Matthijs Welle, chief executive of Mews, here discusses how customer demands during the pandemic are encouraging hotels to move away from rigid brand standards and think for themselves
Technology and service have always been seen as an either/or in the hotel sector, with the idea that the former cannot possibly help the latter and is an alternative to not having enough real-life interaction.
The brands have very rigid ideas set into their standards about how many times you must use someone’s name at check-in, how you must incant it three times in every interaction.
It has become very formulaic. They’re fine, they’re just outdated.
And they were fine when you stuck everyone behind the desk and you could control where your team was at all times, but that’s no longer what the customer wants.
We have seen this change very rapidly during the pandemic, driven by demands from guests.
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