I haven't stumbled upon anything new by bringing up the notion of hotels offering in-house cooking classes, courses or an entire culinary teaching school. It's a well-established facet of our industry, but one that is mostly in the realm of esteemed five-star jaunts or bucolic inns with Michelin-rated restaurants. So, what I ponder is why more hotels don't engage in this practice. Is it exclusive to luxury providers, or is it something that any hotel could get up and running, even at the one-off, ad hoc level? Yes or no, make up your mind once we've reviewed five key advantages of this practice.

1. One more point of differentiation. These days, consumers do a substantial amount of research prior to booking a room. Your location is static and your prices are tightly controlled, so the two other arenas to compete in are guest services and onsite features. Whether prospective guests find out that you offer cooking courses through a third-party listing or by viewing your own brand.com, it's all about potential. They might use the state-of-the-art fitness facilities, they might use the spa or they might partake in a cooking class, but it's always good to know that the options are available. As well, on the group side of business, having a cooking demonstration or participatory option can become a real sales tool.
2. Builds an emotional connection with patrons. The more often a guest or diner interacts with your brand, the more likely they are to remember it. Additionally, cooking classes are indeed fun, educational and not too long, meaning that they can be enjoyed on a whim if a guest or couple is bored. It's one more item on the agenda to round out the hotel narrative for past guests to talk about with their friends and family.
3. A chance for menu input. Suppose instead of having one of your chefs use an everyday dish as their teaching tool, he or she shepherded the assembled class through the preparation of one of the culinary creations on the current restaurant menu. Not only is this great advertising for the showcased dish, but it affords the chef an opportunity to hear some firsthand feedback on how the food tastes and its presentation. This is assuming that the chef is open to receiving feedback. Every chef should be open to this, as cooking classes are not only a good way to extract input but also to improve his or her standing with the public.
4. Lever a sense of community. Nowadays, a hotel should act as much a place of business as a community center. We do this by hosting events for locals and serving up delicious food at our restaurants, to mention two. In-house cooking classes wouldn't be just for resident travelers, but also for your local compatriots to help cement the endearing bond you have with them. If anything, reinforcing these neighborly connections is great for website SEO.
5. Improves reputation of your restaurant and by extension the hotel. Building on all the previous points, cooking classes can add some major esteem to your restaurant by allowing patrons to see it in a different light while also giving them a chance to express themselves when it comes to constructive criticism. You must also keep in mind that many guests do not separate the restaurant from the property- it's all part of the overall hospitality experience. Hence, any efforts you put towards improving the dining experience will in turn reflect kindly on the hotel.

With those five reasons, it all may seem too good an opportunity to pass up. But I have to acknowledge that there are some serious impediments to implementing such a program. Free space for one - your kitchen might not be suitable nor is will there be enough forecasted revenues after renovations. Then throw in chef availability, startup costs, promotions and it isn't so cut and dry.

Even with these drawbacks, many hotels are already primed to accommodate these types of programs. As a conciliation prize, consider hosting an afternoon reception tasting, which can now take many forms such as the alcoholic varieties (wine and cheese, beer and cheese, whiskey) or I've even seen olive oil tastings and heirloom tomato tastings.

By

Larry Mogelonsky

This really appealed to me. A blog by Greg Savage:

I have employed thousands of people over the years. And every time one resigned, a little part of me died. (Okay, I lie. I have actually danced a celebratory jig around my desk on the odd occasion, but that's another post!)

Mostly, my natural reaction has always been a human one I suppose. "What possible reason would they have to do that?" or, "What's wrong with them?" or even, "She must be leaving for money. The fool!"

But I grew wiser as the years rolled by.

Mostly, people don't change jobs solely for money. They almost never resign on a whim or in a fit of anger. They joined your company because they believed it right for them, and they actually want it to be right. Something, at some point, makes it wrong. And if you really take the time to dig into their real reasons for leaving -- and you should -- you will find that it's not "the company" they blame. It's not the location, or the team, or the database or the air-conditioning.

It's the leadership!

Sure, they may not use that word. Indeed, they may not mention management at all.

But when they talk about "morale," when they say, "communication is poor," when they express frustration at the lack of clarity for their career progression -- they are telling you that it's the leaders they are leaving. For it's obvious, isn't it? Leaders are responsible for morale, communication and career path.

So, for maybe 15 years I have been irritating the senior managers who report to me by stopping them mid-sentence when they start venting at the stupidity, lack of gratitude and disloyalty of the departing employee.

Looking into a mirror can be a shocking experience. Especially if you have not done it for a while.

A "company" is just a legal entity. A "business" is a collection of desks and computers. No one resigns because of that.

It's the decisions, the motivation, the atmosphere, the ethos, the support, the training, the vision, and the direction set by the leadership that they will follow.

Or not.

So, next time you get a resignation, resist the temptation to laugh it off as "another dumbo who doesn't get us."

Take a moment to reflect on what it actually is they are resigning from.

It's not the departing employee who doesn't "get it." It's not the company they are leaving.

It's you.

This post first appeared on The Savage Truth

We are a society that puts a huge emphasis on rewards, and a school of psychology is based on it. In behavioral psychology, an American invention, there are two ways to stimulate a response from someone, either reward them or punish them. This two-way mechanism works with lower animals - dog and horse trainers, for example, use food treats to reinforce the behavior they want - so it should work with humans, or so the logic goes. If you want a certain behavior out of prisoners, for example, behaviorists advise giving privileges as a reward for obeying the rules and punishment for disobeying them.

The problem is that human behavior isn't that simple, because we have inner lives. A dog or horse will be content with a steady supply of food and a warm place to live. Those things are barely the minimum for meeting human needs. There is another duality besides reward-punishment that plays a huge part in the career arc of every successful person: encouragement-discouragement.

To be encouraged means literally to acquire courage, while to be discouraged is to give in to fear. Soldiers need courage to charge into battle, and without it, they won't. Every person conceals a level of fear and anxiety inside, however, and in order to meet life's challenges and crises, we all have to discover how much courage we have. This is a prime example of why reward-punishment is inadequate on its own. To face your fears isn't a pleasant experience that anyone would consider a reward - it's much closer to being a punishment. Yet in the long run, many accomplishments in life come our way only if we overcome fear and acquire courage.

These issues come up as early as grade school, where teachers traditionally offer rewards, in the form of gold stars, high grades, and personal praise. The drawbacks of this approach have been noticed in recent years, and they apply to adults as well.

The negatives of rewards as an incentive:

•     It divides people into winners and losers.
•     The losers are under-motivated.
•     Losers resent winners, leading to passive aggression and non-cooperation.
•     The winners can become pampered, egotistical, and selfish.
•     Bonds between people are frayed; no sense of "us" as a community.
•     External rewards do nothing for inner needs such as acceptance and belonging.
•     Competitiveness becomes exaggerated, leading to hostility and vicious rivalry.

The tough-minded may shrug off these drawbacks, and if you think that success is only about external rewards and winning, you may be tempted to as well. But reward-punishment is devoid of moral and ethical values, a huge lack when it comes to solving global challenges - witness the lack of international cooperation over climate change, as each rich country continues to gobble up rewards while poor countries aspire to do the same. The result is that all of the winners will wind up losing if our planet is suffocated.

The duality of encouragement-discouragement has its advantages, although they don't come to mind as easily as earning a reward in terms of money and promotion.

The advantages of encouragement as an incentive:

•     It develops a stronger sense of self.
•     People feel included and accepted.
•     The group moves forward for the benefit of everyone.
•     Fear of failure is reduced.
•     People feel that they are not alone in facing a crisis.
•     A stronger sense of self diminishes anxiety.
•     Resilience in the face of challenges is able to grow.
•     Group productivity is increased.

These are not "soft" qualities. The band of brothers mentality that develops among soldiers embraces everything on this list. From the outside, battle looks so horrifying that non-combatants don't realize how much it means for a soldier to acquire courage and bonding with fellow soldiers. But I am not promoting a battlefield outlook. Vast areas of human society, including all of Asia, emphasize the value of identifying with a group in order to reach a goal.

