Dallas McLaughlin

This is an unfinished blog post.  Just trying to brainstorm and outline some ideas.

Front Desk

• Every Front Desk “Agent” needs to understand they are your marketing department.  They are your sales team.
  • I’ve never seen a hotel desk clerk writing letters or making calls to generate new business—they stand at the desk waiting for business to arrive.  Why?
• Everyone must:
  • Take responsibility.
  • Pay attention to detail.
• Lose the “that’s not my job” and “our internet service is outsourced, it’s their fault.” type of attitude.  If you absolutely will not help, you can say essentially the same thing, but with a far more pleasant spin.
  • All the magazine ads in the world can’t undo one lousy desk clerk.
• Answer the “Why?” questions!  ”That’s our policy.” “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do about that.”  Quit trying to make the guests just go away.
  • Does that make any sense at all? The single most efficient (and lowest cost) technique for improving your operations is answering the why questions! You should embrace these people, not send them away.
    • “You know, sir, I have no idea why you have to do that. But I can tell you that I’ll find out before the end of the day.”
• Lose the script!  I understand the importance of everyone being on the same page and everyone relaying the same message, but I think in this day and age, we can toss the script out the window and talk person to person.  When you’re just talking person to person, a guest knows you’re actually putting thought and effort into what you’re saying; you’re sincere.
  • I know it’s more difficult, but hiring people who can think for themselves is usually a better long run strategy than scripting every conversation.  If scripting’s the plan, it’s probably better (and cheaper down the road) to get an automated system.
• How much extra for nice?
  • If I upgrade to the Super Duper Presidential Suite, I’ll get treated much nicer at check-in.  If I give the valet $50, I’d expect him to treat me much nicer.  If I tip the housekeepers $20 a day, they’d be much nicer.
    • What if the guest doesn’t request any special service, any special accommodations?  What if all they want is to be treated nicer?  How much does that cost?
    • I think there’s a huge gap between what people are willing to pay for nice (a lot) and what it would cost businesses to deliver it (almost nothing).  Smells like an opportunity.

Management

• Most hiring managers don’t understand organizations that go to extraordinary lengths to find and retain amazing people.  Most think “Pay market wage, run a classified, process the resumes. Done.”  It only takes 10% of their effort to hire someone in the bottom 90%.
  • Why not put 90% effort in, to hire and retain someone from the top 10%?
• Hire people who smile more.  Don’t hire the same look of failure, the same feeling of impending, slow, inexorable doom I see everywhere else I go.
• If you’re trying to be truly remarkable and groundbreaking, hire someone with no prior hotel experience.  It’s easier to instill your plan and message into a brain that has no previous idea of “how things are done.”
  • The training process may be longer, but the “long tail” will tell us it’s worth it.
• During the interview process, have an actual conversation with the potential employee, something completely out of left field.  Something they never could have rehearsed or seen coming.  Picture people as an iceberg.  90% of their personalities are hidden below the water line.  You might not see it in the interview, but trust me, when a guest is having a bad day and takes it out on the unsuspecting Front Desk Agent, you’ll see it.

Property

• Each room needs to have something people will talk about.  Something that demands Word-of-Mouth marketing.
  • A room at the ‘W Hotel’ in San Francisco goes for around $300 a night.  In each room is an Etch-A-Sketch.  A $300 room with a $2 Etch-a-Sketch!  If you stayed there, how could you NOT tell everyone about that???
    • Take it one step further.  Have your hotel name and logo embossed on the frame of the Etch-A-Sketch.  God forbid someone steals one, it continues to tell your story where ever it ends up.
• On the reverse side of that, if your room has something you don’t want people talking about, and they find it, they’ll talk about it.
• Breakfast needs to be exceptional.  The last thing people do before they checkout is eat breakfast.  It’s your last shot to leave an impression.  Whatever they feel when they get in their car and leave, is what they will feel when someone asks how their trip was.  It’s how they’ll feel when that e-mail survey shows up in their e-mail inbox.
  • The difference in cost between offering 6 different kinds of individually wrapped cereal packets, and 40, is close to zero.  Why offer just one kind of tea? One kind of bread that you toast yourself?
    • No, we don’t need it, but we don’t need to eat in the hotel either. And yes, you’d be sure to tell people about it. “Hey, you know what I had for breakfast? A mixture of Cap’n Crunch, Froot Loops, and Honeycomb!! And I had it with chocolate soymilk and M & Ms on top!”
• The hotel hallways and rooms NEED to be well lit.  I understand the tradition of keeping very low lighting to hide any wear and tear, or anything your housekeepers may have missed.  By turning the lighting up, you’re providing a safer, more convenient (I can see where everything in my room is without squinting!), and more uplifting experience. 
  • You’re also saying “We’ve got nothing to hide.  We have 100% faith in our housekeeping staff.”
• Why doesn’t the Coke machine take room keys?  With all the technology and information packed into a hotel room key, it’s not particularly difficult to imagine how this would work. Hotels have done almost nothing with this ability. Once they see how they can personalize and customize the visitor experience, there are countless ways both sides can profit.

