Class Acts. Rachel Sherman

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СКАЧАТЬ found four factors related to recognition, personal attention, and customized service to be among the top eight factors (of eighteen) that clients said engendered loyalty to a particular hotel; 87.5 percent of clients surveyed rated “the hotel uses information from your prior stays to customize services for you” as either 6 or 7 on a 7-point scale of important factors (with a mean rating of 6.4). The factors “the staff recognizes you by name” and “the staff recognizes you when you arrive” achieved a mean score of 5.6.²⁹ Other research has identified personal attention and recognition as two of the three factors determining the choice of a hotel brand.³⁰ Marketing research reveals that affluent frequent travelers in particular look for recognition by name and, in making reservations, “a direct line to the general manager, who inquires about a recent family triumph or tragedy, as any old friend would do.”³¹

      Most guests I interviewed likewise described personal attention as important to them. Many enjoyed being called by name; Christina, a young leisure traveler, appreciatively told me that at a Four Seasons hotel the staff had remembered not only her name and her husband's but also the names of her two dogs. Tom, a business traveler, had been “dumbfounded” when his preferences were observed at another Four Seasons hotel; upon arrival, he had received plain strawberries instead of chocolate-covered ones, because on an earlier visit he had mentioned that he was “a low-fat eater.”

      Guests appreciated being distinguished from others and having their personhood acknowledged, often describing this treatment in terms of “care” and feeling “at home.” Betty, a training consultant, preferred luxury hotels because, she said, “they treat you like you're a person” and “they respect me as a person.” Adam, a retired businessman, said of himself and his wife, “We feel [being called by name is] more a guest relationship and a human thing, that you're not simply a number or a unit. You're a person who is recognized and you can have a little conversation.” Andrew, the president of a major manufacturing firm, echoed these ideas: “I think that that changes the whole equation for the entire hotel, when somebody who's at the door in the lobby—there's at least a sense of recognition. If he doesn't know your name he might say—like if you are coming back from dinner, he says, ‘Did you have a nice evening this evening,’ like he really cares, ‘I care about you as a person.’”

      By the same token, guests frequently complained if they did not get the personalized attention to which they felt they were entitled. On several occasions at both the Royal Court and the Luxury Garden, guests lamented, “No one here knows me anymore,” or asked, “What happened to everyone that knew me?” A frequent guest at the Royal Court complained that during the recent renovation “they destroyed my room.” One return guest at the Luxury Garden mentioned on a comment card that she felt “ignored” because the personalized stationery she and her husband received was always in his name.

      A few guests I interviewed, all women, said they did not care if the staff used their names or appeared interested in their lives. They spoke of being “embarrassed” when they were treated this way, and they suspected that recognition was not authentic. These guests were more likely to consider recognition facilitated by technology as less meaningful, saying, for example, “I'm sure they have it in the computer or something.” These guests cared more about the design and décor of the hotel and that the service be efficient rather than personalized. Some of them also mentioned a sense of surveillance or intrusion associated with recognition; one woman told me of a friend who was shocked when hotel staff knew something about her that she felt they could have found out only by listening in on her private conversations. Nonetheless, most of these women also said they would notice if the staff failed to provide this kind of attention, indicating that recognition was still part of their expectation of luxury service.³² (I discuss these guests further in chapter 6.)

       “They Go Out of Their Way”:Anticipation and Legitimation of Needs

      In Robert Altman's 2001 film Gosford Park, Helen Mirren's character, the head housekeeper in an English country mansion in the 1930s, says to a young lady's maid: “What gift do you think a good servant has that separates him from the others? It's the gift of anticipation. I'm a good servant. I'm better than good; I'm the best. I'm the perfect servant. I know when they'll be hungry, and the food is ready. I know when they'll be tired, and the bed is turned down. I know it before they know it themselves.”

      Workers in the luxury hotel are likewise expected to anticipate guests’ needs, a process in which the definition of “needs” expands to include what might otherwise be considered “desires.” The Ritz-Carlton's credo, for example, includes the commitment to fulfill even the guest's “unexpressed wishes and needs.” The general manager of the Peninsula Beverly Hills, Ali Kasikci, told a reporter, “Waiting for customers to tell you what they need is like driving your car by looking in the rearview mirror.”³³ Workers must be on the lookout for needs the guest might not articulate or even be aware of. Concierges, for example, stood armed with umbrellas for guests who were on their way out and might not know that it was raining. Antonio, a guest services manager at the Luxury Garden, advised me always to offer soup to guests who mentioned they were not feeling well, thereby actually creating a need rather than anticipating an existing need. Needs anticipation may also include withholding information or refraining from taking some kind of action; for example, I was cautioned not to tell a guest that he had been upgraded when the person he was traveling with had not been.

      Needs anticipation also entails reading the guest's demeanor, picking up subtle cues to predict her needs and desires. Sydney, a guest services manager at the Luxury Garden, told me, “You have to know what they want that they aren't telling you, because if you don't they won't like what you get them.” When a guest asks the concierge to recommend a restaurant, the concierge must (in addition to asking the guest about his tastes, of course) take into account factors such as where he is from, how old he is, and how sophisticated he appears, in order to increase the chances of making an appropriate choice. If the guest is older and appears unschooled in upscale dining, he may receive a reservation at a chain steakhouse; if a visitor from New York requests information on local entertainment, the concierge will not recommend the traveling version of the latest Broadway hit. In employee training sessions at the Luxury Garden, Alice, the human resources manager, encouraged workers to use visual clues to offer the guests something they might need. On one occasion she role-played a woman massaging her neck and seeming tired and another guest arriving with a crying baby, then asked what we would do to meet the needs they were not expressing verbally (the answers: offer the tired guest a place to sit down and give the mother a private space even if her room is not ready).

      Guests appreciate needs anticipation. One visitor to the Luxury Garden wrote on a comment card: “Housekeeper apparently saw cold medicine next to the rollaway bed for our 10 year old daughter and thoughtfully left an extra box of tissues! Great attention to detail!!” Herbert, a businessman in food manufacturing, recounted approvingly that after hearing that his young son was going to a baseball game, workers at an upscale hotel left cookies, milk, and a baseball hat in the room for him. Shirley, a leisure traveler, was amazed when tea was delivered unexpectedly upon her arrival at one fancy hotel:

      We'd checked into our room, and there was a knock on the door, and they brought chamomile tea and cookies. It was just those sorts of things, those unanticipated, delightful little things. You didn't even know you wanted chamomile tea, and it was the perfect thing…. I think it's a combination of anticipating your needs but doing it in a way that's sort of invisible, that doesn't draw attention to itself, that it sort of magically happens without you seeing how it happens, but it's as if they knew what you were thinking two seconds before you thought of it.

      Although these practices are known in the industry as needs anticipation, these examples demonstrate that the process also creates desires, by providing things “you didn't even know you wanted,” and then codes them as needs.

      Workers also recognize clients by responding СКАЧАТЬ