For decades Americans have considered our ways superior to everyone else's, but the landscape has changed. Anxiety over unemployment, the burden of personal debt, stagnating wages, and the widening gap between the very rich and everyone else, the loss of pension plans and medical benefits - these factors have increased people's anxieties. The only ray of hope with global problems like terrorism and climate change is to examine what it takes to find renewed courage. The old competitive-capitalist model can't do it, not for individuals or for an entire planet.

Deepak Chopra

A new survey by Skyscanner has revealed the various techniques adopted by Australian travellers in the bid to combat jetlag. 94% of those surveyed said they had taken a long haul flight in the last year and on average it took them 2.3 days to recover from jetlag.

51% said that stretching and exercising on the plane had helped them deal with jetlag at their destination. The second most effective technique was ensuring that they ate a light diet of healthy fresh food (34%), and third was setting their watch to the destination time and sleeping according to that time zone (26%).

Tony Gherardin, national medical adviser at the Travel Doctor – TMC (traveldoctor.com.au) said that eating well and staying hydrated – and avoiding alcohol – worked “reasonably well” to counter the effects of jetlag.

“In an ideal world, to prevent jetlag we should begin taking on the habits of destination time zone before we leave home. That is, eating at the same time and sleeping or resting at the same time as what you would be doing at that destination. Of course this isn’t always possible at home or even while flying.”

Only 16% of travellers had tried using sleeping tablets and found that it helped. Gherardin said “safe use of sleeping tablets or melatonin once you’ve reached your destination can also assist in getting your body in sync with the time zone.”

Personally, TM believes in the restorative power of a few glasses of wine, but that may not work for everyone!

Most               Which alleged ‘cures’ for               Yes, I        I believe it worked       
popular           jetlag have you ever tried?             tried it      as a cure for jetlag 
                             
                                 
1         Stretch/light exercise on
           flight                                                                78%         51%

2         Light and healthy diet                                      57%         34%

3         Set watch to new time
           zone                                                                48%         27%

4         Stay awake all flight                                        43%         16%

5         Exercise and fresh air on
           the day of travel                                               37%         22%

6         Drinking alcohol                                              37%         11%

7         Sleeping tablets                                              27%         17%

8         Avoiding alcohol                                              21%         10%

9         Taking herbal remedy                                       8%         4%

10         Taking melatonin                                             6%         3%

11         Taking anti-jetlag pills                                      6%         2%

12         Taking Viagra                                                  3%         1%

It seems that every time a survey hits the hotel news magazines, we are still in the same mess we were last year. In some segments there have been improvements, however most have just stagnated and seem to be content with the results. J.D. powers releases the numbers and it seems that out of a score based on 1,000 score the industry seem to settle for 76% return. It is not an acceptable number, we should be able to do better, a lot better. Now ask how the industry can do better.

Customer Service please sign in:

When hospitality managers, and or owners schedule training for their employees, they seem to concentrate only on those visible (front office, housekeeping) what about the rest of the departments? If you want to improve those scores you better provide customer service training to all departments, and yes that includes the managers as well. Managers are very visible, just because they are in a suit does not automatically make them expert customer service representatives. I have seen some managers that inter act poorly with customers, lack of training or just feel uncomfortable with confrontation. These people need to be trained to provide the best service to customers, for they are the ones providing the establishment with a nice profit every year.

Training, Training

Proper training will increase customer satisfaction, and will increase profits. I understand that training is an expense and it comes off the bottom line. Look at as a long term investment that will pay off at the end of the year. Compare your scores from last year to this year. If you are up in percentage satisfaction score then you have gained more customers as well as repeat customers, now that equals profit. If your scores are less, then training is required, and make sure it is the right kind. Either in house or hire a training company. Training is ongoing, not just once and forget it. Have you sales person train guest relations on how to up sale.   Have your managers be visible during high check in times. If managers are visible, employees will also be very visible, and will quickly catch on the idea that customer service is a high priority.

ADR, REVPAR GOPAR

These acronyms are based on customer satisfaction, so if you want these abbreviation to sing at the register, take care of your customers. All of us in the industry work to make a profit, and in some cases it not the easiest thing to do, especially when the Government decides to shut down. This hurt many hospitality owners that are near national parks and government entities. They will suffer a setback in their projected budgets. That income cannot be made up, without charging adsorbent rates. And that is very unlikely. No one budgeted for a government shutdown, and it cost the industry dearly (note: be careful who you vote for next time) Just remember that proper training is the key to success with customers. Customers have a great deal of information at their disposal so make sure that your site has the greatest satisfaction ratio. The industry will never achieve 100%, but it is a nice goal to try for.

By Alan Campbell

After a record number of 47 entrants into the 2013 Air New Zealand Cook Islands Tourism Awards this year, the confidential New Zealand based awards assessors have completed their evaluations and 21 hopeful businesses have been named as finalists.

While the Cook Islands Tourism Awards committee themselves are not aware of every entrant they are happy that the confidential New Zealand based awards assessors have advised not only an increase in the number of entrants but moreover an increase in the quality of the applications received.

The winners will not be known until the evening when members of Air New Zealand’s top management deliver sealed envelopes that will be opened at a themed gala evening and announced to an eager crowd.

The Gala Evening will take place from 6pm on November 15 in Ngatipa at the New Zealand High Commission residence.

Tickets to the four course dinner and gala event cost $100 and are available for purchase from today through the Cook Islands Tourism Industry Council treasurer Jan Mellor via email on [email protected] or by calling her on 22166.

The Air New Zealand Tourism Awards finalists are: Budget Accommodation – Puaikura Reef Lodges and Club Raro, Hotels and Resorts – Manuia Beach Resort, Muri Beach Resort, Pacific Resort Group and Sunset Resort, Private Rentals – B’s Beach House-Muri, Raro Beach Batch and Taakoka Muri Beach Villas, Self Catering – Makayla Palms, Sea Change Villas and Te Manava Luxury Villas, Festival and Events – The Edgewater Resort & Spa Events, Vaka Eiva and Wedded Bliss Rarotonga, Tourist Attractions – Captain Tamas Lagoon Cruises, Highland Paradise Cultural Centre and Marlin Queen Fishing Charters, Tourism Industry Support – Island Car and Bike Hire, Maire Nui Gardens and Caf and The Mooring Fish Cafe.

Former Air New Zealand CEO Rob Fyfe talks about ways to foster a customer-centric culture - from answering the most difficult customer complaints, to working the night shift to get first-hand account of what is happening in the organisation.

In his nearly seven years as CEO of Air New Zealand, Rob Fyfe made sure he answered each email personally, even the most difficult customer complaints.

Some of the emails were "colourful", says Fyfe, but he remembers one particular comment from a customer who complained about how his flights were always delayed.

“You service is lower than a snake’s scrotum,” the customer wrote.

Fyfe says he may not be that familiar with snakes’ anatomy, but the sentiments of the email were still clear. He apologised to the sender and explained the delay was due to a system that was critical to flight safety and the pilot certainly did make the right decision in this instance. He also stated that the airline has the best on-time performance in the region, with close to 90 percent of flights taking off within 15 minutes of the scheduled departure time.

The sender offered him two bottles of his best French Bordeaux for a wager that his next two flights will be delayed. Fyfe matched it with six bottles of the wine the airline serves in business class.

Fyfe won the wager, and when the sender asked him how enjoyed the wine, the CEO said he would like to share it with all of those responsible for ensuring the planes left on time but it would be like “having communion”.

Instead he offered to auction it off for Koru Care, a charity that organises trips for seriously ill and disabled children. In response, the customer sent more bottles of Grange to be auctioned off for the charity.

Don’t shy away from a complaint; engage with the complainant, figure out what the problem is and how you can restore their confidence.
Rob Fyfe

The lesson from this?

“Don’t shy away from a complaint; engage with the complainant, figure out what the problem is and how you can restore their confidence,” says Fyfe, who related this incident at the recent CIO Leaders’ Luncheon in Auckland, sponsored by Fronde.

Fyfe says he included this experience in his weekly email to Air New Zealand's 11,000 staff.

He says he shared such stories with the airline employees because he wanted these to become a reference point and a guide for what people did throughout the organisation.

At the CIO luncheon, Fyfe also talks about the value of getting first-hand account on what is happening in various business units.

