By Adam Mogelonsky, Larry Mogelonsky
Yes, the title of this article refers to the iconic book “Thinking, Fast and Slow” (2011) by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman. If you haven’t read, we would recommend, although it’s quite long and extensively cited so perhaps a quick summary is in order.
Human cognition can largely be broken down into two broad pathways. We are able to think fast in situations where we have unconscious brain connections well-established: feeling sad when seeing crying faces, getting hungry, laughing at a viscerally humorous joke on television or flinching if a snake were to suddenly drop out of the vents. We can also think slow in a more deliberate, analytical and conscious sense, like how we peruse a spreadsheet for inferences or whenever we attempt to formulate a coherent sequence of words to form a sentence like this one right here (even though the QWERTY typing itself has already been transposed through rote practice into an unconscious pathway).
It’s important for hoteliers to broadly grasp these two cognitive divisions because a guest’s perception of a hotel brand – that is, the experience – is largely determined by the emotional, ‘fast’ way of thinking.
People like one hotel experience or another, but if you ask why then they will be forced to mull it over and back-rationalize – that is, think about it slowly. This isn’t actually accurate insofar as describing the actual minute-to-minute emotions that led to the overall feeling about the brand.
How you can use this to improve is by focusing on a specific aspect of this division between fast and slow: the Peak-End Rule.
What this psychology theory dictates is that all those play-by-play sentiments that the guest unconsciously adds or subtracts into the ‘final score’ or feeling about a brand are not evenly weighed. The ‘peak’ mini-experience and the ‘end’ mini-experience are disproportionally significant. So, in a year of tight budgets, focusing on those two areas may be better than attempting to do everything.
Focus on the Departure Experience
The ‘peak’ in this rule may be more complex to define and to create, but the ‘end’ is clear as day – the check-out and departure. So much emphasis is put on the check-in experience that we may be neglecting other aspects of operations that may, psychologically speaking, have a substantial influence on how your brand is remembered, reviewed and recommended.
That’s not to say that checking in isn’t critical; great first impressions set the pace for a great stay and will buffer the peak by allowing for a higher high (a good check-in) or suppressing what maximal can ever be attained (a mediocre or bad check-in). In this sense, it works a lot like compound interest. But the human brain isn’t so simple, with the peak-end rule revealing why you must also improve the departure experience to optimize satisfaction.
Here are some thoughts:
- A proud and sincere ‘thank you’ always goes a long way
- Introduce a bit of theater into your gratitude by making it a grand team gesture
- Personal farewells from a senior manager or a team member who had extensive contact with the guest
- Departure gifts in the form of unique mementos related to the property, the brand or a specific experience that the guest partook in
- Departure gifts in the form of snacks and drinks for the road
- Refreshment beverages available during the check-out process
- Any kind of surprise and delight
- So often check-out is depressed by the transactional part of it, implying that you should aim to use technology to shift the guest folio settlement away from the physical check-out
- If the last thing you are giving a guest on check-out is their invoice, then you are leaving them on a sour note that should be avoided or masked by something else
To reiterate from the opening paragraph, a brand’s ability to curate an exceptional departure experience is further complicated by guests who want a contactless check-out, settling their folios via their phones and eschewing direct contact with the front desk. If you don’t know when guests are leaving, how do you tailor a great departure so that they leave on a positive note?
Tech to the Rescue
For the rest of 2023, integrations are allowing you to home in on the mini-experiences that are bringing down the average in the guest’s mind. Sitting with the aforementioned contactless check-out, perhaps the same technologies that facilitate the online folio settlement and check-out can also send a ping to the front office team so that they are aware of an imminent departure.
Maybe that online check-out can be equipped with a message prompting the departing guest to head somewhere to receive their gift or snacks. Or maybe the solution lies in how brands manage the post-departure aspect of the customer journey. There are lots of options to get creative.
Next, think of the departure as the end of the end, with the overall stay as the aggregate of a bunch of different experiences, each having its own peak and end. How can you map this using internal systems or hotel review platforms? This will help you look beyond the departure to build higher peaks and thus create a more positively remembered onsite experience.
In the Restaurant
On our ledgers, onsite F&B is kept separate from the rooms, but they are jumbled together in the guest’s mind. Hence, a great dining experience halos positively back onto the perception of the rooms.
Taking the peak-end rule into account, while an amuse bouche or complimentary breadbasket may come standard at your signature dining outlet, these both start off the experience rather than end it. Yes, a great start allows for a loftier zenith, but to create a lasting upbeat sentiment amongst patrons, consider, for example, a few free house-made truffles presented after the bill.
Such a small gift helps to shift the end from the check (transactional) to a sweet, thoughtful dessert (memorable). This would go over even better if you can identify beforehand whether it’s the guest’s final night at the hotel – yet another reason for better PMS-POS integrations.
Traditionally this post-meal gift is the mint’s role, but there are a few key differences between these two presentations. Truffles are far more elaborate than mints and, when combined with the made-in-house aspect, they really drive home the implication that you truly care. Next, present them after instead of alongside the bill so that the truffles are the final thought and not the dent in the guest’s wallet. It doesn’t have to be truffles per se; Greek hotels excel at crafting a strong finish with restaurants often leaving a complimentary small bottle of raki (a digestif) on the table for you to enjoy after settling up.
A whole book could be written on how hotels have gone to great lengths to create memorable peaks and pleasant endings, often without ever having heard of the peak-end rule. Beyond the restaurant, how can you apply this psychological lesson to other services? What tech can you deploy to get granular on all these mini-experiences? The point throughout is to focus on these two aspects of the hotel journey and seek out ways to elevate just one element for lasting results.