Sales

• Every ‘Sales Director’ needs to have extensive training and knowledge of how the Front Desk works.  
  • Only when they understand the daily operations of the hotel, can they make accurate promises and negotiations.  I’ve seen too many Sales “people” end up doing the old “Over promise, under deliver” method.  That’s a real short sighted plan.
• Understand that gambling and overselling the hotel is an inherit risk, yet easily avoidable.  Everyone in the hotel world knows “Heads in beds” is the mantra.  BUT, having a 100 room hotel, and booking four wedding groups on a Friday night, with 30 rooms in each block, gambling that they won’t all book, is hardly a good way to do business.  You might win some times, but when you lose, you lose big.
• Understand the difference between “Sold out”, and SOLD OUT.
  • Handling an overbooked hotel by simply saying “Sorry we’re full, the hotel down the road has vacancy.” is not good enough.  The guest will not settle for that.
  • 1 upset guest cancels out 10 satisfied guests.
• Also understand that just because you aren’t there, face-to-face with the guests as they check-in, you’re still responsible for upholding the promises you made to that guest.

Web Site

• Looking at industry competitors, you’ll see all hotel web sites bend over backwards to be just like everyone else.  You can’t identify one hotel website from another if you delete the name of the hotel.  Sometimes, we try so hard to fit in we give consumers no choice but to seek out the cheapest. After all, if everything is the same, why not buy what’s cheap and close?
  • How about a site that says, “Here’s why we’re different.” And means it.

Marketing

• It’s 2010.  Your hotel absolutely can not afford to continue embracing “Old World Marketing”.  You can’t just get louder as the market place gets larger and more demanding.  You need to refine your market and embrace “Permission Marketing”. 
  • Flickr – Set up a Flickr account.  Post pictures of your rooms, pool, special events, (friendly) staff, etc.  The more information people can find on your hotel, the more people find your hotel.
  • Twitter – Set up a Twitter account and Tweet once every couple days.  Just a quick, less than 140 character Tweet about something in the area, a special event at the hotel, or even a special “Twitter only” room rate.  Post a direct link to a specific suite, etc.
  • Facebook – Use a Facebook page to post pictures of your hotel, very similar to Flickr.  Use the same page to post updates of the hotels “happenings”.  You can use Facebook as a combination Twitter/Flickr platform, but with 11 million users.

In October of 2010, a property I was helping manage asked me to outline areas I felt we could improve on. Below is a truncated version of what I provided the owners of the property with

Keep in mind, a lot of the ideas are property specific and don’t necessarily work everywhere.

