What is happening to our industry? Where did all the glamour go?
Hotel glamour is about the yearnings the hotel conjures in its audience, the escape and transformation a visit promises to provide. No one understood that better than Architect Morris Lapidus best known for designing the Fountainebleu in Miami Beach. He wrote: “I was convinced that just as a store had to be designed to make people want to buy what the merchant had to sell, so a hotel had something to sell also. What was that something? A home away from home? Absolutely not! Who wants a homey feeling on a vacation? The guests want to find a new experience. People wanted fun, excitement, and all of it against a background that was colourful, unexpected; in short, the visual excitement that made people want to buy-in this case, to buy the tropic luxury of a wonderful vacation of fun in the sun. A sense of freedom from the humdrum lives the guests had: A feeling of getting away from it all.”
“Getting away from it all” is the key word…but do our guests get to do just that nowadays, when they stay at most hotels? Put your feet in the shoes of a customer, think of the everyday adjustments they’ve already made: Online education courses eliminate the need for instructors, Microsoft Office eliminates the need for secretaries, ATM machines eliminate the need for bank tellers, Online purchasing eliminates the need for shop assistants, ‘Bag’ your own items purchased at the supermarket eliminates helpers.
Seriously have you paused and considered how things have changed in the hospitality industry? Look around! Earlier, there used to be dozens of staff hovering around to render assistance. In contrast to the past, our guests now find it really hard to find someone. The availability of service has been grossly economised and the term ‘user-friendly’ has been floated as a replacement for service. So, we have introduced self-check-in kiosks at hotels to eliminate the need for hotel receptionists, Apps that enable guests pay their hotel bill at check out eliminating the need for hotel cashiers, buffets that invite diners to help themselves eliminate waiters… a few of the ‘do-it-yourself’ tasks that have crept in to our everyday lifestyle.
If our guest really wants to be served – then he or she must be prepared to join the queue….at the front Desk or Reception to check in…at the restaurant for a table…..at the cashiers to check out…..at the concierge to collect his/her left luggage…virtually everywhere . Come to think of it, when a guest stays at a hotel, there is less service provided by the staff and more service provided by the guest. This is evident in everything from making one's own reservation, checking in, market research disguised as a registration card, unpacking, making a telephone call, collecting ice from the machine on the corridor, programming one’s wakeup call, help yourself breakfasts, hanging wet towels to be re-used, filling in a comment card to tell an invisible hotel manager how he or she is running it.
Yes, the industry must adapt to technology in a meaningful manner whilst balancing the ‘do-it-yourself ‘trend. The new guest of today’s fast paced world is time conscious and is willing to perform some tasks to save on time. For example they are willing to prepare their own morning tea or coffee in the room rather than depend on a slow paced room service. Guests want immediacy and do not tolerate delays. A DIY (do-it-yourself) guest at a budget hotel will not hesitate to carry his/her bag to the room; however, it is a different story when the guest has arrived at a star class hotel and is willing to pay a premium price.
Are we preparing our guests for a life of no service, except self service? The only ray of hope for guests is that, unlike prices of almost everything else going up…the percentage of service charge mandated on the guest bill may never go up. After all, would any of our guests be happy to pay more for less?
Ilzaf Keefahs
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