The Tricycle of Guest Service Excellence: A Perfect Model For Remarkable Experiences
Doug Kennedy | October 4, 2024
The Art of a Great Arrival for Luxury Hotels
Adam and Larry Mogelonsky | May 22, 2024
Guest Experience
Where Are Your ‘Wow’ Moments?
Larry Mogelonsky | December 17, 2014
By Larry Mogelonsky, MBA, P. Eng. (www.lma.ca) Did you ever notice that it is the little, unexpected nuances that grab your attention? From the world of statistics comes the normal curve of outcome distribution, also known as a bell curve because of its shape on a 2D graph. This simple curve identifies that, for most circumstances, the result is going to be somewhere in the middle, the hump of the curve so to speak. That is the expected. It is the two 'tails' of the curve - those outcomes that have deviated from the standard - that standout and differentiate your property for better or for worse. Dwelling on the 'for better', it's these...
Cornell Study Finds that Loyal Sports Fans Focus on Complete Service Experience
The Center for Hospitality Research | December 17, 2014
Ithaca, NY, December 17, 2014 - The most loyal sports fans have very different expectations from first-time customers, according to a study published by the Cornell Center for Hospitality Research (CHR). The survey of more than 7,000 patrons of a major professional U.S. sport found that the most loyal customers took into account both core services (e.g., the game itself, food and beverage, and concessions) and supplementary services (e.g., parking, distances needed to travel at the event, the entrance gate) when they considered buying another ticket. By contrast, first-time customers focused mostly on the core service. The study, "It's ...
Enseo, Integrator of In-room Technologies Named Preferred Vendor for Marriott International
Enseo | December 14, 2014
Richardson, Texas - Enseo, an integrator of in-room technology services for the hospitality industry, has received preferred vendor status for Guestroom Entertainment Services for Marriott International. This includes Enseo's ground-breaking "Over-The-Top" services featuring the most popular native, streaming video applications which have received overwhelming guest acceptance at deployments at select properties of The Ritz-Carlton, JW Marriott, Edition, Marriott, Courtyard and TownePlace Suites brands. The Enseo E3® solution meets or exceeds all aspects of the Marriott television brand standards recently published. The preferred vendo...
Developing Your Sense of Departure
Larry Mogelonsky | December 10, 2014
By Larry Mogelonsky, MBA, P. Eng. (www.lma.ca) Most hoteliers intrinsically understand the concept of a sense of arrival. Broadly defined, this is that glorious moment (or what's intended to be glorious) when a guest arrives at the threshold of your establishment. The goal of this 'sense of place' is to quite literally bedazzle your arriving guest from the get-go to reaffirm their hotel selection. I am confident that most of you reading this have spent hours in planning committee meetings discussing this very topic. Your doormen are attired with distinctive uniforms designed to create a point of differentiation from the very moment a gu...
Cornell Study Highlights Customers’ Role in Service Quality
The Center for Hospitality Research | December 10, 2014
Ithaca, NY, December 10, 2014 - A new study from the Cornell Center for Hospitality Research (CHR) examines how the location or context of a service facilitates or constrains customer-employee relationships and thereby affects service dynamics. Using the cruise ship as an ad hoc laboratory, the study identifies four types of service relationships in the shipboard environment: the passenger as expert, the passenger as manager, the passenger as friend, and the passenger as a team member. As explained in the CHR report, "Managing Context to Improve Cruise Line Service Relationships," by Judi Brownell, managers can use this framework as a t...
Teach Your Guests About BAR
Larry Mogelonsky | December 3, 2014
By Larry Mogelonsky, MBA, P. Eng. (www.lma.ca) Do your guests know what BAR stands for? Not likely. Unless they have worked or are presently working in the hotel industry, chances are correctly expanding that acronym out to 'best available rate' isn't snap-your-fingers knowledge, nor is its implied meaning. In its simplest terms, best available rate ensures that the low prices for nightly room rates on third-party suppliers will be matched by the hotel when the consumer contacts with 'parity' in mind. This BAR, also known as best rate guarantee, is adeptly used by revenue managers worldwide to incentivize guests to make their reservatio...
