Defining Hospitality

Dan Ryan: Hey, everybody. Just trying something out a little bit different today. Um, so one of my favorite things about doing these podcasts is I get to meet and collide with other thought leaders within our industry who have developed platforms that help us get just a little bit better each day. Um, and within hospitality could be from design, entrepreneurism culture, or even hospitality management.

So today, I'm gonna introduce you to one of these platforms, that my friend Josiah Mackenzie came up with called Hospitality Daily. It's a podcast and a newsletter. Josiah, who's also a past guest from Defining Hospitality. I think it was episode 60. I think we called that one. Surprise and Delight.

Which I think we can all get better at surprising and delighting everyone. But Josiah has built an amazing platform, this Hospitality Daily podcast. So it's, it's shorter form. So I'm gonna include, I don't know, three or four of his past or more recent episodes. Um, but really his promise is that. He wants to deliver inspiration from the best in our hospitality business.

and that really resonates with me cuz all the people I'm talking to are pretty awesome and have a lot to share and can help all of us shorten our own journeys to surprising and delighting all of our stakeholders. Um, so again, the reason for doing this is I just think that we can. Benefit from sharpening our saw a little bit and getting a little bit better each day to serve those five stakeholders as Danny Meyer, who I hope one day to have as a guest on here, likes to put it.

And actually what's interesting is stakeholders, there's five of them. And in order of importance, it's the team. It's the guests or the customers, the community, the suppliers, and then the investors. And what's interesting is, and I was actually pretty surprised by this, by putting the investors. As his last group of stakeholders in order of importance.

It sounds unusual, but if you really take care of all four that proceed it, your investors should get ample return. So without further ado, here, are excerpts from my Friend Josiah's podcast. The first one's called Don't Nickel and Dime, your Guests. that's with Tamara Mims from The Four Sisters Inns. Then we are ambassadors Marlon Smith with Hotel Enso Then. Lessons for hospitality from New York City, nightlife from Britt Morgan-Saks from the June. Then how are we providing hospitality outside the walls of our hotels byb with Christian Lundén from Nordic Choice Hotels. So everyone please enjoy, please follow and subscribe. His please follow and subscribe ours.

Um, and again, this is coming from a place of where we can all get a little bit better each and every day. Thanks.

Tamara Mims: go and stay at a four or five diamond hotel and it's going to cost you a lot, but so will the water and so will the wine and everything. Seems to be four times more, whatever you're talking about. That's

Josiah Mackenzie: Tamara Mims, president and c e o of four Sisters Inns. Whenever I stay at a Four Sister's property, I appreciate all the free amenities they provide, and it always increases my feeling of loyalty to their company.

And in today's episode, Tamara explains a little bit more about her thinking behind this strategy.

Tamara Mims: Our hotels, it can be expensive, but we always are cost conscious on that room rate to ensure that. While our expenses have increased, of course, and everything has gone up, we're trying to find that delicate balance of raising our room rates, but also a guest really does feel like there's a value to it.

We've always continued with the full breakfast, the wine and cheese, or the wine and hors d'oeuvres that we do in the afternoon. Freshly baked cookies at most locations. We don't have a charge for parking. We never charge for internet. Try to find items that don't cost us a lot, but that are like, wow, that's kind of cool.

So many of our hotels have bicycles complimentary. We're not charging for them. You're. Welcome to take it out and half the time, or most of the time it's more just how fun it sounds. Oh look, we could take bicycles out and no one's actually taking them out. So it's trying to find items like that can be really special to when someone's planning and preparing and thinking about a property.

And even when they actually do take the bicycles out, it's a nice little bonus. At Newport Beach, we have. Beach chairs and we have coolers and umbrella beach umbrellas because no one wants to travel with all that stuff, and we know you're gonna want it, and so we might as well just offer it and it's not costing us anything.

Yes, of course we purchase it, but it's, it's not, there's not an ongoing expense.

Marlon Smith: have to understand that we as hotel people, we are ambassadors to our hotel, our community, our brand, and our city. We're able to really, on a human level, one-to-one level to really tell people how we feel about our city, how we feel about our communities, how we feel about our neighborhoods. My name is Marlon Smith and I'm the general manager here at the Hotel Enzo in San Francisco.