Sales & Marketing

• Maximize repeat sales. It’s nearly impossible to build sales volume with new sales alone. With the technology we have available, it’s extremely easy to identify which guests have been the most loyal to us. We can send them letters in the mail inviting them back. Call them and see how they’re doing, see if they plan on coming to the area anytime soon, and if we can assist in making a reservation.
  • Initiate word-of-mouth marketing. Potential guests will take a referral from a personal friend, long before a Expedia  or Orbitz review. Send your most loyal guests a one-time use gift certificate for them to give to a friend to come stay with us. It can be something simple like 10% off. The guest won’t know 10% off is next to nothing, and they’ll be extremely impressed to know you singled them out and personally sent them a letter. You’ll earn all of their future business, plus their referral business.
    • What’s our market? Mayo Clinic patients. Generally elderly people in deteriorating health. Elderly people surround themselves with other elderly people in similar situations. What better way to market then have it done for us? Snowball effect.
  • This would be easy to initiate and build upon. This is something any Front Desk agent could handle with the tools they are already familiar with. Just using the tools within Choice Advantage, they’d be able to send a few letters a day, as well and print and sign their own names on the bottom building a personal relationship which each guest.
  • It’s the old saying – “80% of your business comes from 20% of your guests.”
• Maximize property revenue. I worked at a property in Scottsdale, Arizona where the GM had a popular saying of “I don’t want to hear change jingling in pockets when they walk out the door.” That might be a little extreme, but it’s a saying that holds substance.
  • All of our Local Rate Plans have a contract end date. Instead of simply renewing contracts on our end, at the contract end date, why not call to renegotiate our contracted rate? Tell them about the improvements we have made, our increased occupancy, and explain we now demand a higher rate. Worst case they refuse and we maintain the previous rate.
• Increase our network presence. We are not taking full advantage of the community we do business in. Rochester is a very unique market in the sense that it depends more so on who you know, rather than what your business is. There are nearly 6,000 hotel rooms in Rochester, so we need to take every step we can to be on the bleeding edge of self-promotion and building brand awareness.
  • While we might be attending the occasional RCVB meeting, and working with John Larsen on our sports groups, we aren’t using our connections with the community to drive our sales, and build our presence like we should be.
  • We aren’t participating in any of the Chamber of Commerce “Member to Member” advertising opportunities.
  • There is a monthly Chamber “e-mail blast” which goes to upwards of 10,000 e-mail accounts around town, which is free to include anything we want to say about ourselves in.
  • No one is representing us at the “business after hours”, “AM Espresso’s”, or the FUEL luncheons.
    • While it might appear trivial at best to take part in these, Rochester is the kind of market that you almost have to “play the game” to succeed in. Having a “face”, and someone there to shake hands at these events for us (which we are already paying for), would generate a great image for us in the community, and would really drive word-of-mouth sales around town.
• Cater to the “Gatekeepers”. Within the infrastructure of a company, especially our local companies, the CEO’s, GM’s, and big bosses aren’t the ones making the decisions where their employees, clients, and guests will stay. It’s the people further down the ladders that make these decisions. It’s the secretaries, desk agents, call centers, etc., who have to pick up the phone and book the reservations.
  • Sending these people cookies, donuts, flowers, a thank you note. Giving them a gift certificate, anything to recognize the work they continue to do for us will have an insurmountable return on the investment we make in having a relationship with them.
• Respond and take action on each and every Medallia and Guest Service complaint. This falls into the “above and beyond” category. While we’re not “required” to take action on the Medallia surveys, taking credit for, and showing concern for our guest’s complaints, shows that these surveys are being read by humans, and shows that we are dedicated to improving our property.
  • Send personally signed and addressed letters to guests addressing their complaints, even small complaints. We can offer a 10%-20% discount on their next stay. That minor, one time loss in revenue, is still profit on the alternative of them never coming back.
  • By addressing our guests concerns, and accepting the blame, we can earn back the trust of our guests, and earn a second opportunity to impress them.
    • 1 upset guest negates 10 happy ones.
• Guests, not policy needs to determine our services. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard sales people say “we can’t do that” or worse, “our policy is…” because they don’t want to take the time to find a way to fulfill a guest’s request. As long as one can make the task profitable for the hotel, anything can be done.

All of the above “Sales and Marketing” ideas can be successfully executed without a dedicated Sales Director, or Sales team of any sort. Our existing Front Desk staff could easily handle each of the above tasks with little cost to the property itself. Any inherit costs involved would pay for themselves tenfold.

