The Wonderful World of Free - and How it Can Work in Hotels

In the recent Hollywood comedy The Internship, a movie based on the unlikely premise of two guys on the brink of middle age landing internships at Google, there’s a scene where one of the main characters, played by Vince Vaughan, goes up to the counter at the infamous Google canteen and orders a coffee. When he asks the server how much he owes, he responds “it’s free”.

Vince Vaughan and Own Wilson in The Internship

“What about the bagel?”

“It’s free.”

“The muffin?”

“No charge.”

“The fruit?”

“It’s also free.”

It’s not a word for word transcript of how the conversation went, but the gist is there: Vince Vaughan’s character is in total awe of one of the reasons why Google has been voted one of the best companies to work at: the free food.

Free massages and other perks not withstanding, the free food canteen has become the employee-envy of choice for non-Googlers trudging to the pantry of their workplace every day to put their lunch box in the microwave.

But as said by others, the point of the canteen is not the wide variety of food that’s on offer, or that Google wants to spare its workers the daily distractions around what to eat at work. The point is the fact that, in stereotypical internet style….. it's all free.

It’s no secret that people like free stuff. Used as an adjective, Free is defined as “not under the control or in the power of another; able to act or be done as one wishes” but as an adverb it means “without cost or payment”. Combine the two - free of charge and free to consume - and you hit on something that is ingrained in our cognitive patterns which makes free stuff inherently and almost automatically attractive.

Of course, the label free is also a big fallacy and things that are offered for free almost never are. The free food and other perks at Google for example, are designed to foster employee loyalty, and I’m sure it works. There is no such thing as a free lunch, remember…

How Free can Work in Hotels

Given the powerful pull the label free has, I am surprised how little it is employed in hotels. Take movies, for example.

As I have pointed out before, the airlines have been doing a much better job with employing “Free” as marketing and branding tools by absorbing movie and other content costs in the ticket prices, meaning they are invisible to their customers.

Imagine the same customer who has watched two Hollywood movies “for free” on the plane over to Asia now checking in his hotel and discovering that the same range of movies will be charged at US$15?

In the age of BYOD, movie hit rates – specifically for Hollywood content – are suffering like never before, and fact is, that they won’t come back. So why not turn this trend into an advantage by offering Hollywood movies for free? The free-to-guest business model can be had for as little as US$5-6 per room and month (depending on the room count) which is surprisingly reasonable and can be a rounding adjustment, if absorbed in the overall room cost.

But even if not, the marketing and brand value is something not be sneered at. This kind of offering may not be for every hotel, but the hit rates for free movies in some of the more family-oriented hotels where our system has been deployed show a healthy viewership, indicating that it hits a soft spot with a certain demographic. This knowledge, if used wisely, can be a great loyalty driver.

Of course, not every feature or service can and should be free in a hotel. But a lot of hotel features move through a product life cycle that ranges from innovative to commoditised and a lot of times this matches the trajectory from chargeable to non-chargeable item.

Internet access/Wifi has already marched through this cycle and has arrived at a point where it is now expected to be free to guests. VOD is still at the beginning of the curve and hoteliers should move quickly to get the maximum brand and marketing value out of offering them for free before they, too, move to the commodity site of the cycle.

(Incidentally, I am writing this from my hotel room in Tokyo, a city where ‘free’ still seems to be a dirty word. Aside from the impossibility of finding cafes offering free wifi, my hotel initially insisted on charging me ¥2,100 (about US$20) for using the hotel pool. Only after repeated requests to explain the charges, the manager finally allowed me to ‘become a member’ which allows me free access…)

Of Thumbelinas and Indexers and what it means for technology in hotel rooms

I can’t remember just how many times I have heard hotel managers looking at in-room technology saying “but will my grandmother be able to use it?’, or “it needs to be simple, our guests are not tech savvy.”

Let me just say upfront that these are absolutely valid comments and the many stories on Tripadvisor and elsewhere of in-room technology not working proves that there is definitely danger in over-reliance on technology, let alone technology that is badly executed. But not all technology is bad technology and sometimes the brush gets applied a little too broadly, so it is worth investigating this further.

If, for example, your hotel is in a country where power outages are common (think India and Thailand for example) it is probably not a good idea to rely heavily on centrally controlled curtains, air-conditioning and lighting (generators not withstanding), lest guests get trapped in the dark.

But even in countries where continuous power is assured, technology can turn a hotel stay into a nightmare. Most often this happens when it is badly executed or simply doesn’t work, which is wholly unnecessary and risks giving technology as a whole a bad name.

But even when it works well, technology has the capacity to annoy and delight in equal measures, depending on what type of person you are. And that’s the problem: guest rooms today have to bridge an ever increasing generational gap which makes choosing what type and the level of technology a challenge. The challenge is though that it’s no longer just about thinking of guests being positioned somewhere between early adopters or laggards – the differences are much more profound.

New generations live IN technology, not just WITH it

Between those of us who were born in the 1950s or 60s and those born in the 1980s is a cultural canyon as wide as the Pacific. As French philosopher Michel Serres puts it succinctly (and as retold by Christopher Caldwell in the FT here), young people “walk among the living ruins of a culture that makes little sense to them”, with libraries, newspapers, DVDs and even hand writing rapidly losing their footing as common cultural denominators. And while older generations don’t completely forsake technology, they merely live with this technology, while the new one lives in it, which is a significant difference. Serres calls the new generation “Thumbelinas” for their thumb-driven communication habits, which I guess makes us older folks “Indexers” for we still remember using index fingers to dial the old rotary phone, the main communication vehicle of yore.

But think what you may about the information revolution (Serres, for one, thinks it’s about as significant as the invention of the Gutenberg Press), the fact is it is something that cannot be reversed and it should not be ignored by hotels or they may risk alienating their future guests. So how to make it right for all? It’s a true dilemma for hotels and does not just affect technology – although I would argue it is here that the divide is most pronounced.

One way this can be dealt with is a dual approach, where old and new sit side by side. Don’t completely remove the printed in-room dining menu. But don’t decide not to introduce an interactive in-room dining menu on your TV because you are afraid it may alienate the ‘less tech-savvy travelers’. Have both and let the guest decide what he or she prefers and then gradually phase out the paper version when you think the time is right.

Technology needs to make sense

However, I don’t believe that in-room technology should be there for the sake of it - it needs to reflect real life and/or address a need. Just as a few years ago flat screen TV adoption in the home forced hotels to replace their old CRT sets, we again need to look at where technology has moved to in the living room to get a cue on what guests may want in the future. Mobility and BYOD is one of those technologies that are here to stay, so screen mirroring is a big one that hotels should embrace sooner rather than later.

Fundamentally though, technology also needs to make sense. My washing machine does not have an in-built microwave, neither does my fridge, so why Skype should be included in an in-room entertainment system defies me. In my view, the only time Skype on the big screen makes sense is when you gather the family to have a reunion chat of sorts, which is a scenario that I would think doesn’t happen too often in a hotel room. The fundamental question every hotel should ask is before embarking on any technology upgrade is “would guests use this?”