THE BULLETIN
Does everything have to be an experience ?
On Halloween 2001 , just after midnight , I was in the Bronx . For anyone living in New York back then , being in the Bronx anytime , much less after the clock strikes 12 , is dubious . But I was among 55,000 other souls , at Yankee Stadium , watching the home team play host to the Arizona Diamondbacks in Game 4 of the World Series . As October gave way to November , Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter strode to the plate with no one on base and two outs . With the count 3-2 , he punched the next pitch off Byung-hyun Kim into the right-field bleachers , tying the series at two games apiece . The once hushed crowd segued into delirium as Jeter rounded the bases , right arm stretched high above his head , as “ Whoomp ! ( There It Is )” blared over the PA system . Me , my friends and the rest of the throng yawped in unison as the venerable ballpark , not wanting to be left out of the mania , shook in agreement .
For the record , I am not a Yankees fan ( they went on to lose in seven games ), but what I was part of on that late-night-intoearly-morning was an experience , in its most authentic , genuine version . The real McCoy .
Checking into a highway-adjacent midscale hotel is not an experience and that ’ s ok ; it doesn ’ t — or shouldn ’ t — need to be . One problem with the hotel industry is its propensity to try and create or label everything it does an experience . At the ALIS conference in Los Angeles , one hotel company CEO said this on stage : “ Today ’ s guest wants an experience based on a story that hotel tells .” Never mind that he was the CEO of a midscale brand , not Disney World . Another CEO of an economy brand said : “ We will continue to capitalize on people wanting to spend money on experiences and not things .”
Let ’ s be honest : We have all had hotel experiences that we wished we didn ’ t have . In many cases , it ’ s the product that lets the customer down , which can potentially be saved through a service recovery .
It ’ s here that I am going to declare something perverse : the hotel industry is as much a part of the service economy as it is the product economy . I can hear every CMO ’ s strident fulmination . A hotel can be just a hotel , a product first and a service second . Hoteliers need to first get their product right before the service even matters . Case in point : Los Angeles , where I stayed with my favorite brand and while the overall visit was fine , it was a product failure that almost ruined it . The culprit : poor shower pressure — a spit , rather than a deluge .
In 2012 , Philipp Klaus and Stan Maklan put forth a scale of customer experience quality . One of four inputs leading to overall customer satisfaction is product , which aims to validate that the customer evaluation is not only based on service encounters .
A hotel doesn ’ t always need to be an experience because not every guest is in search of one . A hotel , however , can be the perfect staging ground for an experience , like a fraternity reunion , or , on a larger scale , the jumping off point for a night with U2 at Sphere in Las Vegas .
Can ’ t a hotel stay be pragmatic : a clean room , strong shower , nice cup of coffee ? It doesn ’ t have to be an experiential marvel . It can just be a regular night . That ’ s an experience I
David Eisen don ’ t mind having .
Editor In Chief
EDITORIAL David Eisen Editor In Chief
Kathakali Nandi Editorial Writer
Tatiana Valenzuela Editorial Coordinator
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Contributing Writers Harvey Chipkin , Derek Herscovici and Rayna Katz
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