The
classic philosophy in hospitality goes like this: customers – whether leisure,
business, corporate group or SMERF members – require services provided by super
nice, smiling, well-trained humans.
Think the Ritz Carlton’s employees and
their little “Gold Standards” handbook that ensures above-and-beyond customer
service. After all, the reasoning goes, this is the why our industry is called
“hospitality,” because our guests supposedly
expect their hosts – the hotel staff themselves – to provide “human” services
at all touchpoints of the guest experience.
I believe
the notion that guests are demanding human-provided services is greatly
exaggerated, especially today. A great example of why guests do not care about
human-provided services as much as some in our industry think comes from the
vacation rental sector.
What can
hotels learn from vacation rentals?
In 2021,
close to a third of room nights in North America were consumed at…
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