Josiah Mackenzie: Welcome to Hospitality Daily. I'm your host, Josiah Mackenzie. I'm really excited to bring you today's story because the Hotel Enzo's opening up just down the street from my home in San Francisco. Sometimes San Francisco gets some negative press in the media, but as someone who grew up here and lives here, now I know just how beautiful the city is, and so I'm really interested in the role of hospitality for telling a more accurate story of what a place is actually like.

Here's Mar. Explaining a little bit more about his own journey to hospitality leadership and how that informs how he thinks about this today.

Marlon Smith: I think hotels are an extension of my childhood. I grew up on military bases. I'm a military kid. My father's a retired US Army. I was surrounded by lots of different cultures, ethnicities, um, age groups.

In the military world, you don't get to choose who your neighbor is, so there's no such thing as you're living in a particular neighborhood that only has one particular group of people or one particular age. So for me, being in hotels and being surrounded by so many different cultures, ethnicities, uh, it's fun for me and it is truly an extension of everything that I've had in my childhood.

Josiah Mackenzie: Alright, now that you have that context, I want you to hear Marlon explain what it looks like to be an ambassador and provide remarkable hospitality. I think it

Marlon Smith: really boils down to. Treating people as if they were coming to your home. We have a hotel. We have 131 rooms, but you have to treat every single guest as if that guest is your one and only guest.

And you have to think of their needs and the attention to their needs like you do when you bring someone to your house. Like naturally, if you see someone in your house and you think that they're cold, you're gonna ask them, are you cold? Would you like me to turn on the heater? Would you like something to drink?

But there are a number of questions that are always out there because you're always worried. How they feel and whether or not they're comfortable. And then naturally you want them to come back and that's pretty much what hospitality is. You have to be on the forefront of thinking what the guests may need.

You have to be on the forefront of actually reading body language and understanding when people may look confused or a little bit lost. My wife is a San Francisco native, and I remind her all the time that she lives in a destination city. I remind her that there are people. From all over that save up time and money to come see San Francisco.

You have to put yourself into their place. You have to think from their mindset, and you want them to have fun, just like you want to have fun whenever you go anywhere else. And so that's what it's about. I think it's understanding, empathy, and just putting yourself in other people's shoes. And from there, I think everything else works itself out because the intent is there and it's a good intent and it's a true effort that's made.

Josiah Mackenzie: I love this approach and this mentality to providing hospitality, and I asked Marlin how he hires the sort of person who can provide this kind of welcome to guests.

Marlon Smith: It's all about the conversation that we have within the interview. It's about the eye contact. It's a, it's about how this conversation feels.

I usually bring in other managers well, so that it ends up being a three person conversation because I wanna see how that person moves around the room. I wanna see their eye contact. I wanna know the things that they're interested in. I wanna know places that they've been, things that they've done for me.

A good portion of what we do in the hotel industry is learning to. And be empathetic to people's needs and situations. And so for me, it's really about the conversation that I'm able to have with the employee because they're going to have to connect with my guest on an emotional level. And if they can connect with me on an emotional level, then I'm pretty confident with them, connected with my guests later on.

We are the true ambassadors. It's one of those things where when I go on vacation with my family, let's say I'm in Hawaii, I don't remember the. Of the hotel. I don't remember the director of sales, the people that I remember, the people that I directly interact with. So it's the front desk staff. It may be the person working behind the stand at the Shave D place that I love to go to, but.

That's what we do as travelers. We go to those people and we ask those people for information, and they provide us the keys to the local experiences, not the tourist experience, but the local experience. And that is what a vacation is all about. That is what a trip is all about. When you go anywhere with your family, you want to experience something, you want to watch your kids experience something new.

So if you're in an area that doesn't have the benefits of a Japan town, this is a beautiful area for you and your kids to walk around. For five or six hours and actually get some history on Japan town and history on the culture itself, believe it or not, we open the doors and we provide new experiences for people coming to our city.

I know for me as a hospitality person, it's actually fun to talk to a person about what they want to do in this city, and they're asking me about true local stuff. We're able to. On a human level, one-to-one level to really tell people how we feel about our city. So many ways we get to be private cheerleaders almost in a way.

