Why don't we value F-words anymore?
+ Hospitality News and Jingle Bell Kindness #2, 2024!
How often do you use your favourite F-word?
If you’ve read our book, Spin the Bottle Service - Hospitality in the Age of A.I., you would know that my two favourite F-words are Feedback and Follow-up.
If you haven’t read our book yet, shame on you. All is not lost, though, because it’s currently on special for US$ 9.99 on Amazon or about $14 Canadian. I’ll link to it later in the newsletter so you have time to get your credit card out.
Back in the day, following up and sending feedback to people wasn’t something we entrusted a bot to do. People actually made an effort to provide timely responses to enquiries.
In the company I worked for, we were required to respond to every enquiry within 24 hours. For people like me, who could type a maximum of one word a minute if I was lucky and avoided a spelling mistake which would require me to a:) start over or b:) grab a bottle of liquid paper, paint over the mistake, blow on it until the paint dried, and then try to align the paper properly in the typewriter again, the 24-hour deadline was a challenge.
Today, it seems companies believe responding to someone is nothing more than programming a bot to automatically respond and say something nice but generic to whoever contacted them with whatever issue they wanted to discuss.
On November 7, I contacted our phone/internet/TV service provider (I’m not into naming and shaming so I won’t mention that it was Telus) about issues we’re having with the new TV setup they convinced us we needed. The Telus bot immediately and politely responded.
I’m not great at math, but I’m pretty sure there are more than 48 hours between November 7 and December 7.
Since I’m impatient, I made a new request after 15 days, even though I think that, too, is more than 48 hours.
The bot immediately sent me the polite reply again but within minutes it reconsidered. A second reply came and told me my new request was closed and not to reply to the message.
We’re still waiting for a response to our original request. Yes, I know it’s a phone company and yes, they do have a phone number. Unfortunately, their bots aren’t great at resolving issues so each time I’ve phoned, I have discussed with a bot who ultimately decides I need to speak to a human. It then informs me that the next human will be available shortly after the current King of Norway’s great-great-grandchild abdicates the throne.
Hospitality businesses are no better.
It seems the empty promises bots make on our behalf are impacting our own ability to provide feedback and follow-up. We say a nice thing, we make a vague promise and then we just let life run its course in the hope that the person we made the promise to will be as busy drowning in information overload as we are.
A famous quote attributed to Maya Angelou, says:
People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
Failure to follow up with promised feedback creates feelings people will never forget.
Fortunately, the opposite is true.
In our book, one of the stories in the chapter about our two favourite F-words is from The Curious Cafe in Kelowna. The owner followed up a reservation we had made and sent us an email the same evening we visited the restaurant. He asked how our visit was. He could have programmed a bot to contact us, and all of his guests, but he didn’t want statistical data. He followed up because he genuinely cared about getting feedback.
Good feedback and good follow-up build trust. Trust builds loyalty. Loyalty means your customers will continue to be your customers.
Wanna know something else about loyalty? It’s a two-way street.
Last week, Kirsten and I were on our way to an event. We were early and decided to pop into Curious for a pre-event drink.
Unfortunately, they were closed for a private party.
The owner, Luigi, saw us and came over to say hello.
“If you don’t mind sitting at the bar, please stay and have a glass of wine. The event hasn’t started yet anyway.”
How do great feedback and follow-up impact your loyalty to a business? Please share your comments and stories.
Hospitality News
Tragedy at the New York Hilton
Tragedy struck in New York when the CEO of a Healthcare Company was shot and killed outside the Hilton. Pundits have questioned the apparent lack of executive protection, and I’m sure there will be detailed investigations on many levels. Perhaps New York, United Healthcare, and the hotel where this happened are so used to these high-profile events that this one didn’t rank as a concern. It should have. Healthcare is a contentious area. When I was head of hotel security in Denmark, one of the safest countries on earth, there were always very detailed threat assessments and security arrangements when we hosted investor and shareholders meetings for pharmaceutical companies.
Whose side are Swifties on?
The union that has been on strike against the Radisson Blu Hotel at Vancouver Airport have urged Swifties to stay away “to avoid encountering noisy demonstrations in front of the hotel this weekend while Taylor Swift is in town.” The message seemed to go unheeded as the Choice Hotels website (Radisson Blu in North America is under the Choice portfolio) shows the hotel is sold out all weekend. Will hotel guests set up boom boxes playing Swift’s “You Need to Calm Down” to try to quiet the protesters?
Hospitality fully focused on first-world problems
The EHL Insights Report Outlook for 2025 was released this week. As usual, the industry experts show an impressive ability to look beyond the challenges the world faces (war in Europe, war in the Middle East, increasing climate-related disasters, etc.). The report doesn’t once mention the words safety, security, or crisis, but the industry’s old friend sustainability is mentioned thirty-five times on eight pages. That’s an average of more than once per page. The sustainability chapter in the report concludes, “the industry has the opportunity to create a lasting impact – not just for businesses or the industry alone, but for the planet as a whole.” As mentioned in last week’s newsletter, sustainability programmes that don’t include planning for the climate-related challenges we know we’re going to face, are doomed to fail. The industry needs to wake up and accept that it’s not about saving the planet, it’s about saving life on the planet.
The AI-produced picture that accompanies the sustainability chapter in the report shows a camper van with solar panels on the roof parked on a hilltop overlooking an ocean. The vegetation around the van seems to have been destroyed by vehicles or other traffic, which I’m guessing would upset a few sustainability-friendly folks in my circles.
Update on the Safe Hotels Act
Last week, I linked to an article on the Safe Hotels Act in New York City. I also posted a poll on LinkedIn and asked what people thought of the requirement that all hotels have a manned front desk 24 hours per day.
Sadly, yet not totally surprisingly, one of the two no-votes was from a hospitality association executive.
How would you vote?
Jingle Bell Kindness #2 - 2024
The Kindness Games were started by Lee Oughton and Tim Wenzel. It challenges you to give shoutouts of kindness and gratitude to people who have inspired you or played an important role in your life.
Every Always Care Community Newsletter in December will include a Jingle Bell Kindness shoutout to people who are important to me.
Don’t forget your shopping!
Spin the Bottle Service - Hospitality in the Age of AI is on sale for only US$ 9.99 until January 15, 2025! Click the pic to order on Amazon.
Thanks for being part of the Always Care Community.
I’m Paul. I was born, raised, and currently live in Canada. After high school, I embarked on a gap year in Europe. It lasted four decades. I went to university in Norway and started my hotel career in the basement of a five-star hotel in Oslo. The manager who hired me told me I was too old, too educated, and had too many opinions to be a security guard. He also told me that the only other person who applied for the job didn’t want it.
Thirty years later, I left that same company. It had grown from a small regional hotel chain in Scandinavia to become a large, global, multi-brand company. I moved from Norway to Denmark to Belgium. The company awarded me their highest individual honour for leadership, and security professional peers selected me as the world’s most influential corporate security executive.
I’m a hospitality professional. I’m a security professional. If you ask, I will tell you that security was my job, and hospitality was my business.
Today, I’m an educator and a consultant passionate about hotels, hospitality, and keeping people safe during their travels.
In addition to the Always Care Community, I also write for Risk Resiliency’s Keep Travel Safe. If safe, secure hospitality, hotels, and travel are important to you, please follow us there!
Written with the clarity of hindsight, the accuracy of a faded memory, and countless creative liberties, this is a newsletter of how life has made me an emigrant, an immigrant, and gifted me experiences I never dreamed possible.
Thanks for reading. Your support is my motivation and I’m genuinely grateful that you’re here. Please share, subscribe, and connect with me.
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