How often do travelers find the clichés of the glossy ads, and the PR hype, redeemed by that elusive amalgam of true friendliness, service, recognition, and efficiency that I call ‘hospitality,’ whether in hotels, airlines or cruise ships?
It is hard to find that authentic welcome, a true home from home, to coin another cliché; it is palpable but at the same time elusive; it is hard to define, except in industry clichés, but seasoned travelers recognize it at once – typically in the first ten minutes of stepping into a hotel, or boarding a jet.
Travelers cherish recognition, whether they are traveling for business or pleasure, or both. Hotels that treat every guest as ‘mystery shoppers’ can reap dividends in goodwill and future business.
Legend has it that Fats Waller, when asked for a definition of jazz, replied: ‘Lady if you have to ask, I can’t tell you.’ (It is a nice analogy when you think that jazz engages both the brain and the feet.)
I call it the ‘boutique experience.’
It comes down to training and example which has to come down from the top through the organization. It has to be dyed deep in the culture and in the reward system of a company; and permeate through to every employee whether in direct or indirect contact with guests.
‘People are our most precious asset’ is a corporate mantra that has a hollow ring in many organizations, whether it applies to staff or customers.
‘Boutique’ is an overused word describing any small environment with ‘luxury’ facilities. But small is not necessarily beautiful; although there does seem to be an optimum size – and a staff/guest ratio of typically one to three. It is the ‘software’ – the soft-skills of the people who provide the service – that can make or break the experience.
Bea Tollman is founder-president of the Red Carnation Hotel Collection of fourteen boutique hotels in outstanding locations – five in London, two in Dorset, Guernsey, Geneva, Palm Beach, and three in South Africa. She inspires awe and affection among the staff.
‘The boutique experience for me is that people feel they are walking into a home where the welcome is warm, genuine and where they are recognized for whom they are. Every guest should be made to feel special; that is what we really aim to do. And we do this through training and leadership example – how you genuinely feel about people. But to make a real boutique hotel you should have less than a hundred odd rooms; I think that’s the optimum number really.’
Guy Young, president of Uniworld, a self-styled ‘Boutique River Cruise Collection,’ based in Los Angeles, says. ‘What makes us unique as a river cruise operator is that the décor on our ships has a different look and feel… plush, intimate and warm; we’re not a cookie-cutter company. We average about 130 guests, with one staff member for every three guests. So they get to know the guests personally, and greet them by name when they come back on board after an excursion; it’s like a big family on board, and our staff work very hard to express that sincere, caring attitude. And there’s a lot of interaction between the guests.’
The Virgin Limited Edition of boutique properties includes the Necker Island resort in the British Virgin Islands, along with the Necker Belle, a 100-foot catamaran; Kasbah Tamadot in Morocco; a private game lodge in Ulusaba, South Africa; the Roof Gardens and the Babylon restaurant in London; and The Lodge in Verbier, Switzerland.
The Lodge, a large chalet style hotel, consists of two big communal floors and nine en suite guest rooms; and 14 staff.
Hannah Allen, general manager of The Lodge, says, ‘It’s a very relaxed feel. With one staff member for every three guests, we can be up till four or five in the morning, until the last guest goes to bed. It’s a tailor-made environment. Richard [Branson], whether he is staying with us or on Necker Island, likes to come and relax; he likes a homely feeling and to share that with other people. We have groups of business people; family couples with friends; winter skiers; corporate clients… it’s a real mix.’
‘When you go into some of the larger hotels, it’s clear the staff have been taught certain things they have to say; it doesn’t come from the heart; and everybody you pass along a corridor or anywhere in the hotel they all say the same things; you just feel they’ve been taught to say that,’ Bea Tollman says. ‘I believe my staff genuinely feels pleased to see a guest – hopefully know their name – and feel that they mean what they say.
‘Training is everything; and the motivation; to motivate passion into your staff, for them to be proud of working in that hotel or that company,’ Tollman adds. ‘That’s the thing that makes their working life more interesting and they know there’s a chance to do better in a company where someone is watching over them, and encouraging them to grow.
‘It comes down to knowing the standards of the hotel and having a very critical eye; you should be watching everything,’ Bea Tollman says. Nothing should be left half done. If you see something that’s not right, you should immediately do it, and be enthusiastic about doing it. You’ve got to learn and train your eye to notice these things; to put them right; and then to be genuine, be sincere; because hotel management is the same all over the world. Everybody is taught the same things; how to run a department; what you should look for…
‘What it amounts to really is the service; and looking for the detail, because it’s a detail business. Everybody’s got everything and doing the same things today; you read up what your competitors are doing, and you do it. What really counts is your staff: and how you genuinely care about your guests.’
