Creating a buying experience centered around the customer
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When you buy a product at an Apple Store, there’s a good chance they’ll complete the transaction on a mobile device where you are.
Savvy hotels are bringing this concept out of retail to their properties. Someone walks the guest in, completing the check-in process along the way.
In this week’s episode of This Week in Hotels, Guillaume and I discussed some of the changes Hyatt is introducing for their Andaz brand – explained by Barbara De Lollis in this article for USA Today:
Andaz hotels do away with the big, iconic front desks, which were created more than a century ago when hotels looked for a way to secure customers’ cash, Hanson says. When guests walk into an Andaz, they’re greeted by a “host” who walks around carrying a tablet computer.
If guests want to get to their room immediately, the host may offer to help carry bags to their room and check them in.
If guests have time to chat, the host might walk them to a sleek, modern table decorated with a bowl of cherries, and offer fruit and coffee while taking their information. The process resembles stepping into a friend’s home instead of a business transaction.
It’s so different from the wait-in-line-and-wait-for-us experience of a traditional check-in desk.
Maybe this is not practical in your situation. But if you’re opening or rebranding a hotel, I would give this some serious thought.
Re-engineering processes like these show your world centers around the guest.
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This is an excellent point Josiah. The hotel industry is full of this kind of unwritten rules that make a hotel experiences identical from one another. The reality is that there is actually no difference in the actual physical products. All senior executives or hotel managers are all coming from the same schools (well known Swiss hotel schools), all grew up with the same core principles and with the same rules. Reading the same school books. Having worked for the same companies and regularly swapping positions.
For sure there is a school book that says that the reception desk must be 1 meter 40 high and stuck against a wall about 50 meters from the hotel entrance. And until someone challenges this rule, any hotel experience will be identical from one another.
I wrote a piece a while back about that matter. You should have a look! http://fabriceburtin.com/2010/05/06/innovation-why-the-hotel-industry-missed-the-train/
So to add to Josiah’s post I would say if you are opening or re-branding a hotel… Break the rules!
Fabrice
http://fabriceburtin.com/
That was a great article, Fabrice – thanks very much for sharing.
Everyone reading this: be sure to click through to read the article on his site!
Loved your article, Fabrice, especially the part that suggested businesses “copy” strategies implemented by other industries, and your insights into how larger hotels’ capacity for innovation is limited by their success — how do you suggest they break through the red tape and test innovative ideas? Is it possible to create “hard data” for untested ideas? Or could they find those numbers by looking to other industries that have implemented similar changes?
As Josiah said, it’s certainly a must-read for our HMS shakers
Hi Katie, Thanks. As Josiah well said, any experience should be built around the customer, his expectations and his needs. The hotel industry is working the other way around. The frame work exists and you cannot change it. It is full of rules that can’t be moved. The check-in counter is one of them but there are plenty others. Check-in time 2.00pm, check-out 12.00pm. Breakfast until 10.00am only. Staff wear a name tag (have you ever called a staff by his name??) Etc.
Forget about “hard data” for untested ideas. By definition, innovation is a change in thought process, therefore its potential cannot be quantified unless it is trusted and tested. If you only take a business decision based on absolute certainty, you may take small risks and achieve small successes.http://fabriceburtin.com/2010/06/09/corporations-longing-for-certainty/ This is this change of though process that never happened in the industry.
What it takes is to start from scratch, work out what are the customers needs and expectations and re-build the frame work around these needs only forgetting totally about the pre-conceived ideas and constraints that are set by default by the industry. Answer customer ultimate needs and you can’t go wrong.
Fabrice Burtin
Great advice, Fabrice! The hotel industry definitely needs a good shaking.
Especially enjoyed this insight:
“What it takes is to start from scratch, work out what are the customers needs and expectations and re-build the frame work around these needs only forgetting totally about the pre-conceived ideas and constraints that are set by default by the industry.”
And I’m very much looking forward to reading and sharing your interview!
Mihir — Great to hear a hoteliers’ view of the guest experience, and I loved the bit where you suggested hotels offer a drink at the beginning of the stay, and allow guests to get right to their room without bombarding them with information.
Those little courtesies can make a huge difference. Will you start doing something similar at the Goa Hotel? Maybe two glasses of champagne upon arrival? A little box of chocolates on the bed-stand? If not, they can always request a little something extra from Mr. Troubleshooter
Something I wrote on one of the rare occasions when I was a guest myself:
“She greeted us warmly and without too much small talk, showed us our way to our room. I don’t know if she realised how tired and sleepy we were or whether this was her usual practice, but we were really glad to be shown to our room as quickly as possible.
I have stayed and worked in hotels before where they make it a point to unload all the possible and available information about the hotel and the surroundings before they even let you have your room key.
A great idea instead would be to place an Information Sheet with an alphabetic index so that you can search for the information at your leisure. And I wish hotels would just use regular names instead of hi funda or fancy sounding terms. Once hotel I stayed in had the Operator listed under ‘Switchboard’ and Room Service as ‘In Room Fine Dining’ !!! ”
http://mitaroygoahotel.com/2010/07/13/on-the-other-side/
Just a thought.
Cheers
Mihir
It all goes back to ‘speaking like a human’, right?
And I really liked that article you linked to. Especially how you closed it off:
“the best kind of research is not the questionnaires and the bar graphs but personal experience”
I think all hoteliers should go out there and do some real-life market research as often as possible. That’s why I usually switch hotels every 1-2 nights when I’m in a new city for a week or more….