Even grand can be bland for today’s experience-driven hotel guests, who prefer unique amenities and good connectivity over sheer aesthetics.
As a consultant and trainer, I have had the opportunity of staying in many hotels in different countries and, upon arrival, I have gone through the same check-in service. I can safely say that the main difference is not What is offered, but How it is offered and What it causes on the recipient.
The world of hospitality is full of essential concepts that determine the positive results to be obtained. One of them is, without a doubt, business competitiveness that arises from the constant growth of hotel chains and, consequently, from the number of offers to their main customer: the dearest guest.
Many enterprises remain stagnant even after having designed a valid change route because, in my opinion, they suffer from the Entrepreneurial Fatigue Syndrome ( EFS ) a key constraining factor to manage reengineering. The first symptoms of the EFS are warning signals that should not go unnoticed by the organization, because they are closely related to a decrease in the physical and mental capacity of the workers.
Although it is not an easy task, hotel businesses are always thinking about finding the magic formula to guarantee a real differentiation and, consequently, the competitive advantages for the market sector to which they offer their products and related services In this paper, I want to share some issues hotels may focus on to manage to turn the stay of their guests into positive holistic experiences which is, no doubt, the differentiating factor par excellence in the present tourist market.
To manage increasing demand, hotel businesses face an exponential development and, consequently, an increment of the offers and a change of behavior of their main clients: the potential guest, who has become more selective when deciding where to spend their leisure time.
The hotel industry is, undoubtedly, a leading one in terms the creation of direct and indirect jobs and, therefore, one of the most solicited in the present labor market. However, we cannot fail to mention one of the most controversial factors related to our industry, the extra earnings one can obtain, about which there are so many stories, myths and facts, namely: the guests' tips.
The transformation of the stay of a guest into a positive holistic experience is, no doubt, a formula of success to achieve the differentiation and positioning of the hotel in the current hotel market. This can only be achieved provided that the guest reaches the longed-for emotional states such as feeling pampered, cared for, understood and, above all, important.
The constant growth of hotel offers makes hoteliers look for new strategies to catch the attention of potential clients to choose their business in an extremely competitive market. Globalization turns business differentiation into a great challenge, due to the increasingly common 'copy-paste' of hotel products and their associated services.
It is common knowledge that a hotel is made up by different departments in charge of offering products and associated services under specific norms, procedures, costs and standards. However, these specifications sometimes allow for territorial boundaries which are often impossible for the other departments to cross over, thus creating dysfunctional boundaries in terms of the final satisfaction of the guest.