Once a month, Fyfe would ask an employee to come and spend the day with him to see what his job was about. “Those experiences allowed people to see the trade-offs we have to make, the toughest of decisions,” says Fyfe. He says they always chose people who they were confident will go back and share that experience with their colleagues.

Fyfe also worked in different areas of the business, including being a flight attendant and a baggage handler. He once worked the night shift at the Nelson hangar, donning overalls and helping to change brakes and tires. “Within an hour, they were interacting with you like you were one of them," says Fyfe. "You’re no longer CEO, and you build long-term relationships.”

“I could pick up the phone to anywhere in the organisation and talk to these people that I'd worked alongside for a day,” he says. He would ask them about how the people felt about an issue or “what the vibe is” in that part of the organisation.

“You get really genuine unfiltered feedback… that was incredibly valuable."

Focus on people

“My leadership philosophy over the last three decades has been an unwavering belief that business success is essentially all about people,” says Fyfe, who was CEO at the airline from 2005 to 2012, and had also been its CIO. He is executive chairman at Icebreaker and is on the board of Antarctica New Zealand.

“In my experience a highly motivated community of people working cohesively towards a common goal with a shared sense of purpose... will almost always outperform an opposition focused primarily on the bottom line, on financial ratios, and technical superiority,” he says.

“We were never going to be able to create a competitive advantage through purely managing the financial metrics. We just didn't have the scale, and the airline business is a scale business.

“By trying to understand better who our customers were and how we could offer a better and more compelling service to our customers [we could] actually win by attracting more customers to fly on an airline and ensure we had fuller aircraft rather than trying to win through having a lower cost base, or some other miraculous way [of increasing] our revenue.”

Following a survey of some 1000 customers, the airline distilled characteristics of New Zealand that they would like to bring on board. “If we can bring that personality to life inside Air New Zealand, then we can start to make the airline an added value rather than a barrier that you have to pass through before you get to start enjoying your holiday.” The airline sought to bring that "personality" through everything in the business, from the IT team, to what goes on board with the aircraft, engineering and baggage handlers.

While the concept might not sound like a big breakthrough, he says, the airline industry was traditionally about planes, not people.

“Everyone spends their time figuring out which planes to fly, where to fly the planes, how much to charge for a seat. The heroes in the airline industry are the people that deal with the planes – the pilots, the engineers, [they hold] the ‘sexy jobs’."

So it is actually turning the business around when Air New Zealand says the airline “is about people, not planes”.

his makes the airline heroes “different”, he says, and they now include the flight attendants and staff at the check-in counter.

“The people who interface with the customers are the ones that are going to have the biggest impact to our customers,” he says. “These people need to be supported throughout the organisation.”

“When the door of an aircraft closes and the flight takes off, it is a bit like the rugby team running onto the field.

“What happens to your team in the field is up to the team or players and how they draw from what you have instilled in them. They are not going to give me a call and ask how to deal with any of those situations.”

Taking a stand

He recalls another “colourful” email that contained a lot of unsavoury words that required being abbreviated into ‘effing’ when he read it.

Fyfe responded to the sender, saying “it embarrasses me that someone purporting to be a fellow New Zealander would engage with anyone in such a fashion.”

He says after the series of exchanges, where he also explained the airline’s side on the issues raised, the passenger became a “surprisingly loyal customer” and sent him regular feedback on how great his experiences were on Air New Zealand.

The adage in the service industry is that the customer is always right, says Fyfe. But "when you engage with people on this notion of 'welcoming everyone as a friend', to some degree it cuts both ways”.

“If people are going to be either physically or verbally or emotionally abusive of our staff, they need to know that in our culture and our organisation, that's not acceptable. And I've got tremendous feedback from employees for the fact that we were prepared to take a stand,” says Fyfe.

Two or three times a year, he says, “we’d divorce one of our customers, but you don’t want to do it too often”.

This is interesting in the context that a Mystery Guest programme would help make this easier.

You have hired a few new employees; whether they were a waiter, bartender, front desk agent, cook, etc., so what is next?  You put them through your usual training program and now they are "on the floor" working on their own.  A few weeks go by and your new recruit has been doing a decent job and you know that their speed & efficiency will only get better.  You think "great, that position is filled and I can now move on to the next challenge".

But how do you monitor this new employee over time?  Frankly, how do you monitor ANY of your employees over time?  What process do you use to evaluate your staff, and not just the newly hired ones?

There is no way to consistently have superior customer service without every employee performing to their fullest.  But how do we know if any of our employees are truly performing at that level?

There are two basic ways to evaluate and monitor any staff within any department and it is a shame that most managers wait until something goes wrong to focus on either of them.

Process #1: 30-60 Day Evaluation Program

You should have a systematic program in place that allows you to gauge how well a new employee is doing at their job

Does the employee arrive to work on time?

Does the employee take pride in their appearance and follow all dress codes?

Does the employee ask questions designed to allow them to improve on their existing skills?

Does the employee show initiative and seem eager to learn?

Does the employee "fit in" with the existing staff?

Has the employee learned your departmental standards?

Does the employee keep an orderly work station, is he/she organized?

Process #2: Watch Your Staff

Regardless of our position, as a manager we still have plenty of our own paperwork to do.  There are schedules to complete, budgets to follow & forecasts to adjust, payroll to process, etc.  This list can go on forever.  But when was the last time you went "on the floor" yourself and did nothing more than watch your staff performing their job?  What could learn from this?  Example:

When was the last time a reservation manager pretended to be a customer and called up to make a reservation for dinner or a hotel room?  What could you learn about your reservation agent?

As a restaurant manager, have you ever taken a seat in the rear of the restaurant and watched the waiters, bartenders or bussers interact with their guests?  Or stand in the lobby and see how the hostess greets the guests?  Would you get a different perspective of your employees from this vantage point?

When was the last time a hotel housekeeping manager entered the public restrooms on a busy Saturday night at 8pm when there was a large wedding and 5 other dinners going on at the same time as well as a full house in the restaurant?  Probably never but what would they see?  

Does the chef check the walk-in boxes each day/week to see how the food is stored and labeled?  Does he check on his kitchen during the early morning hours or nearer to closing time to see if the staff are functioning the same as they usually do during the lunch or dinner rush?  Would he see the cooks behind the line on their cell phones or doing anything they would not usually do when the chef is there?

As a manager, we must provide the tools needed for any employee to be successful at their job.  But initial training, uniforms and equipment is not enough.  We must constantly monitor our staff to see where their shortcomings may be so that we can address them and guide the employee toward the desired outcome.

Remember: As a manager we are judged by the actions and performance of our employees. Make them the best they can be and we too will reap the rewards of satisfied customers.

By feature writer Steve DiGioia

The owner of a resort in the Tongan island of Vava’u says the ongoing saga over a Chinese plane gifted to Tonga is hurting the tourism industry.

New Zealand’s foreign minister Murray McCully is continuing to withhold tourism funding to Tonga until it can prove the proper accreditation of the MA-60, despite the aircraft being used in 20 other countries.

He has also maintained a travel advisory, despite the United States Federal Aviation Administration saying Tonga complies with international standards.

Shane Walker, the owner of Tonga Beach Resort, and a board member of the Tonga Tourism Authority, says two operators in Vava’u have already closed and left the country.

He says the two most recognised aviation authorities have accredited the plane, and both sides need to resolve the matter urgently.

    “It’s going to have a tragic effect on Vava’u as a destination. It is a real shame for the community in particular because they don’t have a choice, that’s where they live and they’re reliant on tourism to make ends meet.”

Shane Walker.

News Content © Radio New Zealand International

Well well well - whats going on here?

Five of CP Group’s Mercure hotels in New Zealand are set to leave the Accor network on December 1, 2013.

The properties – Mercure Auckland Windsor, Mercure Rotorua, Mercure Wellington Willis Street, Mercure Picton Marlborough Sounds and Mercure Dunedin – are set to join the StayWell Hospitality Group in a boost to the increasingly popular operator.

Accor’s Vice President for New Zealand, Fiji and Japan, Garth Simmons, said the chain had worked with CP Group to “find the right solution for these small properties moving forward as the Mercure brand globally repositions with a new visual identity and focuses on a modernised guest experience”.

“Streamlining the network of Mercure hotels in New Zealand is essential to achieving overall consistency in line with the new global vision for the brand,” he said.