How Location Analytics Will Help Your Hotel
Larry Mogelonsky | November 26, 2014
By Larry Mogelonsky, MBA, P. Eng. (www.lma.ca) Big Brother is coming. He knows where you are. He's tracking your every move. Despite whatever dystopian fiction you've read, seen or had nightmares about, he's actually here to help. And he doesn't go by some tyrannical, cult of personality namesake as 'Big Brother' but rather the far more innocuous title of Location Analytics (or what some call geotargeting). What is this marvel of modern science? Let me explain it in a generalized manner (which isn't necessarily the route taken by all companies involved) so we don't get bogged down in IT jargon. It all starts when a smartphone comes with...
The Power of Consistency
BWTV | November 23, 2014
by Bryan Williams One of the key factors that separates good service from truly exceptional service is Consistency. Consistency means repeatable. You are confident that a process is going to happen or someone's going to do something. Everytime. Whether it's in the morning or afternoon or evening. Or if it's a weekend or a weekday. Whether it's hot or cold outside. Or even regardless of who happens to be working that day. To drive that point home, take a look at my latest BWTV video, entitled: The Power of Consistency. It is a little over 3-minutes long, and will be a part of our ever-growing BWTV library. BWTV addresses two key pain poi...
Five Ways to Get in the Holiday Mood
Larry Mogelonsky | November 19, 2014
By Larry Mogelonsky, MBA, P. Eng. (www.lma.ca) The winter holidays (or summer holidays for those south of the equator) are a time for family gatherings, warming your feet by the fireplace and hotel promotional packages. In fact, these days it's rare to come across a property that doesn't have some enticing offer on the table for prospective holiday season travelers. In this period of hyper-competition, how do you cut through the noise? The answer is to design promotions with finely tuned messages that cater directly to people's holiday-specific desires along with a novel or adventurous component. Here are five suggestions: 1. Decadence....
World-Class Leadership: The ONE thing the best leaders do to lead a service-driven team
Bryan Williams of B.Williams Enterprise | November 18, 2014
by Bryan Williams Let's just cut through all the clutter and get right down to it. Teams that consistently give excellent service have leaders who enthusiastically talk about excellent service everyday. How often? Everyday. There is no way around it. You can have the best training sessions, videos, and recognition programs. You can even fly in the best consultants and throw the most lavish employee parties. Those things are nice, but nothing can ever replace leaders using their mouths to speak about excellence. How often? Everyday. "But I'm too busy!" "There is so much to do!" "We can't add, yet, another initiative to our plates!" That'...
DIRECTV and Guest-tek™ Announce Strategic Relationship
DIRECTV | November 13, 2014
Calgary, Alberta and El Segundo, Calif., - Nov. 13, 2014 - Guest-tek, one of the largest integrators of HD free-to-guest, IPTV, HSIA and Voice services for the hotel market and DIRECTV, one of the world's leading providers of digital television entertainment services, have formed a strategic relationship to deliver more advanced technology, expanded programming selection and cost savings to hotels across the country. As a result of this strategic relationship, hotels of all sizes will realize advantages such as savings through DIRECTV's channel rate card and upgrades to the Com2000, which delivers more features in a smaller size head-en...
Of Matchboxes and Other Hotel Freebies
Larry Mogelonsky | November 12, 2014
By Larry Mogelonsky, MBA, P. Eng. (www.lma.ca) Picture this: I'm dining out at an upscale restaurant and when the bill arrives, it comes with a branded matchbox for each person at our table. Twenty years ago, this would've been nothing out of ordinary, maybe even a slightly nicer touch over leaving a bowl of matchbooks at the entrance or on the bar. But with the declining number of smokers as well as prohibitive laws against lighting up in public establishments, complimentary matchboxes are now somewhat of a rarity. While I'm not condoning a resurgence of cigarette consumption, from a branding and marketing perspective, perhaps we gave ...
