THE HARMONY PROJECT IS A BLACK SWAN
Three sojourners stroll down a safe side street in a village they have never visited. Local music and unique aromas from a nearby kitchen draw them into a space animated by villagers energized by each other and the circumstance. The newly encountered music, aromas, conversations, and performances are fresh and enticing. The sojourners are pleasantly enveloped yet realize if by chance they encounter a villager, they know the greater meaning of the experience could be had.
Such an encounter is delightful because it is real, authentic, and meaningful. It is not staged; instead, it is routine. If the sojourners indeed chanced upon an encounter with someone they knew, such a person could be the Bridge to a greater appreciation of the milieu.
The global hospitality marketplace calls for meaningful and authentic experiences, including food, facilities, and authenticity. Some global brands have responded with consolidation and brand extension — a proliferation of new sister brands like snack food makers introducing new flavor and ingredient combinations based on the original successful product. Alas, this may be considered a corporate response.
Most new brand extensions typically focus on facility and brand impressions while leaving the attention on the brand experience under-invested. To assure deliver, it may be more effective to inverse this relationship with the brand experience to receive greater attention.
The brand experience involves more than standardized procedures, materials, and facilities. It requires an enveloped workplace culture, empirical and objective analysis, and goal setting, ideally commencing with design and pre-opening.
Before elaborating on workplace culture, lets us consider the prevailing hospitality business environment.
Substituting Competition for Innovation
There is a heightened proliferation of new hospitality brands by the global players (Marriott, Accor, IHG, Hyatt, Hilton, and others) involving consolidation while simultaneously launching confusing names and unclear identities such as Motto, Aiden, Sadie, Clarion Pointe, and Voco — a handful of the new brands announced recently. Are truly innovative concepts emerging, or is the all-inclusive buffet simply expanding?
Commoditization of the Marketplace
The quest for scale has intensified in markets dominated by a few players. Their aim for financial and geographic domination is causing apprehension for consumers. The net effect is greater competition with less innovation as resources are devoted to developing new brands and acquiring competitors.
Eight General Trends for 2021
Global hospitality brand proliferation is generally grasping at bits of prevailing trends. Eight examples include local experience, healthy & organic F&B, sustainability, wellness, personalization, smart hotels (AI, robots, VR, augmented reality), “bleisure” and direct bookings.
In line with the commoditization, key players are even commingling loyalty programs with local experience (Hyatt’s Find, Hilton’s Auction, IHG’s Access, Marriott’s Moments, Accor’s Limitless Experiences), and wellness (Hyatt’s Exhale).
Wellness has exploded beyond the spa & gym to include F&B, in-room, and neighboring amenities generally assumed to be an extension of a traveler’s existing lifestyle. In reality, the marketplace is simply catching up with the evolving demographics and preferences, yet few offer wellbeing solutions.
Meanwhile, sustainability is advancing beyond green-washing while personalization is experimenting via smart hotels and direct bookings while missing the essence of hospitality.
“Hospitality” is the relationship between a guest and a host, wherein the host receives the guest with goodwill, including the reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers. Successful operators focus on anticipatory and meaningful relationships. Louis, chevalier de Jaucourt describes hospitality as the virtue of a great soul that cares for the whole universe through the ties of humanity.
Jaucourt’s great souls are similar to permaculture — the inter-connectivity of the universe. The ecology is healthy when all its symbiotic systems are in balance. Workplace culture is strong when it too is based on methods of real interconnectivity. Procedures must include finely tuned means for incentivization, self-motivation and empowerment, life learning, indigenous visual, performing, gastronomic arts and culture, wellbeing, and outlets for creativity and individualization.
Innovative hospitality must not be a single opportunity, start/ stop, cut/past affair, but rather one that is perpetual as permaculture.
The commoditized and consolidating hospitality marketplace is hungry for such an approach chiefly because it is a seller’s market for the authentic hotelier. The more brand extensions look similar and lack clarity, the savvy sojourner, will easily spot the authentic alternative, like the friendly face within the otherwise unfamiliar encounter. Guidance, life learning, wellbeing, authenticity become a quest, an opportunity to seek out and mature rather than returning to the all-inclusive buffet.