“The CP Group will remain the owners of the five properties which will be operated by StayWell Hospitality Group.

“We are pleased with the mutual outcome with CP Group which allows the staff in each of these hotels to remain in employment with the new operator and crucially, the continuity of service.

“Accor will do everything possible to ensure there is minimal disruption to employees and guests during the hotels transition to their new operator.

“Our relationship with CP Group remains steadfast and we look forward to working on new hotel projects including Sofitel Wellington and Sofitel So Auckland in addition to the continued management of seven other CP owned properties under Sofitel, Pullman, Mercure and Ibis Styles brands across New Zealand,” he said.

Reacting to the change in guest expectations in the midscale hotel market, plans are underway for Accor’s Mercure Auckland, Mercure Wellington and Mercure Queenstown properties to undergo an extensive refurbishment program.

As a midscale hotel leader with more than 700 hotels worldwide, the Mercure brand will re-launch in New Zealand following the completing of these hotel refurbishments in 2014.

A damning report issued by respected market research group Forrester has concluded that “Facebook is failing marketers.”

In an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, Forrester vice president and principal analyst Nate Elliott says that ”while lots of marketers spend lots of money on Facebook today, relatively few find success.”

The executives we surveyed said Facebook’s display ads were significantly less effective than the display ads they buy elsewhere online. They also reported that Facebook ads were less valuable than any other marketing tactic they could use on your site.

Elliott claims that Facebook focuses too little on driving engagement between companies and their customers and has not done much to improve its branded page format or upgrade the tools that marketers use to manage and measure those pages. He also says that less than 15 percent of display ads make use of Facebook’s social data to target relevant audiences, and the static-image ad units offer marketers less impact per impression compared with the ad units other sites offer.

Forrester report is vague with a small sample

However, given Facebook’s wide reach, it is strange that the Forrester report draws its conclusions from only 395 marketers and eBusiness executives across the US, Canada and the UK. The research firm claims that these are “large companies” but which exact companies these are is a mystery.

Surveying a few hundred marketers from unnamed companies to conclude that Facebook marketing is literally worthless seems a tad too premature.

Furthermore, the final score that Facebook got rated by marketers was 3.54 out of 5 marks — a mere difference of 0.3 points from the top-rated on-site ratings and reviews — which could easily boil down to a methodical research error.

The fact that Forrester deems Facebook as a failure — when the mark it scored isn’t that bad ultimately and is a passing mark — is baffling. It’s fair and all to pin down areas where Facebook marketing is less effective and suggest improvements; but to deem it a failure seems to be a harsh accusation.

For some clue to Forrester’s thinking, it says in a preface to its report:

Facebook hasn’t revolutionized marketing; in fact, it now does little to support social experiences between brands and customers. Instead, it has quietly become almost entirely reliant upon Web 1.0-style display ads and simplistic targeting — and marketers say those display ads just aren’t working.

Facebook marketing is made up of many parts

Yet the truth is that Facebook marketing is made up of many components, and it works differently for many companies. It’s not just about ads — though within ads there are already many options — but also about running and managing pages, organizing contests, and even building apps.

Shalu Wasu, the managing director of Singapore-based Circus Social, a partner company of Ogilvy & Mather which creates social software for marketers, says that Facebook is still a new option for many marketers, and they are still getting used to certain options such as its targeting functionality.

“Currently not many are using it. As more and more marketers use that feature the results will get better. (For example,) Facebook’s Power Editor is a great in-built tool which not a lot of marketers are using,” he tells TNW.

He also notes that Facebook has been introducing several new types of ads over the last few years, and it is up to marketers to experiment with them and make use of these new tools. Indeed, Facebook hasn’t been resting on its laurels — even if it may not execute its plans perfectly, it has been trying to listen to marketers.

In June, Facebook announced a new initiative to greatly simplify its advertising products, which would result in half of its ad units being shuttered by the end of this year. The core of the plan stemmed from feedback Facebook received from marketers, which helped the company realize that its ad products were too complicated and redundant.

Last month, Facebook announced it was tweaking its News Feed algorithm in the coming weeks to show fewer annoying and irrelevant ads, benefiting marketers as their ads would be shown to the people who “might want to see them the most.” Earlier this month, Facebook redesigned its ad buying and reporting tools to be objective-based and gave marketers the option to select the placement of their ads.

Marketing on Facebook can be effective

Facebook issued a comment to Business Insider, saying:

While we agree that the promise of social media is still in process, the conclusions in this report are at times illogical and at others irresponsible. The reality is that Facebook advertising works. That’s why we have more than a million active advertisers including all of the Ad Age 100. And, countless studies have demonstrated the significant return on investment marketers see from Facebook. Our promise is to continue to deliver positive results for marketers.

At the root of this case against Facebook is a figure that is highly important — there are a whopping 1.15 billion users on the social networking company, a huge potential audience to target.

In a Wall Street Journal report on mobile ad marketing earlier this month, American F&B conglomerate Mondelez said a mobile ad campaign on Facebook for its Nilla Wafers cookies during the summer boosted sales by 13 percent in July. Now that’s a “large company” that apparently Facebook hasn’t been a failure for.

Wasu says he has personally managed and overseen dozens of Facebook campaigns and in general found them to be more effective than other online media.

Of course there are campaigns that are more successful than others – it all comes down to the theme of the campaign, what’s being sold, what the target audience is, how sharply the target audience for the marketing has been defined and eventually – how good the final product is that you’re marketing in the first place.

Failure on Facebook’s part?

Wasu also noted that when attributing blame for the reported failure of Facebook marketing, he would think about the situation a little differently and suggest ”the fault lies, not with Facebook but with the untrained media agencies — who still find it easy to stick to just banner buys on Facebook when so much more is possible.”

Indeed, Facebook has opened up low-cost advertising to a lot of marketers used to competing with only a few players that had the money to advertise on TV or on traditional print media. Nowadays, large companies find themselves competing for the same eyeballs as startups — and this may be a boon to the smaller companies but a challenge to bigger firms.

In June, Facebook reached one million active advertisers driven by growing adoption from small businesses and bigger global brands alike.

Is Facebook marketing really that much of a failure? Or is it because marketers are not using Facebook tools as efficiently as they could be? This is a topic that really deserves a thorough report in itself, and not a survey of less than 400 marketers to determine that Facebook hasn’t been effective at all, with the fault pinned on Facebook itself.

By Barbel Pfeiffer

Do You Seriously Think Your Hotel Website Stands out?

For decades now, hotel marketing online and off follows the same pattern and approach: To attract prospective hotel guests, it presents glamorous images of accommodations and locations, supported by more or less creative content, clever pricing and occasionally a really unique service offer. "A picture is worth a thousand words" is indeed a strategy that works but, does one uniform concept significantly make you stand out from your competition, and…

Should Interior Design Really Be the Main Selling Point of Your Hotel?

Much research has gone into the role of emotions in the decision making process. While we all like to believe that our decisions are purely based on rational analysis, psychology teaches us otherwise. Neuroscience research has shown that emotions are indeed an intrinsic part of the decision making process. Marketing uses the influential role of emotions in consumer behavior and has long established the "golden rule" of "stress benefits, not features."

People purchase a product or a service firstly because of its benefits. Features only play a secondary role. Your housekeeper doesn't choose the new turbo vacuum cleaner because of its impressive new technology, but because it will help to keep the rooms cleaner, do the work better and faster, and ultimately keep his or her guests happier.

Hotels have mastered the art of advertising features, but what about the benefits? A few superlatives below a grand image might make for a great first impression. But do they also create an emotional connection?

The essence of "the product hotel" is hospitality and service.

When you think of a great host, certain characteristics come to mind. Caring, warm, personable, a relaxing enjoyable ambience, generosity and easiness, and the knowledge that you'll be very well looked after - in a nutshell, you'll feel a thrill of anticipation just thinking about going there. How do you trigger this feeling that tells prospective guests your hotel could indeed be a great place to go to?

Furthermore, recent market research suggests that hotel guests are not satisfied anymore with simply a nice ambience and good food, but that they are looking for an experience. How does your marketing address these expectations? How do you truly convey the unique ambience and atmosphere of your hotel, the warm hospitality and the promise of a great experience?

