SPECIAL REPORT about room service . Could you get a pizza or a burger down to your desk in 25 minutes ? Try to differentiate the offering by leaning closer to the hotel . Our view is it ’ s a lot easier to run a co-working business as a hospitality company than it would ( be ) if you ’ re not . Wilson : If you want to create authentic experiences , you need to do what you do for the right audience . Generally speaking , that ’ s not your hotel guests . It ’ s like a lecture that I give all my general managers over and over and over : Do not go to your coffee bar and think about what you should be doing to get hotel guests to buy your coffee ; think about who ’ s coming in off the street . If they ’ re not coming in off the street , you ’ re going out of business . It ’ s the same with co-work : You ’ ll be successful because you built a product that ’ s right for that customer . If you build a co-working environment thinking that your hotel people are going to fill it , it will go bankrupt . It ’ s thinking like an experiential operator .
Bill Walshe : You must have purpose to disrupt positively . Disruption without purpose is interruption .… I want to create an environment that recognizes the evolution of behaviors of my guests – where they want to work , at any time , in any way , at any point within the hotel , and it ’ s up to me to facilitate that .
STOP IT
HOTELS asked roundtable participants what hoteliers should stop doing .
Brad Wilson : Stop observing other hotels , and start observing their customer as that would lead to authenticity . There ' s too much ‘ this other hotel did that , so we have to start saying we do that .’ Observing the customer is the true answer to authenticity , and the experiential economy .
Also , stop being everything to everyone and focus in on your mission , on that guest . Whether it ' s by brand or overall , execute on it . I think again , you muddle everything if you ' re trying to do everything for everyone . That ' s where it gets sloppy in the delivery of what you ' re doing .
Bill Walshe : Stop judging an initiative based on its outcome , and start celebrating the intent of the action . So have the courage to fail . When I talk about finding a few things to do brilliantly , particularly if it ' s in an innovative space , promote the people who failed gloriously because life got in the way . We ' ve become so success focused in that success is everything . If it didn ' t work , it wasn ' t worth doing . We need to be open to tripping over our shoelaces a little bit and allow content to evolve . Stop trying to script content for our guests . They ' ll find what they love .
We also need to stop hating on the OTAs . As a small company we need to recognize that the distribution platform has changed forever , and we need to change with it , embrace it , and try to manipulate it to our favor , or get left out . I ' ll never have a sales office in Sydney . If I get a booking . com booking for 10 nights for Viceroy Santa Monica in a suite , because they have invested millions of Australian dollars creating visibility for my product , and I begrudge that reservation , shame on me for being who I am . Now I should be annoyed if OTAs are giving me business from my key home source markets where I have 10 people in a sales office . But they ' re a fabric of distribution and they ' re a part of our life .
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