Throughout my career as a hotel trainer and conference speaker, I have often had some version of this conversation when I meet new people in casual social settings when a polite conversation migrates from “So, Douglas, where are you from?” on to “So, what do you do for work?” Unlike so many traditional professions, my life’s work seems to be a bit harder to understand for most people, and the conversation usually goes like this:
Doug: “My company conducts training for the existing staff of hotels and other lodging companies.”
Stranger: “Training? So, what do you train them on?”
Doug: “I do training on hospitality, sales, and service.”
I can appreciate that most people are confused to the point where a further explanation is needed, but way too many times I have heard this response: “So basically, you train them on fluff, right?”
Now, early on in my career, I found this to be offensive, immediately feeling the need to speak up in defense of my profession, but over time I simply came to ignore their inadvertent rudeness and would simply reply “Well, yes.”
More recently, though, I have taken a fresh approach, which is to embrace this comment and to exclaim, “Exactly! You’ve got it! I travel the world teaching hoteliers how to create fluff for their guests.”
Why the change? Because one day it occurred to me that “fluff” is exactly the perfect word to describe what delivering hospitality experiences does for hotel guests, turning the commodity of a hotel room into a memory-making travel experience. What is a hotel without the fluff? As the well-known hotelier Bashar Wali says so pithily in his TEDx presentation, “A hotel is just a building,” thereafter adding many great examples of seemingly “small” things that people do to make his hotel stays memorable.
Think about it. What truly makes one hotel stand out from all the others within the same marketing segment? Location? I doubt it, as hotels tend to be clustered in locations near attractions, business centers, highway exits, airports, beaches, ski mountains or other points of interest. Décor? Seems to me that every time a mega hotel brand truly innovates, all the others quickly copycat the concept. Price? Increasingly automated revenue management systems pull from the same data sources, leading to rate parity. The loyalty points that are now offered by all major brands and the online travel agencies? Unlikely. Amenities? Tech? As I often say, you can’t “out-tech” or “out-amenity” the competition.
But there is one timelessly proven way to outperform your comp-set, and that is to “out-people” them! And what can your people provide for your guests that means more than anything else? Fluff, because that is what creates happy memories.
What makes the experience of eating S'mores around a campfire memorable? Fluff!
What makes the peanut butter sandwich in your kid’s lunchbox cause every kid in the cafeteria to want to trade? Fluff!
What makes your bed so comforting that you can’t wait to jump in it at night and don’t want to leave it in the morning? Fluff!
Likewise, what causes your guests to come back next time? Not the rooms, not the amenities, nor simply the location or a competitive price — it’s the fluff.
What makes your vendors come through during extreme emergencies? Not the checks you write them. It’s the fluff. What makes your staff committed to their roles, to one another, and to their leadership? It’s not the paycheck, which they can get across the street. Once again, it’s fluff.
Indeed, hospitality is the fluff. Best of all, fluff is made with very “cheap” ingredients and is easy to spread around.
To make fluff, help your staff better understand the experiences being lived out every day on the other side of the guestroom doors, phone calls, email exchanges and texts. Get them thinking about how the frustrations of travel often slam hard against the high expectations of the perfect trip. Encourage them to imagine the diversity of stories behind the guests you encounter.
Spreading the fluff is as easy as making it. Hold eye contact a little bit longer; long enough for a genuine smile to break out. Be present; if you ask how someone’s day is going, wait long enough for them to truly respond. Use “loop-it-back” listening; pause, paraphrase and probe for additional details to get to the heart of their story and truly make a connection. Greet their baby, dog or the elderly person they are traveling with. Offer sincere, appropriate compliments. Share a spontaneous laugh.
After struggling for so many years to explain and validate my chosen career to the strangers I encounter, I’m now just going to go with my simplified definition and proudly exclaim, “Well, basically, I get paid to travel the world teaching fluff!”
Doug Kennedy is president of the Kennedy Training Network, Inc. Contact him at doug@kennedytrainingnetwork.com.
The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Hotel News Now or CoStar Group and its affiliated companies. Bloggers published on this site are given the freedom to express views that may be controversial, but our goal is to provoke thought and constructive discussion within our reader community. Please feel free to contact an editor with any questions or concern.