Everybody loves to read a good story

We are now living in an information-rich world, where everyone knows everything about your brand, your hotel, and the company behind it. With information flooding us every minute of the day, the stimulus level necessary to get things noticed and to create a lasting impression has to be set higher and higher.

There is one thing though that holds us back from just skimming and moving on to the next topic, that makes us stop in our tracks and pay attention: A good story.

Why? Because stories are a fundamental part of how we successfully connect as human beings. With the right story, you are able to capture attention, to engage and entertain, to raise curiosity and to persuade. Even better, if it's a good story, it's memorable and we want to share it with others. That's why for example Trip Advisor is that successful. Yes, people visit the site to determine whether a particular hotel is for them, but they also search for interesting stories and comments about the hotel. Trip Advisor would probably be much less popular if it was just publishing guest ratings without the "stories"…

A good story about people and services is also what brings a hotel to life.

What's a good story?

This is where your creativity comes into play. Weave a story around the creation of your signature dish, and the person who came up with it; talk about your busboy who is training for the Olympics, or simply let the huge old tree outside the entrance tell tales about the people it has seen coming and going. Maybe your hotel is the place where a great business deal was once made, or where a star was "born". You could share anecdotes or humorous experiences  - there are literally no limits as to what you can talk about, as long as it is engaging and compelling. These "stories" have another invaluable effect - a good story will trigger the reader's imagination. Just as happens with a good book, it will inspire readers to add their personal and unique thoughts and ideas, and take on a life of its own. The story then becomes more powerful. This presents you with a terrific opportunity. Storytelling not only helps raise curiosity and anticipation in prospective guests, but it helps build a connection with your hotel long before your guest has set foot in it.

And it will make you stand out from your competition.

This from Bärbel Pfeiffer she is a former hotel manager, turned consultant/marketer who helps hotels create content that makes them stand out.

21 October, 2013: 

Results from this year’s Air New Zealand Cook Island Tourism Awards have proven that events such as the tourism awards can help improve business performance and drive innovation. The Awards, held every two years since being introduced in 2009, have helped raise the bar in the overall performance of the Cook Islands tourism sector.   These  improvements show through in the entries submitted, in sections such as; marketing, operations and processes, culture and heritage, environment and sustainability and human resources & people management.

Ross McLauchlan, of Oceania Tourism Group, the company appointed to manage and assess entries, says the quality of entries in this year’s awards was far above those from the two previous Awards. “The Awards were put in place to get businesses who rely on tourism, to look at their operation, and find holes in what they were doing from a business perspective. Its been really encouraging to see those who have over the last four years used the Awards business analysis process to improve business performance, especially when it has been a very good year for visitor numbers.

The theme of this year’s awards was Customer Care. The finalists will be named this week and the winners awarded at a special dinner in Rarotonga on 15 November. 

http://www.theage.com.au/travel/everyone-asks-what-can-you-take-from-a-hotel-room-20131016-2vmn6.html

This is from Peter Hook ex Accor PR Manager who got caught fudging Tripadvisor reports!

Is this for real? We need some way of getting 100% verified reviews for it to be 100% believable!

Dennis Schaal, Skift
Oct 17, 2013 9:20 am

On the surface — at least to an outsider — TripAdvisor CEO Stephen Kaufer is a mild-mannered guy. The online travel review brand’s leader is methodical, carefully contemplating each question before providing an answer, and he never raises the decibel level. In public at least.

But when it comes to matters of fake reviews and the reliability of the tens of millions of reviews on his site, there is no quit in Kaufer. He’s convinced that his most-important constituency — travelers — is satisfied with the perspective they get on TripAdvisor.

As Kaufer puts it, “The system works.”

Skift sat down with Kaufer at TripAdvisor’s Newton, Massachusetts, headquarters earlier this week, and discussed fake reviews, TripAdvisor’s acquisition strategy, the advantages it sees over competitors in hotel metasearch, and the company’s roadmap for the future.

A few interesting takeaways from the Skift Q&A below:

    It is full-steam ahead for TripAdvisor’s user-generated content. Don’t expect TripAdvisor to become a hybrid of verified and unverified reviews.
    TripAdvisor commends Yelp for cracking down on fake reviews, but believes it has an advantage over Yelp in blocking fake reviews because TripAdvisor is a travel company.
    You can expect TripAdvisor to continue with its strategy of buying small startups, as it announced with Oyster this week. Everything, including large acquisitions, is on the table.
    TripAdvisor believes it has a significant advantage over other hotel metasearch players such as Kayak and Trivago because of TripAdvisor’s hotel reviews, user photos, hotel room tips, and forums.
    Consolidating TripAdvisor’s myraid apps is on the agenda.

 

Skift: Let’s talk about fake reviews. Yelp admitted that 25% of its reviews never get published because they are fake. And there has been a New York State investigation about fake reviews. Do you find with TripAdvisor that a large percentage are knocked out before they are even published because of your efforts?

Kaufer: We are always improving our algorithms to automatically catch suspicious behavior and launch our investigations. For the record I applaud Yelp’s efforts to root out, and name and shame, the folks who are trying to post the fake reviews, and sue them in various cases.

Skift: Yelp has sued them?

Kaufer: Yes, Yelp has sued a couple of companies, including a law firm. I tip my hat, Amen. Yelp is telling the world that authenticity is important. We have been on that same mantra since day one. We have arguably more ability to catch folks that are trying to defraud our system than Yelp simply because we are in the travel vertical as opposed to local.

Skift: Why would that give TripAdvisor more of an ability to spot take reviews?

Kaufer: It is a little easier to detect patterns and understand behavior because people live in a single town and use Yelp in a single town most of the time. Whereas people travel and they don’t always go back to the exact same place.

Our sort of “carrot and stick” approach says if we catch you trying to fraud our system, the penalties are meaningful. On the flip side you can use our Review Express tool and ask your guests to come write reviews on TripAdvisor. You can upload your [customers'] email addresses and we’ll send a note out and you’ll get more reviews.

When we ask our travelers — and we ask all the time — is that restaurant, hotel or attraction living up to its billing on TripAdvisor, the answer is yes. The system works. And so while everyone continues to wonder and ask about it [fake reviews], it is everyone except our travelers who use the site, rely upon it, and swear it never steers them wrong.

Skift: How do you ask the travelers whether the reviews are living up to their billing?

Kaufer: It is surveys, it is focus groups, anecdotal evidence, friends. It is a variety of different methods over time. There have been some external studies saying, hey, where do people find the information most helpful. Do you trust the review sites and they list the order in which they trust them, and TripAdvisor is alway top.

Skift: So all the noise is coming from everyone but your core group of users?

Kaufer: I think it is very reasonable for an Internet-savvy consumer to be skeptical of what they read, be it on Amazon, eBay, on TripAdvisor or be it on CNN. I think all travelers need to do is try TripAdvisor to find out that the wisdom of the crowds really works better than anything else out there. With our traffic stats: That’s what’s happened. They’ve tried it. It’s worked so they come back, and that’s how we keep posting such amazing traffic numbers.
More About TripAdvisor:

    TripAdvisor’s New Program Launch Will Bring In Small Hotels Like Never Before
    TripAdvisor Launches a Redesign of the World’s Most Popular Travel Review Site
    Does Expedia Have TripAdvisor Spinoff Remorse?
    5 Big Travel Brands and Their Current Moment of Identity Crisis

Skift: You bought Oyster with its professional reviews, and you recently started integrating verified reviews from American Express cardholders. Do you see down the road TripAdvisor becoming more of a hybrid of verified and unverified reviews?

Kaufer: You are barking up the wrong tree. We went after Oyster for the photos. The  photos are multilingual, they are unbiased. They tell it like it is. You get to see it in the photo. The Amex partnership is not about verified reviews for us at all. It is about affinity with the American Express customer. And that customer who, like a Facebook-connected person who wants to see where their friends are, the Amex customer wants to identify with other Amex cardholders. So those reviews labeled as American Express help deliver that.

Skift: We have written about your strategy of acquiring small startups and you guys have talked a lot about it this year. Do you see any change in strategy down the road?