I believe it was the legendary Soichiro Honda who once said that Japanese and Western management was 95 percent the same, ‘but different in all important respects.’ He meant the software – personal skills that make the difference and provide the competitive edge – especially true in the service industry.
On a recent visit to the Ecole Hoteliere in Lausanne, I was exploring an angle for a story: how and why hotel managers can readily adapt to other management roles but seemingly not the other way round: Perhaps because hotel managers learn an eclectic range of skills having hands-on experience in so many diverse areas of expertise.
Red Carnation has what you might call ‘peer-performance’ reviews in the form of weekly or monthly meetings at each hotel when all the staff vote for the ‘best manager’ of each department. They’ll also acquire experience of how other departments work by changing positions during the year and functions by changing positions for a time during the year. The doorman might end up as a receptionist; a manager will serve as a doorman; or work in the food and beverage department…
While there seems to be an optimum size for a boutique property, I asked Bea Tollman if there is an ‘optimum’ size for a personally managed family group such as Red Carnation.
‘One wants to be able to grow but not too much that you can’t keep up the standards with the input that the higher level of management has to give to the different hotels,’ she says. ‘You can only spread yourself that thin because you just get busier and busier; standards get higher in the hotels; the things we do take an awful lot of time and effort… How can you keep that spirit up when you’ve got too many hotels? We’ve got fifteen operations now, and to look after all of those and to watch what’s going on, know what’s happening, and encourage them and do the right thing… it takes a tremendous amount of work.’
Although I have always assumed that every silver lining has a cloud; I cling to the belief that every cloud has a silver lining. The events of 9/11 precipitated a crisis among world airlines, which went into free fall, with empty seats and canceled services, and large hotel chains suffered falls in occupancy levels, there was a boom in the charter market for business jets (even for trans-Atlantic travel) and ‘boutique,’ and boutique hotels reported business almost as normal at a time when fewer people were traveling.
It is easy to understand why. Jet charter (and the growth of scheduled business-only airlines that use business jets) addresses a need for security, discretion and confidentiality. Book a charter and you travel to your own schedule in an unmarked plane with private access at major hubs or convenient small airports, even taken by limo to the steps of the plane. During the flight, you can relax, work or have meetings. And speed by limo (motorcycle escort is optional!) to your office – or boutique hotel.
Business jets (whether chartered or scheduled), along with boutique hotels are ‘private’ environments compared with the public arena of large hotels and even the premium cabins of conventional airlines. You might call it ‘closed circuit’ travel, segregated from the madding crowd, and cocooned in your own security blanket. What I would call a true boutique experience.
Back to basics, what makes a great hotel? This is a recurring theme that I am often asked to talk about. There is no ideal. People travel in different modes, different frames of mind, with different needs, motivations and prejudices, that can vary from trip to trip, depending on why we’re going and where we’re headed.
Are we traveling only for business or trying to combine that with a vacation? Do we need to use the room as a high-tech business center? Do we need a prestigious address with facilities to entertain, a high-tech ‘command center’ to work and keep in touch with the office, or simply a room for the night? How important is location? Are we looking for adventure, new experiences? What is our budget? How much do loyalty and frequent guest programs count? And who is picking up the tab?
Everybody expects a quiet room with high safety standards and service. Add to this your own pet foibles, predilections and prejudices, such as wall-to-wall Muzak, $50 club sandwiches from room service and egregious mini-bar prices. Some people seek recognition, such as being greeted by name by the deputy assistant duty night manager. Others thrive on anonymity. Or ‘added value’ options, such as early check-in, late check-out, room upgrades, airport transfers, cocktails and canapés, exquisite bed linen, or a luxurious turn-down service with candles and chocolates on the pillow. Small things can make a big difference; a sincere handshake; a misplaced smile; or a gesture beyond the normal call of duty that can make or break the experience. (I once shocked a group of hotel managers by jokingly averring that one of my criteria for judging a hotel was by the quality of the removable wooden coat hangars that I might accidentally take home to add to my collection.)
Hotel experiences (good and bad) stick in the mind like burrs. There was the late night welcome at the Hotel Splendido in Porto Fino with prosciutto and ripe pear and a cold bottle of Chablis; the giant Edwardian bathtubs and lemon-scented soap at the old Hyde Park Hotel in London; the vital telephone call that I took when caught short in the bathroom of the Excelsior Gallia in Milan; and, in a hurry for the airport, losing, for forty fateful minutes, my sole pair of shoes that I had left outside my door to be cleaned at the Plaza Athenee in Paris. The warmth and sincerity of the welcome and goodbyes I receive at the Beau Rivage Palace in Lausanne is truly heartwarming, with calls beyond the call of duty. I shall never forget the time when Sylvie, the luminescent head concierge gave my sick wife care beyond the call of duty; and offered us a car to the airport. The Beau Rivage is a rare example of a traditional grand hotel with an authentic boutique feel.
