Customer Journey Series, Ch. 1: Why Hotel Guest Journey Matters More Than Ever

Glenn: [00:00:00] Everybody. It’s your hospitality, friend. Glenn. With my friend Tom Luersen, President of CorralTree Hospitality. And we’re going to be focusing on a series of stories about the customer journey with Tom and a bunch of other folks within the company. But first, I want to thank our friends over at Unifocus. Unifocus, Technology that drives value to me a favor. Check them out. They make these series possible, so help them out as well. So Tom, customer journey is so essential these days and you guys are really wrapping your arms around it and kind of wrestling it to the ground. Why now? What’s the plan and how are you going to transform yourselves?

Tom: [00:00:35] Yeah, it’s as far as I’m concerned. Let’s try that again. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the number one thing that we can be doing in our properties at times. We talk in business so much about being in business and the corporatization of that with revenues and returns. We need to get back to the fundamentals of service. And so now this guest journey for us, we’re really focusing in on how can we be customized at each one of our properties. We don’t want cookie cutter Other experiences, but what we want is really exceptionally trained and developed talent, meaning our team members on site to do things that are special for the guests. If we do that, we will be far superior than the rest of the hospitality industry, and that’s where we think we can kind of make a difference.

Glenn: [00:01:27] Well, I hope you’re right and we need to make a difference in the industry, because my entire career I’ve been chasing that Valhalla, the mass personalization that understands who I am. And finally, with companies like Coral Tree, how far we’ve moved with technology and the understanding that operators really need to focus on people in order to boost revenues and create an emotional connection, this is where it really becomes important. So how do you start to think about bringing this vision to life and transform an idea into a strategic reality?

Tom: [00:01:58] Well, one is to have a plan. So the first is to create an initiative that’s not with one person, but with the entire organization of coral tree. And that has happened. It’s taken us a year. Things that take time will be more effective. So I want to be patient. And yet I’m anxious for us to be complete on this. So one was the understanding of the importance and our organization that became very easy to get to. The second one is to then develop a plan and stay to it. Reinforce. What we can’t do is what our industry does so many times roll something out and then think it’s just going to perpetuate itself. So we’ve now dedicated our resources. We’ve got people with titles of director of guest experiences that are effectively working with every one of our properties, and we’ve got metrics and measurements and ways to accomplish things. For the first time in our 50 plus year history, we created Standards of Care. These aren’t standard procedures like many other organizations have. These are standard approaches on how we can have guest interactions that are personal and customized. That’s going to take a lot of patience. We’re going to use technology and then we’re going to have high touch. That’s the part that we got to have. We got to really connect with the individual.

Glenn: [00:03:14] Well, that’s really essential. And we need to keep the humanity in hospitality, because that’s the only way that we’re all going to be successful. Plus, with consumers being so discerning, they almost are having that expectation that you should know more about me. I mean, for goodness sake, all of our devices and everywhere we go seem to know so much about us, so our hotel should too.

Tom: [00:03:32] Amen to that. So if we can find out that that Tom likes Diet Doctor Pepper, and that when he goes to sleep at night, he wants the light with one switch to turn off, and we understand his preferences. Man, can we make that guest experience exceptional to the point that the loyalty will be so deep they’ll continue to return.

Glenn: [00:03:51] And that is the whole point. Creating that emotional connection by giving the customer everything they want, plus surprises they didn’t even realize that they needed. Now, one thing I want to go on a little bit longer with you because you said you spent a year on it, and that makes sense that you spent a year thinking about it. But why did you spend a year on it?

Tom: [00:04:08] Because that’s how important it is. Yeah. If we were to just roll out that we want all of our teams to do the following things, we’re not going to get buy in. So we’ve spent times collaborating, not just having top down thinking, having collaboration with the implementers. We went to the bellman, we went to the front desk agents. We went to the concierge. We had several forums throughout the last year and all of our conferences garner their opinions and their ideas on how we can be successful. I think that investment of a year will make the long term of this be stickiness. It’s not going to go away. It’s going to be connected.

Glenn: [00:04:46] Plus, you said it’s not going to go away. So it’s a different approach. It’s you’re going to continue to have iterations for it and kind of do a continual improvement, which is kind of your theme at your annual conference this year?

Tom: [00:04:58] No. Our philosophy in everything we do is continuous improvement. So guest behaviors change. You know, what I was doing when I was in my 40s was different than my 50s. Different than now. Your experience, what you do now is going to be different at a resort versus an urban experience. If we can use data to understand you, when you go to our different types of properties, we can accommodate that need that will create you to want to come to our properties around the country.

Glenn: [00:05:26] I absolutely love it. So stay tuned for this series. We’re going to go through all the different elements that you need to know and what Coral Tree is up to. So Tom, thank you so much for being here. And thank you all for being here. Be sure to like, share and subscribe if you like this series. See you later. Take care. Bye bye.