Kaufer: I’d say we look back and we are very proud in our track record of buying companies that range from a pure asset purchase — just a website, no people — all the way to our more typical buying the whole the team, management, everyone included to continue to run the business. If history is any judge of future performance, we would expect that to continue because we’ve been pleased with the results. I’m not ruling out bigger. We have the financial strength to do something quite a bit bigger, but that is less in our DNA.

Skift: I noticed with your hotel metasearch that you are integrating a lot of B&Bs, and it says contact the hotel for availability. It seems to me like you are becoming much more comprehensive than even Booking.com. How do you view that?

Kaufer: It’s less an overall numbers game than do you have all the overall content, the reviews, the photos, and the pricing and availability for the properties that consumer want to stay at.  We are very broad and very deep in all of those, and we are very clear that want broad availability for every property that is open for business.

Skift: Are you working on a direct booking option in your metasearch as Kayak, Hipmunk, and Room77 have done, and so many others?

Kaufer: That is not something you see on the site now, is it?

Skift: No. There has been so much discussion about your hotel metasearch. How’s it been going, and what kinds of changes have you made to it in the last couple of months?

Kaufer: We have certainly changed around the display, the prices, there are some that include tax, not including tax, those sorts of things. And some of those do vary by country, by the way. I’d say it has been a little more fine-tuning on the display side and a fair amount of work on the supplier-facing side to help our clients. Most of the leads that we generate for our clients don’t come from that search results page. They come from the individual property page.

Our audience isn’t just looking for the best price, they are looking for the best property at a price that they can afford. They may see all these properties are available. They may skim the prices to get a sense, and then they may click into a specific property to look at the photos, to read the reviews. Then they say, yes this is the property they are interested in. Let me see who has it for sale at which point we might show 12 or 16 different offerings. The top three being highlighted, but then everyone is actually shown because we want to present it as a comprehensive choice.

Skift: Does that dynamic give you a huge advantage over other metasearch players? The fact that you have all of that content on those hotel pages?

Kaufer: We think we are a better resource for picking which hotel you want to stay at than any of the other meta players. They used to have a usability advantage when we had popups and they had meta. Now we believe that’s gone away so now I think you can look and say, well, with the millions of candid photos, the 100 million-plus reviews, the wisdom of friends and all that extra advice I’m getting, plus our forums, plus the restaurants, plus the attractions, plus the mobile app, and the room tips, and the list goes on. The other metasearch players have strong offerings. They are just not as complete for selecting a hotel, nor as complete for meaningful trip planning.

Skift: Expedia spun off TripAdvisor about a year before metaserach got hot, hot, hot. Do you expect to see a lot more consolidation in the travel metasearch landscape? There’s been a big investment in Skyscanner. And would Room77 or Hipmunk be attractive to anyone as the next puzzle piece?

Kaufer: I know the folks. Those are two good companies and two good products. It is a little unclear to me who the natural acquirers would be and with the big OTAs pairing up with metasearch engines, plus Travelocity doing their Expedia deal, you could envision, I guess, Orbitz buying a meta player, but it is not clear that they need to.

Skift: You haven’t really gone after restaurants in a big way. You have a lot of restaurant content, but it hasn’t been a strategic goal in the way that hotels is.

Kaufer: That is true. Usage pattern for restaurants on TripAdvisor varies by device and varies by geography. If you live in the U.S., you are probably less familiar with our restaurant offering than if you live in Europe, where it is incredibly popular. There isn’t quite the financial benefit to the company in restaurants versus hotels, but there is a huge value proposition to consumers in their local market, and especially when they are traveling if they don’t have the list of favorites that they want to go to.

Adopting a ‘lead by example’ approach to the role, which he took up in September, new CEO of Fiji Airways Stefan Pichler, outlined the three to five year plan for the airline, incorporating what he described as the four key strategic pillars – brand positioning, management structures, customer service and providing career opportunities within the airline – that will develop the consumer brand.

“What is the marketing proposition of the Fiji Airways brand? We don’t know yet,” he said, noting that it is important that the airline’s messages align with Tourism Fiji.

“We have to make sure this company is professionally run. We have to coach the locals to get there and bring some know-how in to professionalise every management function. Fiji Airways is the Fijian people, so we have to listen and consult with them.”

Pichler said the master plan, which he hoped would be ready to roll out by year end, would focus on the airline becoming more customer-centric, while ensuring profitability, as well as looking at ways in which jobs and career opportunities can be created for locals.

Before joining Fiji Airways, Pichler was CEO of Jazeera Airways where he led the company to achieving the highest profit margins in the industry in 2011 and 2012. He was also responsible for transforming Virgin Blue from a low cost carrier to a network airline and launching V-Australia long haul operations.

“It’s an exercise that won’t be done overnight”, he said of the plans for Fiji’s national airline. “Airlines is a complex business.”

NB Firstly he states that it is a three to five year plan and then says "which he hoped to roll out before the end of the year"

When it comes to creating a memorable guest experience, what has the ability to achieve a high level of customer loyalty conversion?

The Check-In

As we pulled into the resort property, we had a hard time finding the check-in area.  There wasn't any clearly defined signage for where to check-in to the resort. It had been a little while since my wife and I had visited this property, and they had expanded. Throughout our stay, I noticed a lot of guests experiencing the same frustration with this lack of signage as well. (You don't want to start out by annoying your guests with poor signage on where to check-in.)You would be amazed what proper signage with the right message and meaning behind it can do for enhancing the guest experience.

Moving on to the front desk check-in... While my wife and I were proceeding through the check-in process, we realized that no one from the front desk had acknowledged our 25th anniversary or even welcomed us back to the hotel. (That was a huge missed opportunity to make us feel welcome and establish an emotional bond with us, right from the get-go. This is a great opportunity for hotels to differentiate themselves from all the other hotels front desk check-in experiences.)

The front desk person was more focused on the internal operation and administrative side of the check-in process, rather than being focused on creating a personal connection with us, to make us feel welcomed to the resort, considering the fact that our room was not ready at that time.  We assumed this to be the case, since we arrived at the resort five hours before their check-in time allowed. My wife and I decided to arrive early to the resort to take advantage of the hotel's beach area as well as get a jumpstart on our vacation. The front desk staff did very little to introduce us to the resort property. Another missed opportunity. There was basically no game plan for any early arrivals to the resort on their part. We had to ask the front desk folks what was required if we wanted to go to the beach because they didn't extend any of the hotel offerings to us while we're waiting for our room. It seemed like when our room wasn't ready, their job ended, and the check-in process had come to an abrupt stop.

Don't make promises that you're not committed to keeping.

The front desk folks did say they would call us when the room was ready, and, that they would do their best to get our room ready as soon as possible, especially since we were on property so early in the day. They did not follow through on their word. Fast forwarding nearly five and half hours later from our check-in, we had to call them 20 minutes past their standard check-in time for our room availability, only to find out the room had been available for some time. The front desk person who we spoke to didn't realize we were even on property.

Customer experience design strategies for your check-in processes.

I think one of the biggest things you can do as a business is to have the ability to anticipate customers coming into your business. Hotels, the majority of the time have access to information about their customers before they come through their doors and have open lines of communication with them as well. This information can give hoteliers a tremendous advantage in how they can better anticipate their guest's needs as well as meet or understand their expectations. In our case, the reservationist knew that we were celebrating our 25th anniversary and that we had been to the resort previously. I even believe they asked what time we thought we would be arriving to their property.

There were some processes in place by the hotel to anticipate our arrival, which came in the way of pre-check-in list of anything we may need during our stay. We took advantage of this service and had them put in a DVD player in our room, so we could watch our favorite TV show. My wife is totally addicted to the show Dexter and was very excited to be able to watch the show while we were away. Unfortunately, the DVD player was not the right model for the type of TV in our room, and it ended up not working the first time around. This is what we call in the customer experience profession as an "unfulfilled expectation" and is one of the main reasons for customers getting upset with hotels, especially when you don't deliver on the expectations you created for your customers. They did replace the DVD player the next day. :-) Happy wife, happy life!