People Person: The Importance of Having the Right Person in the Right Role
Bryan Williams of B.Williams Enterprise | November 11, 2014
by Bryan Williams "I used to be a people person...but people ruined that for me." I recently read that quote, and thought it was very funny. Then, it occurred to me that there are people who actually feel that way. Yet, they have jobs that require them to serve customers all day. More specifically, some of those people are the first touchpoint for the organizations where they work. Whether they are called receptionists, greeters, hosts, hostesses or phone operators, the point is the same: The overall service experience is directly impacted by how effective that person is in his/her role. For the purpose of this article, let's call the p...
Five Reasons to Sponsor Cooking Classes
Larry Mogelonsky | November 5, 2014
By Larry Mogelonsky, MBA, P. Eng. (www.lma.ca) I haven't stumbled upon anything new by bringing up the notion of hotels offering in-house cooking classes, courses or an entire culinary teaching school. It's a well-established facet of our industry, but one that is mostly in the realm of esteemed five-star jaunts or bucolic inns with Michelin-rated restaurants. What I ponder is why more hotels don't engage in this practice. Is it exclusive to luxury providers, or is it something that any hotel could get up and running, even at the one-off, ad hoc level? Yes or no, make up your mind once we've reviewed five key advantages of this practice...
LRA Worldwide CEO Rob Rush Invited to Dean’s Distinguished Lecture Series at Cornell University
LRA Worldwide, Inc. | November 4, 2014
Horsham, PA, USA: November 4, 2014- LRA Worldwide CEO Rob Rush will participate in the Dean's Distinguished Lecture Series at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration (SHA) on campus in Ithaca, New York on November 7. Rush, Cornell Class of '77, will recount to SHA students his journey through the hospitality industry in building his company, LRA Worldwide, into the leading provider of Customer Experience Measurement services for the global hospitality as well as a number of other industries. For 85 years the Dean's Distinguished Lecture Series has been a highlight of the SHA academic program, giving students an unparalleled opportuni...
Technology Cannot Replace Face To Face Communications
Larry Mogelonsky | October 29, 2014
By Larry Mogelonsky, MBA, P. Eng. (www.lma.ca) Many would lead you to believe that face-to-face communications are a thing of past. After all, we have email, cell phones, social networks, Skype and webcams - why bother with this archaic and time-consuming medium? Working closely with the hospitality sales master David M. Brudney, ISHC (www.davidbrudney.com), I can tell you that this belief is flat out wrong. We live by relationships with the support from technology, not relationships borne from technology. Selling is not and never will be a faceless or silent pursuit. It seems all too easy to use technology as a crutch these days. And i...
Experiential Dining and the Synergy between Hotels and Restaurants
Larry Mogelonsky | October 22, 2014
By Larry Mogelonsky, MBA, P. Eng. (www.lma.ca) On the surface, every hotelier has a broad notion of how integral a hotel's F&B program can be for the guest's onsite experience. It's all about exciting the senses, igniting positive emotions and revenue, of course. That said, it's time to revitalize the hotel-restaurant connection in order to sustain F&B profitability as well as enhance ADR, RevPOR and loyalty sentiments. Aside from excellent guest service, plush guestrooms, superb amenities, consummate cleanliness and all the other indulgences you'd expect from a 'perfect' property, one of the cardinal tenets of success is to sim...
Have You Planned Your Black Friday?
Larry Mogelonsky | October 15, 2014
By Larry Mogelonsky, MBA, P. Eng. (www.lma.ca) A simple question deserves a simple answer. And if you didn't answer, "Yes!" then you better have gulped. Black Friday (and Cyber Monday that follows) are the biggest shopping days of the year and as such there's a lot of noise. Everyone is in on the action and if you can't make yourself conspicuous to consumers in a unique way, then the noise will drown you out. Think game theory. If all properties are playing the same game, then you're competing against everyone else. Differentiate yourself from herd and watch your competition dwindle. You can distinguish yourself on the promotions offere...
