I am back in Singapore after an epic month of travel which took me from Seoul to New York, Fort Lauderdale and Bangkok and this lull on the ground has given me a chance to reflect on the very different hotel experiences I had.
At a time when we in travel keep saying that travellers are extra demanding these days, given the higher prices they have to pay as well as the higher expectations set after Covid, I thought it might be worth recollecting what it actually is like on the ground when you’re a normal hotel guest at the other end of the “guest experience”.
And it seems that despite all the candy floss media releases from hotels, going on about ‘authenticity”, “connections to the neighbourhood” and offering guest “unforgettable experiences”, it seems not much changed.
In Seoul, I stayed at the Fairmont Ambassador – efficient, comfortable, predictable. Everything you’d expect from a hotel as a conference delegate. Whatever tech that was in use in-room and within the hotel worked, invisibly.
I didn’t feel any visible recognition though as a loyalty member, but everything was just so smooth and efficient I didn’t feel I needed anything more, for the purpose of my visit.
One of the best things going for this hotel is its location next to the Hyundai Mall and a walk away from Hanggang River – so you can choose to be either a mall rat or a river walker, depending on your mood and weather (which given its unpredictability these days cannot be underestimated).
In New York, I chose the Sofitel Midtown primarily because I wanted to be in the theatre district, since my main purpose was to go to the theatre, be a tourist and generally soak in the big urban vibe of New York. Again, the Accor-managed brand delivers to expectations – it is efficient, elegant and comfortable – but it does not exceed, human-wise. It does not deliver anything that I’d say, I really must return because …
But then my purpose for this trip was to be out there, and not in a hotel room. I found my delight in watching Danny De Vito on stage, dancing with the cast of “Here Lies Love”, walking The High Line on a beautiful autumn morning and marvelling at the art in the Whitney Museum of American Art, especially the highly detailed work of Ruth Asawa.
The hotel wasn’t the star, New York was and so I was happy enough with the supporting cast member.
At the Diplomat in Fort Lauderdale, when I walked into my room, there was a machine blasting away – housekeeping had obviously forgotten and left it behind. Having never seen one like it before, I later deduced it was an ozone machine, designed to get rid of the really strong stench of stale ganja in the room.
As it was either suffocation by ozone or ganja, I asked for a change in room. At reception, when I told them about the machine, the front desk staff said, “You should have called housekeeping immediately to ask them to remove it.”
Without getting too deep into the ensuing conversation that followed, I was given a new room card. After packing up from the old room, I went to the new one and found the key card didn’t work. I called reception and was told some other staff had given the room to another guest, in the interim, leaving me stranded between rooms.
Eventually I got a new room.
It is baffling to me that in a hotel, where I’ve stayed at least three times, each time to attend the Phocuswright conference, I remain anonymous to them and worse, the experience gets, yes, worse each time. They blame it on lack of staff. I think it’s something else.
In Bangkok, I stayed at the Amari Bangkok (formerly Amari Watergate). Here, there’s no lack of staff – they are polite, gracious and eager-to-please. I am there for the Hotelbeds MarketHub Asia conference and clearly, the team is on high alert to please everyone, wearing a badge.
But tech is the letdown here. For some reason, they’ve installed those lifts usually used in office buildings, which are controlled by floors, not by humans. On check-in, one of the staff wanted to show me to my room, so he took my key card to “inform” the motherboard, but by the time he did that, the car I was in with another guest decided it was time to go up – leaving him outside with my key card and me inside without any means of pressing any buttons to get off.
Stranded in Elevator Limbo Land, I got out with the other guest, went down to the lobby in search of the staff and my key card.
Quite comedic really.
It’s not comedic though when you have over 400 conference delegates wanting to rush to their rooms during the breaks or before and after the event, and the elevators run the show, not the humans. Humans are then needed to resolve the situation because tech has become the barrier, not the enabler.
At a panel at Phocuswright, deliberating the mix of human and tech in product design, I asked Schubert Lou, CTO of Trip.com Group, what’s the human quality needed most in product design these days, and he responded with “empathetic design” – to design for what cannot be articulated, which I deduce to mean the ability to read between the lines and to hear what is not said.
And on the same panel, Fahd Hamidaddin, CEO of Saudi Tourism Authority, said, “Tech is for the expected, human is for the unexpected.”
I’d like to add – humans should control the tech, not the other way round.