SPECIAL REPORT
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 .
BRAD WILSON
spent the weekend in . That ’ s what we ’ re here to do .
Brosh : I have two points : one is curation and trying to connect to the community is dangerous territory because it can be trite , and people see right through it . Number two is we have a hotel in Santa Monica that ’ s been number one ( on ) TripAdvisor for two or three years , and I just don ’ t understand it . We have no pool , we have no concierge , we have no liquor license . The reality is the people that work there are just friendly and it has this sort of neighborhood sensibility about it , and people love it . That is a hard thing to encapsulate and it ’ s a very hard thing to repeat , especially when you have a lot of keys and a lot of meeting space . But that is the secret sauce .
WHAT ’ S NEXT ?
We heard a lot about co-working spaces . What ’ s coming next to the hot list ?
Greg Doman : We ' ll see if it gets any traction : popup hotels . We ' ve got a Flying Nest at a ski resort in the Swiss Alps . They are 12-square-meter rooms , full window , private bathroom . Then we ' ll move it in another 90 days and put it somewhere else . Sharan Pasricha : The next decade will be about using technology . Whereas five years ago we started hiring designers , for the first time we ' re hiring software engineers to start thinking about the proprietary steps required to start building technology to understand guests a lot better … Most of us are sandwiched between legacy systems and trying to extract data in a meaningful way to provide a true , single-customer view . Our industry is plagued with 40 % to 50 % turnover , so you can ' t always rely on that individual to give you that amazing guest experience . So what else have you got ? Our view is you need technology to really provide that single-customer view . It ' s not going to happen unless you go and start building it yourself .
Bill Walshe : Artificial intelligence ( AI ). We ' ve just started to roll out Alexa in our rooms and had no idea how it would work . Some guests ( single digits ) ask for it to be taken out because they think it ' s listening to them . Other people use it all the time . Across the first 98 keys that we put it into , the average daily interaction is 46 times .
Danny Hughes : I think the biggest trend is affinity through a values base . It ’ s going to explode . People who want to do business with your company , work for your company or invest in your company want to know the purpose of the company and share some of the values . Whether you want to call it authentic , or purpose , or anything else like that , it ' s going to change the landscape dramatically . When I listen to my college kids and their friends , they ' re going to make choices based on that .
30 hotelsmag . com May 2019