PolyU Study Finds Online Customer Reviews Key to Understanding Customer Satisfaction
PolyU's School of Hotel and Tourism Management | October 14, 2014
14 October 2014 - Online customer reviews can provide crucial aid to hotel managers in understanding the drivers of customer satisfaction, argue Professor Rob Law of the School of Hotel and Tourism Management (SHTM) at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and co-authors. In an article published recently, the researchers examine the content of online hotel reviews, identify the hotel features to which customers attach most importance, and highlight those features with which customers are most and least satisfied. The analysis, suggest the researchers, reveals a number of areas that hotel managers may wish to consider in the drive to "imp...
4 Levels of Service Awareness
Jana Love | October 13, 2014
By Jana Love October 13, 2014 In the service industry, awareness is a must. You have to be fully aware and fully present to give the level of service that makes people take notice and want more. Walt Disney ~ "Do what you do SO WELL that they will want to see it again and BRING THEIR FRIENDS." Chances are your customers are doing business with some of the world's finest service organizations, and because of that, your company's service experiences will be compared. So you need to ask yourself, how do we measure up in comparison? Some people come "pre-packaged" with service awareness, others can be taught the skill, and sadly there are m...
Lessons from Puerto Rico
Give More Media | October 1, 2014
by Sam Parker My family and I went to Puerto Rico for a quick vacation. When we landed, we hopped the Hertz shuttle bus to get our rental car. For one of the first times I can remember, the bus driver seemed warm and ready to serve ... enthusiastic about our upcoming visit on his island. He helped with our 8 bags, asked questions about what we were hoping to see and do, and shared his ideas on how we might best enjoy a few things. I tipped him ... something I almost never do with shuttle bus drivers because they rarely seem happy to do their job. Do you seem happy to the people you serve? How much more would you earn if you did? When we...
Enhancing Your Comfort Foods
Larry Mogelonsky | October 1, 2014
By Larry Mogelonsky, MBA, P. Eng. (www.lma.ca) We've all heard the term 'comfort food' used here and there, but many of us outside of immediate F&B circles seldom fully grasp its potential. They're soft, filling, easy to digest and hit all the right flavor notes. Comfort foods are also ones that act to directly prick our brainstems to psychologically uplift us and thereby heighten our meal satisfaction. In this way, it's no longer just a meal for sustenance's sake, but an emotional elevator carrying us to the top. There's also a salient slice of nostalgia at play; in addition to making us comfortably numb, these are foods that take ...
10 Quick Ways to Invigorate Your F&B
Larry Mogelonsky | October 1, 2014
By Larry Mogelonsky, MBA, P. Eng. (www.lma.ca) Year ago, my sister wrote a book entitled, "Everybody Eats." While not particularly useful for the average hotelier, the title stuck with me. We spend an inordinate amount of time discussing spas, fitness centers, golf courses and other peripheral components to the our hotel/resort complexes. Yet, no single facet of your operations is likely to enhance your business more than great food. Based upon my experiences, here are ten cost-effective ways to improve your F&B product. True, these may require operational changes or some new suppliers. But, by shaking up this department, you just m...
Enseo on Aggressive Growth Path with 5,000 Hotel Rooms Signed in Last Month
Enseo | September 24, 2014
Richardson, Texas – Enseo, an integrator of in-room technology services for the hospitality industry, recently completed contract agreements for more than 25 hotels totaling more than 5,000 rooms, making it the highest in-demand service among integrators of in-room technology. Installation is in progress in more than 60% of the properties with completion of 100% of the rooms expected by end of the year. Enseo's E3 Platform is an IP Over Coax solution and includes the industry's most advanced interactive program guide, Dish Network HD free-to-guest television programming package, mini-guide, Welcome channels, compendium services, and s...