Front Desk

• We need to make sure we are thoroughly interviewing and screening our Front Desk staff. If we choose to be a hotel of exceptional quality, we need to have equally exceptional Front Desk staff.
  • The previously mentioned resort I worked at in Scottsdale, ran with military precision. Every single staff member was trained on how to think, talk, act, and behave. There was no room for error, and nothing but perfection was accepted.
  • It starts with the hiring. We can’t be hiring people simply because they can handle the job; we need to be hiring people because they are absolutely perfect for the job.
  • We should always be interviewing people. Just because there are no openings, doesn’t mean we can’t make an opening for truly exceptional candidates.
  • Everyday you make decisions where you have two options, the safe decision, which offers comfort and warmth; or the risky decision, which offers growth and excitement. In the case of our property, we need to choose risk, and replace any under performing staff, or relocate them to a position more suited to their skill set.
• Our Front Desk needs to be retrained and broken of bad habits we’ve developed over time – myself included. We need to hold ourselves to a higher standard and be accountable for shortcomings and things that go “unseen” in the hotel.
  • We need to instill some of original training materials and stick to them. We need to all be held accountable for what gets accomplished at the front desk.

Online Presence – Personal Web Site

• As I mentioned in our meeting today, there is a paradigm shift in the way the world is getting its information. While keeping in mind that we’re in a completely unique market (Mayo Clinic), and play by a completely different set of rules, New World marketing is quickly outpacing Old World marketing.
  • 50 years ago there were 4 channels on TV. To earn market share all you had to do was have a larger budget than your competition. This is no longer true. We are entering an age of infinite choice.
  • Sometimes, we try so hard to fit in; we give consumers no choice but to seek out the cheapest. After all, if everything is the same, why not buy what’s cheap and close? In a world where our online identity is determined by our “Lowest Available Rate!” we have no choice but to choose to be exceptional.
• We should buy www.——-.com. (Have you ever attempted to send someone to our direct site?) It should have a welcoming appearance with pictures of our property, pictures of our actual staff including their first names.
  • We could include our staff pictures with tag lines like “Call Josh today to book your room!”
  • We could integrate a direct RSS Feed from our Twitter account, which would be updated by a staff member (any Front Desk) once a day. Just a quick 140 character or less update about what’s going on at the property or in town.
  • We could invite people to tell us about their experience on our Facebook “fan page”.
  • We could include more expansive details on our Mayo Clinic offerings, our Sundowner, meeting space, and group options.
    • Much more than our e-Brochure allows.
  • However, when it comes to booking online, the site would just act as a personalized portal to our main ChoiceHotels.com website sending all reservations through CRS like usual.
    • Imagine the personalized experience we could create. They see our faces online, come to the properties and all the same faces are standing right there waiting to greet them. You think name tags form a connection? Imagine that.
• We would be selling an experience, not just a $79.99 hotel room. People don’t go to Starbucks for a $10 cup of coffee; they could get better, more affordable coffee elsewhere – they go for the experience.  We would be building indispensable, long lasting relationship with our guests. They would feel comfortable and at home, which is what the majority of our Mayo Clinic patients care about. They want to come back from Mayo to somewhere that resembles home, not just a cold, brick and mortar, run of the mill hotel.

Everyone really needs to take a look at today’s economy. While most companies are getting scared and trying more and more to be like everyone else, they are failing to realize that the only thing that will save them in this period, is going above and beyond all expectations. The economy is giving us two choices – quit, or be exceptional. All of the things I have outlined above will make us an exceptional property.

People can stay at a ——- anywhere in the world, but we can choose to be the only ——- that truly stands head and shoulders above the rest.

Summary

These are just a few ideas I’ve come up with in the few hours since our meeting. I think there are many more opportunities in front of us; we just need to choose to see with new eyes, and take advantage of a market waiting for something new. How many great railroad companies got into the airline business? Zero. They were all afraid of change, and afraid to take the inherit risks to grow with the market.
I think you can see the passion, and desire I have to be successful in the hotel industry. I could sit here and write on the subject for days, writing about things we could try, risks we could take, opportunities that we could take advantage of, and ways we could leverage the “down economy” to work in our favor.

At the end of the day, the owners at this property picked a couple minuscule things from my list to attempt halfheartedly and I eventually went to a different, much more promising property.

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