Josiah Mackenzie: Whether you call it being an ambassador or a cheerleader, I love this concept. It's all about anticipating what someone is going to be thinking about, what they're going to be feeling when they're thinking about visiting your city or your neighborhood, and doing all you can to anticipate their needs, provide a warm welcome to them.

This is hospitality at its best, and Marlon and his team at Hotel Enzo do a remarkable job with this. I'd love to get your take. What opportunities do you see? To be an ambassador of your city, of your neighborhood for your hospitality business, let me know. On the hospitality daily LinkedIn page.

Britt Morgan-Saks: I graduated in oh two from Harvard with a government degree, but I knew I either wanted to work in hospitality or in the music business. I was reading an article about, uh, an EL magazine, about Amy Sako and I was like, this woman's amazing. She's brilliant. Tore the article out of the magazine and I folded up and I put it in my wallet and I was like, I don't know.

I'm gonna look, meet her one day and I'm gonna try to work for this woman. And so I was definitely not cool enough to get into Bungalow eight, but one night I was with someone who was cool. And I had, you know, I've always had a lot of like chutzpah, been sort of precocious and and fearless in this way.

But I just went right up to Amy and I took the article out of my wallet and I said, I just graduated from college and I read this and I'm so inspired by you. I wanna come and work for you.

Josiah Mackenzie: That was Brit Morgan Sachs, founder of the June, who started her career working for Amy Sanko breeder and owner of the Legendary Bungalow eight in New York.

Welcome to Hospitality. I'm your host, Josiah Mackenzie. Here's Brit explaining a little bit more about what she learned from Amy in this experience and how it can guide the way that we think about providing hospitality today.

Britt Morgan-Saks: Remember, she came in one day and as most. Sort of hospitality. And this was like a big club and restaurant. And so of course our offices were in these like tiny little, you know, back of house, like one little teeny window. She come in, the Amy's like six one, she'd come into the sit down and she's like, okay, we're going to build the room tonight.

Right? And so she would sit and she would email. And this wasn't like people weren't texting. She would email sort of everyone. She's like, okay, watch. This is how we're gonna put this room together tonight. And she, I would sit with her and she would just craft emails and she would. And I was like, wow. The lesson there was like putting together a great room is everything right?

It's now we call it like curating or it's like building community. It's learning how to put together a room, whether you're an A and r, whether you're putting people together, finding new talent, whether you're a VC and you're investor and you're looking like, it's, to me, it's all the same thing, right?

It's how am I creating relationships? How am I creating value? How am I creating an environ? How am I doing this in a way that feels energetic, that is mutually beneficial, but doesn't necessarily feel transactional is a real talent, but it's also something that is just innate because you have to have a, a feeling about people, and you also have to have a feeling about the energy and the environment that you wanna create and the experience that you want people to get in being in your presence and being in other people's presence and that.

Everything, right? If you, you can have the most fabulous space, you can have the most, like, you know, fabulous people, what, whatever that means for you. And like, you know, you walk into a room and it's like dead zone and like the vibe is off and it's just like it doesn't work. Or you could be in like some dive bar in the middle of nowhere.

And, you know, it's a vibe. Like it's a thing like people are making money, drinks are pouring, you know, so it's, it really is a, it's a skill. Um, it's, it can be learned, but I do think you also just have to have innate sense of things. And I'm grateful that I have that. And I was also taught. That I think by some really amazing people, and certainly Amy is one, because I don't know if you ever went to Bungalow eight, but it was like the hard, it was the greatest.

It was the greatest place to be. Yeah. Um, and I would also say, and, and sorry if I'm going on about this, but you know, Amy also taught me something really important, big shadow to Amy soccer, but which was. It's really hard. So a lot of those times those things like are, it's hard to scale yourself. A lot of the reason people went to Bungalow is like to see Amy, right.

And to be around her because she is, she is magic and she is magnetic. And I think there are a lot of people in this business who have that same quality. Right? But it's also really, really exhausting and it's very hard to scale a. When you are the person that has to bring the magic in, be there night after night, after night after night, you, you somehow have to like, you know, whether you're hiring incredible people and building amazing team, you have to imbue your space and your business with, you know, with your magic and with your vision and with those qualities.

