Why plastic-wrapped bananas and sweaty cheese don't impress hotel guests
... and why ChatGPT isn't the solution to this problem either
A plastic-wrapped banana or a sweaty piece of cheese Is this really how a hotel should aim to please? Wine without a corkscrew in the middle of the night Does that impress a guest that loves to travel light? They cannot take it with them and maybe they don’t drink It kind of makes you wonder if hotels should stop and think Boring cards and in-room stuff, will not set you apart It’s what the competition does, wake up and play your part To truly show your guests that you’re grateful they are there All you need to do is show them that you care Cause a plastic-wrapped banana or a piece of sweaty cheese Isn’t really how a hotel should aim to please!
How hotels bore their most important guests
I used to think it was just me.
Then I started sharing my feelings with others.
When I told them that I wondered why almost every welcome card in every hotel guest room around the world said the same thing, people smiled, laughed half-heartedly, or nodded in silent agreement.
Some of them rolled their eyes.
One person even feigned vomiting at the thought.
The people I mentioned this to had one thing in common with me. We all spent over 100 nights per year in hotels. We saw the cards thousands of times in our decades of travel.
These cards don’t make anyone feel welcome or special. If you have a friend over for dinner, do you greet them by telling them if there’s anything you can do to make their evening more enjoyable, that they shouldn’t hesitate to ask you or a family member?
I don’t either.
Cards like this show that hotels are thinking more about themselves than about their guests. They want you to point out your needs instead of using information, intelligence, and training to anticipate them.
They likely get a good deal at the print shop when they run off 10 000 identical cards that will be used to pretend they care about you in particular.
Is it a gift or a waste of your team’s time and effort?
Often times the cards accompany a room gift. Sometimes it’s fruit on a plate, sometimes even a bottle of wine.
Business travellers, who often have the reward programme status that makes them deserving of recognition from the hotel, are busy people. They travel light, arrive late, and depart early.
Arriving late means the cheese has been sweating for hours. Departing early means there’s no time to enjoy the wine, and, since you can’t take wine in your carry-on in most places, they can’t take it with them either.
Many hotels struggle immensely to make onsite restaurants profitable, so it also begs the question of why the in-room gift encourages the guest to remain in the room.
During the years when I spent literally half my life sleeping in hotels, like everything else in hotels, the in-room gifts went through cost-cutting measures. There was less fruit in smaller baskets and the bottles of wine were fewer and further between. The welcome cards, that were always hand-written in the early years, were mass produced and, in the latter years, many weren’t even personally signed by anyone.
Help for time-stressed hoteliers
Within a few hours the other day, I came up with almost fifty different ways hotels could use welcome cards to show their most loyal and deserving guests that they cared about them as individuals and were grateful the guest chose their hotel. Many of the ideas would add no cost to hotel operations. Every single one cost less than delivering wine that would be left behind or fruit that would remain uneaten in guest rooms. Especially when you factored in the upselling opportunities that follow when you personally engage with your guests.
Hotels should get their act together sooner than later. When I did the same exercise with Airbnb and similar accommodation providers, the low-cost/no-cost opportunities were in the hundreds. They have the advantage of getting guests on their platform so hosts have far more information and intelligence about their visitors than hotels do. The average length of stay is also longer in a short-term rental accommodation than in a hotel. More time = more opportunity.
No, ChatGPT is not the answer
Before anyone gets the bright idea of using ChatGPT to help design more creative welcome cards, I can let you know that I already tried that. Some were nicely formulated, but every single one had the “don’t hesitate to contact a member of the team” on it. When I asked ChatGPT to make them short enough to fit on a standard-size card, the niceties were gone, but the “don’t hesitate” script remained.
Here’s a couple of examples, and yes, I asked for CREATIVE ideas.
Welcome to [Hotel Name]! Dear [Guest Name], We're thrilled to have you here! If you need anything, just let us know. Enjoy your stay! Best Regards, [Hotel Manager's Name] Welcome to Your Home Away from Home! Dear [Guest Name], Make yourself at home! If you need assistance, we're here 24/7. Enjoy your stay! Sincerely, [Hotel Manager's Name]
All ChatGPT proved is that it loves exclamation marks as much as I do and it is as creative as your competition… that should leave the door wide open for any hotel that’s willing to spend just a small amount of effort to up their hospitality game!
I’m not giving away my secrets but…
On another platform, we’ll be launching a suite of affordable products to help hotels rediscover how easy it can be to anticipate guest needs or show them opportunities, simply by caring about them.
If you’re a hotelier and want to get ahead of the competition, drop me a note and we’ll let you know directly when you can see and order the products.
If you’re a hotelier that likes doing things the hard way, here’s some tips:
1. Offer underused facilities to meet specific guest needs 2. Use your understanding of travel patterns to tailor specific offers to specific guests 3. Showcase expertise from often unseen parts of the hotel in guest meet&greets 4. Appeal to the guest sense of caring for the environment (and no I don't mean by asking them to allow you to clean their rooms less often, you already do that.)
If, like me, you’re just someone that is deeply passionate about travel and hospitality, please share your own best and worst guest welcome experiences in the comments, on Substack notes, or on posts of your own!
Stay safe, Always Care
At Always Care, we help hospitality businesses make jobs more meaningful and guest experiences more memorable by helping you make the most of the biggest differentiator you have – your people!
We’re so passionate about hospitality that we wrote a book about it!
Let’s connect and discuss how we can work together and make hotels and hospitality better places to work, stay and visit. For everyone!