If a hotel is going to achieve any kind of presence of service excellence that has the ability to contribute to the businesses guest loyalty performance, it needs to understand the importance of integrity and how essential it is in creating trust with your customers. When a customer puts their trust in a business, it is to do something for them and not to them, and you back it up with your word. It's a good idea to have systems and service excellence standards in place that ensure that there is follow through on that intention. It's crucial for your people, processes and product to be in alignment with your business's integrity and core foundational principles. Hotels that establish experience management systems have a much lower incidence of having these type of situations negatively affect the guest stay.

The missing hospitality link for creating a strong guest connection.

When we did get into our room, it was absolutely beautiful, as was the entire hotel property with a lot of high quality touches throughout. However, there lacked a certain level of warmth and personal connection by the hotel organization and the employees. My wife and I were somewhat surprised that the hotel did not acknowledge our 25th anniversary, with some kind of in-room welcoming, such as a traditional fruit basket, chocolate covered strawberries, a letter from the GM, welcoming us to the resort and congratulating us , as well as thanking us for sharing it with them, with maybe some kind of champagne toast on behalf of the staff. This also would have been a good way to enroll us in going to one of their restaurants and having the restaurant pick up the ball from there.

Getting back to the early check-in process, I think there is a huge opportunity for hotels to get the guest experience off to a fun start, as well as increase revenue opportunities by creating a list of things to do while you're waiting for your room in an early arrival check-in phase stage of the hotel stay. There's a lot you can do here. Create a scavenger hunt experience for the kids, featuring key elements of the resort that you would want to introduce to the families, as well as familiarize them with the other products, services and amenities that your resort has to offer during their stay.

The same could hold true in a similar style concept appropriate for couples. You can combine different aspects of the resort into an early arrival experience that offers an early check-in discount on food and beverage outlets and maybe consider tying some other services to the experience, like a spa or poolside lunch experience and other hotel recreation aspects that align to your guest experience offerings.

This can also translate to all hotel segments. You could create strategic partnerships with other businesses that are in close proximity to you in an urban city setting, etc. See this as an opportunity to generate revenue growth and not as an annoyance that the guests are here early and getting in the way. You can promote this to your guest during the post reservation phase of the initial customer engagement period. The faster you acclimate your guest to your hotel, the better your revenue opportunities will be.

Firstly, this approach shows that you care and are anticipating their arrival in a proactive manner as well as being empathetic to the guest not having access to a room upon arrival. A key for creating great hospitality and service excellence comes through the presence of having empathy for others. This allows for more creative and innovative problem-solving to be available in the organizational perspective and will enhance a more proactive mindset in all areas of your business for improved processes and product development.

This is really all about being an intuitive hospitality enterprise that properly manages guest expectations. I really feel that this is a missing in the hotel business. There is a lot of doing, but I don't believe there's a lot of connecting with customers for creating an emotional bond with the business brand that encompasses the total customer experience. Businesses that create an emotional connection with their customers, flat out have better customer loyalty ratios and stronger financial results from those customer bonds.

Hotels have to be careful by not falling into the trap of making it about themselves

The level of employee engagement was very low throughout our stay in every area of the resort. The employees were told to inform the guests that there was new ownership and a new management company running the resort. This was something that the staff didn't feel comfortable doing. I could actually feel how uncomfortable they were, and we experienced this awkward situation constantly throughout our stay. It was quite funny because the staff would actually approach it by saying, "We are supposed to tell that we have... yada, yada, yada!" I just want to create a point of reference for my readers that this is a well-established and prestigious four-star, four diamond resort with premium luxury hotel rates, $$$$$.

The above practice would be considered a very internally focused business approach, whereby all the emphasis is on the company, and not on the guest -- just as was the reservation and check-in experiences that we had encountered. They were not ones that would be considered overly focused on the guest receiving a high level of service excellence. That has the ability to generate a emotional connection towards creating a positive and memorable experience.  This is equivalent of going on a date, and the person you are with, talks about themselves the whole time and then sticks you with the bill. What kind of the emotion or experience does that invoke in wanting to get together with them again? Safe to say a pretty negative one.

A customer experience design strategy approach for the situation may have been handled possibly this way. They could have created a personalized letter for each guest staying at the resort. Notifying them of the new ownership and management presence and asking their guest to join them in their excitement by creating a celebratory offering of some kind, in the way of a dining gift i.e. champagne toast or dessert etc. This approach adds to the guest experience. Their approach detracted from the guest experience in my opinion.

You really have to consider what emotions you want to invoke during the guest stay. I got the impression from this hotel that they were banking on their location, their brand's prestigious four star reputation, and their physical product and service offerings to win the day.  Somehow, the personality of the property was not really a priority to them, or creating any kind of emotional connection or rapport with the guest.

All those elements will not achieve a high level of guest loyalty conversion to your brand. It will, although, create initial customer engagement and usage, but not the sustainable customer loyalty performance ratios the hotel is expecting to generate, with regards to their ROI on the investments and daily operating expenses. Businesses that compete on the total customer experience of their business, rather than the above mentioned areas experience a much stronger loyalty conversion rate than the ones that don't.

You have to take a minute and ask yourself:  Am I designing, building and running my business just to achieve customer usage or win the hearts and minds of my customers for achieving sustainable guest loyalty results? If they had created some kind of personal acknowledgment of our visit to the resort, it would have been very impactful on our stay. It also would've helped in building forgiveness capital for some of the shortcomings and the lack of hospitality and service excellence that we experienced at times. A little bit of caring, empathy and acknowledgment by a business organization can go a long way in this area. I.e. well there heart was in the right place.

The point I'm trying to make here is that we didn't feel very good about ourselves from these experiences with the hotel.  It's all about creating great experiential value for your guest from beginning to end. Bottom line, you're selling memories in the hospitality business to your guest, not just a place to stay or to hold an event.

Thanks for reading. Be sure to read Part Three: The Hotel's Restaurant Experiences.

About the author

For over thirty years, Brett Patten has worked in the hospitality industry. He spent those years accumulating invaluable insight, knowledge and experience through his various positions, and studies, from when he starting out has a front line employee at the age of 15, with a four-star hotel in the 1980s', to recently completing his education as an executive leadership and engagement coach.

Making big money is often less important to employees than satisfying these basic needs.

Contrary to popular belief, employees value many things more than the amount of money they're being paid.  If they're treated right, employees will not only work for less, they'll be happier and more productive as they do so.

Based upon hundreds of conversations I've had about bosses and jobs, here's what employees really want:

1. To feel proud.

When asked what they do for a living, employees want to boast rather than apologize. They want the people they meet to be at least a little impressed, even if it's only because the employee has taken on a job that's generally thankless.

2. To be treated fairly.

While almost everyone realizes that life isn't fair, employees don't want the boss to make life more unfair than it already is.  Employees hate favoritism.  They expect the perks and promotions to go to the people who work hard, not the people who kiss butt.

3. To respect the boss.

Employees want respect from the boss, of course, but just as strong is the need to feel respect for the boss!  Employees want to believe in that their boss is a leader who is worthy of their loyalty.

4. To be heard out.

Employees hate it when the boss doesn't have the time or the interest to listen to what they have to say. Employees don't expect the boss to always take their advice, but if the boss won't hear them out they (rightly) assume the boss doesn't care about them.

5. To have a personal life.

For many bosses (especially entrepreneurs) work is a way of life.  Employees, however, usually think of friends and family as their "real" life.  Even when they're committed to their job, they get twitchy when work keeps them away too much.

6. To be coached not micromanaged.

Employees want the boss's help when 1) they ask for it, or 2) they're floundering so badly they're afraid to ask for it.  What employees don't want is to have the boss looking over their shoulder all the time.

7. To see the assh*les get fired.

In almost every workplace there are one or two jerks who make life miserable for everybody.  Almost more than anything else, employees want the boss to fire those jerks. If the boss doesn't, employees know he's either a weakling, a fool, or a jerk himself.

8. To feel less stress.

People hate the sense that they've got too much to do and not enough time to do it. Bosses must plan carefully, anticipate problems and set realistic goals, so that they don't accidentally and unnecessarily add stress to employees' lives.

9. To have a little security.

No sane employee expects lifetime employment.  Even so, it's hard to concentrate when you feel as if a sword is hanging over your head. Employees want to know that they're not wasting their time when they're giving your their best.

10. To beat the competition.

Finally, never underestimate the power of teamwork, especially when teamwork means grinding the other team into the dust.  Employees don't want to be team players; they want to play on the winning team.