But, um, it has to live like beyond you. And that was something that she, that she taught. She's like, Brett, like I, I can't do this every night. Like you have to when, when, so in your trying to do this, you know, you have to do it so that it's, that you're not sort of super stretched thin and that you can't be everywhere.

You can't be there every, you have to build it bigger than you. It has to be about you, but, but bigger than you. It's doing things, you know, that feel small, but are also big. Right? And I think that that was a really important lesson.

Christian Lunden: most frequent guests are maybe spending 60 days a year with us, and that means that we have 300 days that we are not talking to even the most frequent guests. We were thinking about how can we be more relevant for more people more often. My name is Christian. I'm Vice president of Strategic Growth at Nordic Choice Hotels.

Welcome to

Josiah Mackenzie: Hospitality Daily. I'm your host, Josiah Mackenzie. If some of Christian's most frequent guests are staying with his company 60 days a year. You have to think about for the average person, they're only spending a couple days a year at hotels, so how do you expand your ability to provide hospitality beyond that?

That's what we're gonna be talking about today, and I want you to hear how Christian is thinking about providing hospitality in new creative ways, not only to guests of his hotels, but the communities in which he operates in. Here's.

Christian Lunden: I have been working in the company for many years trying to figure out new things around the hospitality and trying to see new ties with new business modules, technologies, partnerships in the way where trying to see how can we break down the walls of hotels and become something more than just something that you are traveling to and become more in your everyday.

Josiah Mackenzie: What are some of the core capabilities or opportunities that you see as a hotel company now looking to provide hospitality in new and creative ways? If

Christian Lunden: we look at our industry and our business, it's, it's not that we are just selling beds and breakfast, it's, we are creating a, an experience, something really nice.

The worst thing with hotels is that you need to check out sometime, so how can we deliver this kind of nice feeling? And this. Atmosphere and surroundings and experiences, even if you're not spending time in our hotels. So we started even earlier before the pandemic as well, trying to see how can we, uh, give these kind of services for our guests even in their own home.

So trying to bring that nice hotel feeling into our members' own home. So we started a service that we still have called Hotel Feeling. Where we actually come out and these kind of cleaning services would a plus. So you can actually order services from hotel where we come and clean. We make your, you we're bringing lemon and the bathrobes and the soaps and everything and make it feels like you are having your own little hotel in hotel room with everything connected to data in your own home.

So that kind of subscription service that we offer already. So that is one way to deliver that nice hotel feeling. But then of course there's other places. So how can we be giving this kind of hotel feeling in, in other places? I mean during work or if it's transportation or in your like, free time. So this is what we're looking into now.

How can this hotel feeling maybe become more on in, in the workplace? We see a lot of co-working places trying. More or less coping what you're doing in hotel. So why shouldn't we be able to do that as well in, in our version? So bringing a hotel feeling and that kind of extra services that, especially now where we see you work in a different way than maybe you did some years ago.

And the workplace is becoming more like a social place and then you are probably working at home when you're trying to get. Peace and quiet and it can do some real work. And when you're using the offices as some, somewhere when you can meet from your colleagues and talk and interacting in a social way.

So how can, so a lot of thoughts are around how we can spend more time in the offices. And here is a lot of thoughts around from the companies that we are working with and big companies that actually. Getting this kind of nice hotel breakfast or lunches or workouts or spa or after work, what? Whatever you can bring to the table in your offices that makes people wanna come to their offices is many things that you already see in hotels.

Josiah Mackenzie: So do you see the bigger opportunity in going into other companies offices and providing these services or inviting people to your hotels to work from the hotel? I,

Christian Lunden: I see both ways. Actually. We were, we have been at from really huge companies to look at, look into creating their environment for the new head offices.

So they see the benefits, of course, that someone with that by creating these communities and then places where people like to meet and be instead of having some corporate doing it for them. So then I think that is one possibility, but of course it's. Bringing them to us so we become more relevant as well in, in our neighborhood for people that have some good place to, to stay.

