator in their rooms, that’s one of the successes of service apartments. Imagine if the guest could pre order bottles of his favourite wine, beer or mineral water from your drinks list. What would open up for you then?
Luke: I love that idea. We could then lose all the costs of controlling and checking the mini bars. We could even have a shop providing that stuff in the lobby.
Frank: Sure you could, but more importantly you would be giving the guest something they value, and you could eliminate the minibar check out ritual. Most regular travellers know the ropes, they’re on expense accounts. They know that they can stock up at the 711 round the corner at a fraction of your mini bar prices. So the mini-bar checkout ritual is just another inconvenience.
Luke: But every hotel I know does the same.
Frank: Exactly, and that’s what makes it easy to be extraordinary. Look these are just a few examples. I would also focus on getting the staff to be different.
Luke: You mean you’d get them to do different things?
Frank: No, I mean how they are being when they do things.
Luke: What do you mean how they are being?
Frank: Robert De Niro or Meryl Streep are amazing not due to the script, nor what they do, what makes them great is how they are being. They call it method acting, some actors get into the role 24/7, even having trouble getting out of the character.
Luke: So you’re saying you’re going to turn our staff into actors?
Frank: No, what I want for them is to have fun, joy, self-expression and freedom with their work. That will unleash infectious passion and enthusiasm. Your guests will be asking what we’ve put in the water. Now, they are constrained by rules and procedures, they are polite and efficient following orders.
Luke: I’m not sure work should be fun.
Frank: It has to be if you want your customers have fun. That’s the secret of customer service. Now, have I answered your question about how I would run the hotel?
Luke: You sure have, and now I have a question for you. When can you start?
Mark - spot on. When we talk to some in the industry about attitude, style, flair and distinctiveness they tend tp reply 'but you can't run an efficient hotel on that' which is - of course - true. But the industry has become obsessed with standards (including 'brand standards' which is a contradiction as brands are emtotive beasts) to the exclusion of being memorable and special.No doubt this, in part, comes from the fact that many hotel groups are publicly listed and need to systemise things in order to keep margins healthy. But that is a terribly dangerous short-term tactic. Brands are built by nurturing long-term relationships and you don't form relationships with things that don't have a personality - like many current hotels. Why is it Harley Davidson is such a powerful brand? Do they make the best bikes? Maybe. Is the brand as an attitude and an aexperience something people can fall in love with? For some, definitely. And in hotels this brand passion needs to come primarily from people. So why hire on functional skills and experience alone when most of the service jobs are low on technical skills and high on emotional quotients. The most shocking thing about this is that hotels have the opportunity to build more powerful brands than in any other industry - the relationship guests have with hotels is longer lasting and more varied than any other. Yet there is not one hotel group in the Businessweek annual top 100 global brands (which measures the brand contribution to profits). Yet there are 12 financial institutions in the list, despite the loathing many people seem to have for them and the poor service many offer. Unless hotel groups move from a focus on standardisation to human expression we're unlikely to see hotel groups appearing in the list any time soon. This probably fightens the life out of the bean counters and their short-term goals, but for those who have an interest in the wellbeing of the company beyond the next quarterly report, remember, as Mark points out, that your brands are built by your people and people are not at their best when following rules and standards. Let them fly. Let them make mistakes. Encourage them to be themselves!