Why isn't money on the list of desires? Well, as it happens, I've seldom heard anybody complain about their salary per se, except in the context of the above desires (i.e. "they don't pay me enough to put up with this.")

Satisfy the ten desires above and your employees will remain loyal and hardworking, even if you're paying them less (and maybe even far less) than they might earn elsewhere.

By Geoffrey James

The legions of hotel mystery shoppers around the world are just that: a mystery. And, they’d like to keep it that way, thank you.

Try finding a hotel mystery shopper willing to dish on one of their stays. Ask them to reveal the dirt on the unkempt suite, the coquette of a concierge, or the wilted flower that sullied the room service tray. You can’t. According to the Mystery Shopping Providers Association (MSPA) there are some 30,000 of them in the U.S., hired by luxury hotel brands to check-in anonymously and judge mercilessly. But like a CIA agent or the rare hair stylist who’ll keep your secrets, gossip is not in the mystery shopper’s after-hours repertoire. Even if they don’t name names, everything they unearth is strictly confidential.

Perhaps it’s to be expected in an industry where everyone, from the booking agent to the bellhop, is famously discreet. If loose lips sink ships, a too-revealing mystery shopper could certainly submerge an hotelier or two. Thankfully, Stephanie Perrone Goldstein, vice president of sales & marketing for the New York–based Coyle Hospitality (whose clients include Starwood Hotels and Resorts and Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group), produced a nine-year veteran willing to answer a few questions. The catch: we would speak by phone, with Goldstein playing watchdog, and the mystery shopper would remain nameless and description-less—more incognito than Brangelina on holiday.

Even by phone, the woman radiated confidence. She’d completed over 500 mystery shops in luxury hotels on four continents, and her voice came through the wires sternly, as if she’d been in upper management a day too long. She works as an independent contractor (paid by the job). What she looks for at each hotel varies from client to client—some brands maintain a checklist of ten things to look for upon arrival, others more than 80. “I pack a measuring tape, because a few hotels want me to get down to the nitty-gritty,” she says. “Is the radius of light emitted from the lamp exact? Is the paint on the walls in a particular palette?” Occasionally, she’ll check in as the most obnoxious breed of hotel guest: the road-weary whiner. “I’ll call the front desk and say the room smells like smoke even when it doesn’t, just to see how they’ll respond,” she says. Fake-outs are staged and executed thoroughly; she’ll go as far as empty the batteries from the remote and grumble about the fritzy T.V., or unhook the chain from the toilet to time how long it takes the staff to fix it. It’s an exacting art. After she checks out, her report is written up, fact-checked by Coyle, and delivered back to the client in a matter of weeks. “My goal, honestly, is to get hotels to provide the highest possible level of service,” she says. “When I return to these properties personally—and I do, if they’re great—I get such satisfaction seeing that.”

In the era of Yelp and TripAdvisor, when travelers can report anything at all to the Googling masses, trustworthy accounts are more important than ever to hoteliers. Coyle isn’t alone in providing unbiased evaluations to luxury brands that clamor for it. Zachary Conen, senior vice president of sales and marketing at LRA Worldwide, a mystery shopping firm based in Pennsylvania, says they maintain a stable of 120 full time consultants who travel 42 weeks out of the year. They too are tight-lipped, but happy to tell you their standards, which alter depending on the client. Is there a seasonally appropriate fruit at the front desk? Did you get a call from the concierge within thirty minutes of check-in? Are the amenities Gilchrist & Soames, and perfectly arranged? Competition for the positions is fierce: you’re required to have three years of management experience in the hospitality industry, excellent written and inter-personal skills, and a credit line of up to $7,500—presumably for booking your travel, which is reimbursed in its entirety. Once you’re hired, there are other hurdles (namely, weeks of training at LRA University, learning the intricacies of each luxury brand.) The coursework is hush hush, of course, but it may be among the cushiest of educational experiences on the planet. One can picture these people lazing about in hotel robes, fawning over thread count quantities and proper lobby manner with equal zeal.

The concept of sending in a ringer to report back is nothing new. Mystery shopping began in the 1930’s with three men touring the country, staking out Woolworth’s and Kresge’s (now Kmart) department stores. It gained traction during the civil rights era, when the government hired black and white “customers” to investigate the compliance, and the prolific lack thereof, to desegregation laws in restaurants and corner stores alike. Today it’s a $1.5 billion-a-year production, a large chunk of which is travel-based. “In the late 1980’s, Hilton was among the first luxury hotel brands to utilize the service,” says Mike Bare, co-owner and president of Bare International and one of the original founders of the MSPA. Three decades later, it’s common practice among hotel brands around the world. (Proof: LRA recently opened a satellite office in busy Singapore.) And soon enough, its taciturn nature may be over.

“You’ll see the secretive side of mystery shopping change; it’s becoming a vestige of the past,” says Jeff Gurtman, a former executive at both Coyle and LRA and now vice president of brand strategy for Dana Communications, a hospitality marketing agency. The wealth of online reviews has reignited the idea that the customer’s feedback is not only important, but critical to success. Starwood recently announced that it’s allowing guest commentary, both good and bad, on its own websites; and more and more guests are leaving feedback directly on Facebook. “Hoteliers read online reviews thoroughly,” Gurtman says. “If they notice a trend there that speaks to a problem, they have mystery shoppers to go in and test it with surgical precision.” Essentially, they’re hiring people to complain so you never have to. And in the thoughtfulness-driven economy of high-end hotels, that might be the most considerate act of all.

By feature writer Larry Mogelonsky, MBA, P. Eng

I’ve emphasized in the past and I’ll emphasize again now: your restaurant’s menu cannot simply be satisfactory. Not anymore at least. It has to be outstanding to the point where guests will remember what they ate two, three or seven days later. You have to ‘wow’ guests with bold choices, unique combinations and fresh ingredients in order for your restaurant to count as a worthy selling point and word-of-mouth generator for your hotel.

Here’s the issue. I liken the going trend in the cuisine world to that of an arms race. Take burgers for example. One diner updates their most indulgent choice to be a double patty oozing with four different types of cheese. A nearby competitor fires back by replacing the buns with grilled cheese sandwiches. Then, the original diner modifies their greasy double cheeseburger to include six strips of bacon and onion rings, all somehow organically sourced (like that would even make a difference at this point). This happens back and forth, back and forth, ad nausea.

Meanwhile, consumer expectations continue to climb as the bar for decadence increases, leaving all the standard fare behind. I used burgers as an example, but this could easily be substituted for pizza, pasta, salad, chicken or steak.

Whereas 10, 20 or 30 years ago, a steak dinner would surely please and astound hotel guests, now, unless there’s something special going on, such a meal goes down with a shrug and a contented smile, but not likely a, “This was so utterly fantastic I have to tell all my friends about it” recommendation. The fact is that when you factor in such things as Yelp reviews, the Food Network (which constantly shows outlandishly dazzling gastronomy) and the general ADD nature of the times, a meal might be superb at the time, but will it be a talking point for weeks or months in the near future?

I’m not saying you have to reinvent how you cook meat. Rather, a little touch goes a long way. Take Jacobs & Co. Steakhouse in downtown Toronto for instance. Like all other high end steakhouses, every item on the menu is exquisite both in preparation and presentation. But, what sets this place apart, and what I will always remember about it, are its salts. When you want a sprinkle, instead of them sidling up with a shaker or grinder, they present your table with a minimum of three types of salt, all with palpably different colors, flavors and textures. This tiny, unique aspect goes a long way towards me remembering my time there, even though I haven’t visited in years. It serves as the entry point for a host of other associated memories – the people, the ambiance, the food.

A good way to reframe your menu in this regard is to ask the question: Is my food ‘brag worthy’? Will a person use your cuisine as a comeuppance when his or her friends start discussing the latest and greatest eateries?

I’m not suggesting that you completely change every menu item to push atop this supposed arms race (even though that’s still a fun and exciting option!). Instead, look to infuse one or two dishes that are completely different than what’s offered elsewhere. Or, incorporate an extra touch like the salt example above. And as always, go out and explore the wide world of restaurants, keeping an astute eye on what they do to make you remember your meal.