My wife and I once booked into the Westminster Hotel in Nice, a fine rococo building on the Promenade des Anglais. I was on a hard-core business assignment, but we had made arrangements with British Airways’ frequent flier miles. We got a lousy room and reception to match: I had to wield my vestigial management skills to change the room and rearrange the attitude.
Flashback to several years ago which shows that a truly grand hotel is still a class act:
I was on a magazine assignment in the south of France with a photographer from New York. We entered the Negresco Hotel in Nice, the grandest of the Belle Epoque palaces almost next door to the Westminster, in pursuit of a room for him – he had not made a reservation.
Nothing strange about that, except that photographers can sometimes look very strange. This one had red suspenders and a purple vest. And I looked strange in a black leather jacket, white pants, espadrilles, no socks, and a mane of windswept hair. But we were received with elaborate courtesy by a liveried voiturier, doorman and desk clerk.
There was none of the usual: “How will you be settling your bill, sir?” or, “Can I take an imprint of your credit card?”
I explained our mission to the manager, congratulating him on the charm and hospitality of his staff. He smiled, “Ah, yes, Monsieur C, you can never tell who you have in front of you these days!”
Years ago, I always stayed at the same small, somewhat decrepit, hotel in Paris, because of the charm and graciousness of Nicolas, the elderly and erudite White Russian night porter. I will return to that tatty hotel with a big heart in Avignon, but never to the four-star palace hotel in Nice because of its rude and uncomprehending staff. Cattle class on one airline can sometimes be a better experience than business class on another. You may have noticed how often two flights on the same airline is like flying with two different airlines. Frequent fliers are able to detect a ‘bad’ crew from a ‘good’ crew the moment they board the plane. One hotelier says that he can tell a good hotel from a bad hotel in the first ten minutes.
Welf Eberling, former executive vice president and chief operating officer in New York of Leading Hotels of the World, says, “The perception of luxury today is not gilded moldings or a plasma flat-screen television, but a harmonious blend of product and service. There are certain givens. For example, we don’t measure the size of rooms, but how often does room service push in the trolley and there’s only one easy chair so the other person has to perch on the corner of the bed?
‘Rooms should have three phones with two lines: one by the bed, one on the desk, one in the bathroom. Turn-down service is always a great point of discussion. There’s more to it than folding back the top sheet and putting a chocolate on the pillow — it should be full room service, straightening out the bathroom, bringing in new towels. Then, there is the whole spectrum of food and beverage. We are not giving a Michelin star for food it’s the service that counts. How is the guest received in the restaurant? Is the waiter attentive, does he pre-empt some of your wishes? In a five-star hotel it should be an experience; like a restaurant.’
Trent Walsh, managing director of Leading Quality Assurance in London, says, “Leading Hotels’ members are inspected twice in a three-year cycle. Our inspectors stay anonymously for 48 hours and score each department against a total of 1,200 quantitative standards and a qualitative scoring — the fuzzy, touchy-feely aspect that is so important in the luxury sector.”
He adds: “Luxury five-star hotels must fulfill what you would expect: a good bathroom, separate shower, double sinks and quality linen. But only 35 percent of the assessment is based on product; the other 65 percent depends on service, which is much more important. You can have the most wonderful product in the world, but if you don’t couple it with a phenomenal service, you are not going to succeed in the luxury hotel market.”
This is why some smaller boutique hotels achieve good scores even if they don’t have all the amenities of larger properties. They make up with gains in service.
Andy Thrasyvoulou, founder of myhotel bloomsbury, a four-star boutique hotel in London, claims to have found the right balance between high-tech rooms and comfort. The idea is that the hotel should work to the guest’s pace.
“We try to know as much as possible about the guest before he or she arrives,” Thrasyvoulou says. “Maybe you want to check in at the bar area with a coffee or drink, talk about London with one of our guest service people, or, if you’re in a hurry and we know about that, you can sign off quickly.
“One of my frustrations with hotels was that if I wanted something done, you’d have this endless directory of numbers. You ring one up and they say, sorry, it’s not us, it’s the concierge, or housekeeping. So what we’ve done is, you ring one number that goes to the guest service pool where they’ll have all the information about you. Even if they can’t help you immediately, they’ll go to talk to housekeeping or whoever and get back to you.”
Thrasyvoulou admits to being influenced by Stuart Scher and J.F. Hofmeyer at Taylor Nelson Sofres, a consultancy in London, who have examined the relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty.
“There are three elements to customer loyalty and commitment,” Thrasyvoulou says: “First is reasonable satisfaction, the second is having a compelling reason to use your product or service, the third is being better than your competition.” At least 20 percent of satisfied customers do not stay loyal, he says. The reason may be that competitors have shown them an alternative, which could be as simple as air miles or hotel points.