But also, we already have all the facilities, so we, maybe the gym is maybe not used that much during day, so it's better than to have someone else from the neighborhood to working in our hotels, becoming a part of, of our community. Even if you are not. It's

Josiah Mckenzie: an interesting idea because I'm actually working from a WeWork today, which has a nice, as you mentioned, social atmosphere.

It's a, it's an open community space, but hotels have amenities that WeWork does not have. And you mentioned the gym. Are there any other aspects of what you. Offer that you think present an interesting opportunity for co-working or inviting people to work from your properties. You have

Christian Lunden: the gym and those kind of obvious things.

But of course we, as we do it, we have our own headquarters in one of our hotels. We see that the benefits are like being able to offer this kind of hotel, threatened breakfast every morning makes you having a really good start, and that makes also, it's more alive in hotel and also for the employees to, to feel that they have a good start and, and little bit of a luxury, uh, services as well.

But we also see that, of course, we have all the conference rooms and facilities and news. Care people and have this kind of working environment for conferences, events, so even those kind of things with having special occasions or guest chefs or speakers or whatever could be. We used to have these kind of things for our conference guests, and it can easily be translated into normal office co-working spaces as well.

So I see a lot of benefits, but this is also something that we can collaborate with other companies with as well. We don't need to do all the things that we are talking about now by ourself. It's also, uh, very interesting to see collaborations and with other companies that could be interesting to, uh,

Josiah Mackenzie: it's interesting.

It feels there's so much opportunity, as you mentioned, everything from house cleaning to office amenities, to providing a place to work from. How do you evaluate such a wide range of opportunities and figure out which of these you're going to pursue? And.

Christian Lunden: That that is the big thing right now and many other things is if we like to expand what we are and expand the universal services and our experiences, we need to consider where we will start.

And we have started with some other things already and, but I think it's very much into trying and testing things in a smaller scale and see if it works. We are now having some hotels with room for gamers and we started in a very. Some few hotel rooms. So we saw that they were always sold out, so now we'd like to expand that.

So there are areas that we just don't know about because it's new and no one has done it, and then we don't go big for the first place. It's try, test and try it and see what succeed. Let's see. There are also areas that maybe we haven't touched into, so we see that becoming a retailer or hotel as a service, whatever, it's a lot of potential even in the retailer or e-commerce area where we.

Hotels could easily be like their, um, showroom for retailers. We are open 24 7. We have staff. We have things that you are surrounded with that you normally may not be able to test before you buy. And we have all that kind of of space as well that we see that it could be really into. Interesting to take a look at how, if you're buying a bed, then you go to a store, maybe I've tested for five minutes in our hotels, you can test it for two, one or two nights.

So it would be obviously the best place to try on and test Altern bed or then, so when would you, when you would like to buy your bed, then where would you like to go to test it up? So I, I think there is a lot of opportunities also in that space trying to deliver that kind of services for other companies to, to interact with in, in those areas.

So I, it's a lot of new areas that we could bring. Nice ceiling and hospitality into other areas that we haven't looked into before. I'm really excited

Josiah Mackenzie: about this. The hotel industry is obviously coming off of a few very difficult years, but it also seems an opportunity to expand the way that we think about ourselves as hospitality providers, right?

Not only to guests, but new ways of engaging our communi. People around us and also unlock a lot of new revenue streams, which is more important than ever.

Hospitality Daily is brought to you by hotel operations.com, by website that shows you how to empower your. To deliver results. Every Monday morning, I publish a weekly briefing that includes new case studies, research, and how to guides that I've written with input from top hotel operations leaders around the globe.

Sign up to receive this for free at hotel operations.com/newsletter. I'm also working on another project that might interest you. People often ask me what technology they should use to run their hospitality. It's hard to know which of the many different property management systems is best. Rather than answering this question myself, I want you to hear the experiences of others, so I'm creating an independent guide with and for hotel operators about this.

If you're interested, you can learn more in request early access@propertymanagementsystems.com. Again, that's one word, property management systems dot. And that's it. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it with a friend or colleague. If you have any feedback, I'd love to hear from you. You can email me editor hospitality daily.com.

Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.