Recently I stayed in a category of hotels that aim to
re-define the convenience / consistency / perks driven experience that
dominates mainstream travel with a highly individualised one, and which have
increasingly sprung up across all regions to cater for the supposedly ‘new’
generation of travelers.
Upon arrival I was ushered by a friendly girl in sneakers to
a self-check in terminal. At the restaurant I found a mishmash of cosy sofas
and dining tables and the menu came on an iPad. The room was a loft room with
separate lounge and sleeping areas. You know by now that I am talking about a
hotel that is from the outset targeted at the so called Millennial generation. The
experience was awful, but before I go into the details why, let’s get a clearer
idea of this much overused category: the Millennial traveller.
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| Shock, horror - Millennials are not as different as previous generations |
The Millennial Myth demystified
After a flurry of breathless predictions over the past years
on Millennials’ uniqueness in shaping every part of our lives, most industries
and commentators have now realised that Gen-Yers are – shock, horror - not
quite as different than previous generations. A recent US centric study on this
that can be found here
shows that it is more the times we live in, rather than generations themselves that
have shaped behaviour. People respond to the changes around them and according
to the report, any differences in travel behaviour between Millennials and
previous generations have more to do with the 2008 Global Financial Crisis than
with dramatic shifts in attitudes and as such are likely to be evened out as
Millennials mature.
The ascendancy of the
Lifestyle brand
If we take the Millennials out of the equation, what we are
left with is essentially ‘Lifestyle’, which as a travel category has been on
the ascendancy for quite a while. It seems that we have mistaken the
Millennials’ sheer power of numbers with our changing habits and preferences,
which are in fact inter-generational.
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| The first W hotel in New York |
We all like a little more personalisation and special
experience when we travel – who wants to stay in a hotel room that is totally
interchangeable with the one in the hotel next door if you can avoid it? It
seems to me that what used to be called a boutique hotel, which was by nature
geared towards attracting a niche, has now become a lifestyle hotel.
A quick check into the history of hotel brands shows this
very well. Ian Schrager, often referred to as single-handedly creating the boutique hotel genre, saw the
emergence of a more individualistic trend in travel three decades ago.
And the original “Lifestyle” hotel brand, W Hotels, was created as far back as
1998, a time when the term Millennials wasn’t even coined, mobile phones looked
like bricks and AltaVista reigned as the Internet search engine of choice.
The newer brands in this category such as Moxy, Aloft, Tribute,
VIB and the likes are the W’s of our times and share the corresponding design
principles pioneered all those years ago, namely high-tech amenities, communal
spaces, as well as an emphasis on the experiential and wellness. These are all
attributes that I respond to as well, and I am certainly not a Y’er. They may
all look kind of bland and same-ish, but as long as what they do is well
executed these hotel brands should do well in any demographic.
The fundamentals of
guest experience have not changed
Which brings me back to my experience at the hotel I
mentioned at the start.
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| Hipster aesthetic: bland and same-ish |
What appears to have gone wrong there was that the
owners/developers wanted to quickly jump on the Millennial bandwagon without
doing the home work. If what we are seeing today is the emergence of lifestyle
brands, not Millennial brands, it is an obvious conclusion that the
fundamentals should not have changed either, such as good customer service and
guest experience.
Is there room for improvement in the check in process?
Absolutely. But just slapping a check in kiosk in the lobby and letting the
guest do all the tedious work of typing in address details (as opposed to being
able to hand front end staff my business card so they can do it later)
translates into a terrible guest experience. That this part can be handled much
better has been proven by early adopters in the lifestyle category such as
CitizenM, that engage the guest early and thus have a complete picture at
check in that requires just a few steps by the guests themselves in order to
walk away with the room key.
And just to complete my list of complaints at that hotel: if
you do go to the length of having an iPad for ordering in the restaurant, make
sure that it actually is doing what it is supposed to do. Handing me the tablet
and warning me to ‘check the order with the server before placing it’
translates into a very expensive exercise in futility.
Last not least, just giving the appearance of ticking all
the right boxes with a contemporary design and ‘communal spaces’ is simply not
enough. A loft room may be cool and contemporary, but if it is not equipped with
enough power points and/or USB charging stations frustration will set in very
quickly. And only allowing me to access WiFi with two devices when I need
access for 3 (the average is 3.6
today and 4.3
by 2020) will make sure this hotel will disappear from my favourites list
forever.
