Discussing the Book "Generations" for Hospitality | with Neil Foster
GAIN Momentum episode #029 - Discussing the Book "Generations" for Hospitality | with Neil Foster
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Adam Mogelonsky: Welcome to the Gain Momentum podcast, focusing on senior lessons in hospitality, travel, food service, and technology. Today, we have a special episode where I'm joined by my co host and discussion partner, Neil Foster. Neil, how are you?
Neil Foster: Yeah, doing great, Adam. How are you doing? Oh,
Adam Mogelonsky: Doing fantastic. Today, what we're going to be discussing is we're discussing a book. called Generations. I'm pulling the title up in front here, and it's a 500 page tome. But what this book is essentially doing, the book is by Jean Twenge, this book is trying to highlight generational differences and mindset changes over the decades, going back to as early as around the 1950s.
And talk about how those differences during one's formu formulative years, formative years, there's the word term, formative years helps to shape their beliefs, their behavior. And this has powerful implications for the hotel products that we serve to these guests and how we approach them as their lodging and accommodation options.
So the first topic that we're going to be diving into here is the whole idea of the slow life strategy, something that's put forward in the book, where in a general sense, to sum it up in five words, 50 is the new 30, which is to say that people, due to a variety of factors, including the optionality, what's available for them for their careers and subject to specialization, people are marrying later, having kids later, buying their first homes later, entering the workforce later, going on to second careers.
Jumping ship and thinking more about society in an individualistic manner. So with that, we're going to dive in and, uh, Neil, I believe you wanted to start things off here to talk about this slow life strategy and the generations as they're going ahead.
Neil Foster: thank you very much. And that's a great overview. Actually, I'd like to begin by getting a bit more comfortable. And this is part of the paradox of Generation X. When I started in the workforce, it was a norm to wear ties. Nowadays, it's really hard to figure out how to present yourself. And this is one of the interesting elements of some of the cross generational understanding. Is presentation norms looking to come across as authentic, trying to be comfortable, dealing with some of the differences between too much structure, not enough structure, and I think this is kind of what's taken us to where we are today in the premise of Jean Twenge's book. Jean Twenge paints a picture that's almost a cry for help. When you consider how over the years, there's been a, a slightly, a gradually morphing, uh, view on, on the importance of different elements of our day to day life. And I guess to, to start off with a quote that connects us with technology. Uh, which is one of the primary themes of, the slow life and the evolution of our generational, trend towards slow living. So the quote is, uh, we become what we behold and we shape our tools and then our tools shape us. The interesting thing about this quote is if you look it up, look it up online, it's attributed to the great Marshall McLuhan. Who is, happens to be Canadian from Toronto, just like, uh, like Adam, uh, and he's a very famous cultural theorist. But, the quote, in fact, is from Father John Kalkin, who was a professor of communications at Fordham University in 1967. And the reason that there's an irony there is that one, the tool that I'm referring to that all of us use on a daily basis is the internet. And we search for information with the internet.
We assume that some information Uh, the information by and large that we search for, uh, is correct. but the internet does have the danger of taking us down, the path of misinformation. So just, just sort of quickly, uh, backing up a little bit and, and to articulate a little bit further, further to, your perspective, Adam, on, on the slow life and, and fast life.
So the slow life was defined by, uh, lower birth rates or is defined by lower birth rates, slower development, more resources and care put into each child. Uh, where kids do fewer things on their own, teens being less independent, young adults postponing milestones, like, and you mentioned earlier, things like marriage and, uh, various other big activities. and I guess when you look at some of the specific technologies that have led us down this path, we have birth control, we have modern medical care, uh, labor saving devices, things that help us to, uh, to stay longer, uh, and don't wear us out quite as quickly, uh, knowledge, the knowledge based economy, and more education connected to it. and of course, uh, well, I guess you then have technology, individualism, which are both products of the slower life. Uh, fast life by contrast is, uh, how we lived, in years and years ago. you could argue in, in the Stone Age. Uh, Fast Life, which, uh, which was about getting around the risk of death, which was higher for babies and adults, and really basically procreating, to hedge against the risk of death and the adversity from it. so you would have more children for farm labor, education would, only be as much as was needed in order to fulfill those basic responsibilities, and, um, you'd basically wear yourself out by age 45 and, uh, death into your 60s. So here we are in this very strange chapter in civilization, where we live these long lives, we're able to almost self actualize in some ways, that we, we've put a huge emphasis on higher education. But the question is, why are we less happy, or it seems that our happiness index over time, as Jean Twench has articulated, has deteriorated over a period of time. Addictions have been on the rise. a general sense of self has, been sort of changing over the years. So I guess here we are now, the newest generation being Generation Z. And I guess tying it all together, here we are in this industry of hospitality, which is based on trust. It's based on authenticity. It's based on presenting yourself a certain way, as I did earlier with my, my tie. all of these things are bedrock in the industry that, that we're centered in, uh, but how do some of these trends uproot the feelings of trust and connection that our guests and stakeholders want to find with us.
Adam Mogelonsky: So let's go back to what the opportunity might be for hotel brands with this slow life strategy, knowing that 50 is the new 30. How do you think, Neil, that marketing might be affected by this, where you have a hotel brand that wants to position itself for the gener all generations, all people. how does marketing get affected by that?
Do you have any ideas?
Neil Foster: That's a great question, and I'm sure you've got some great
ideas and perspectives of your own. and coming back now to our friend Marshall McLuhan, who didn't get credit on my opening quote, but he will get credit on something that is really relevant in the realm of marketing, which is the medium is the message.
Uh, Marshall McLuhan argues that there's a symbiotic relationship between the medium and the message itself.
And here we are now living in, a world where there are almost unlimited media channels. And so part of the message when you're marketing through the TikTok medium, you're marketing through SMS, you're marketing through emails, that all of these, that market segmentation could be a function of, you know, of some of media strategy is very different than it might've been a generation ago. And so now you have a very different view of, the marketing profession and the marketing world, that you might've had before. the order of all of this has been completely disrupted, and it seems to be really a, a, a techno, a technocratic, uh, realm at this point that you don't really have print media the same way that you did before. technology is, is very much a, uh, very much part of this, this marketing riddle. what are, and I guess just touching on that a little bit. when I first started out in the industry, my first job as the EDP manager for a little 300 room Weston, I answered, An ad in the newspaper. It was the London Free Press, which I read on a daily basis. And there was a little ad in the classified section looking for somebody to manage technology for a 300 room hotel in London, Ontario.
I answered that ad. I dropped off a resume. There was no email address at the time to submit an application, let alone the whole application planning process. So to find somebody like me, ironically, somebody who was sought out to lead technology, that it was a very archaic process to find people like me. Now, the interesting thing, is that, that that strategy is really caught up and you could, safely conclude that, that you're able to find the right people by choosing a medium that you're unlikely to find confusion. So in, in other, in other words, if you're looking for. somebody in, in the Generation Z, uh, demographic, and you're trying to find, an influencer or, or, or somebody with, video characteristics, and you find, you use that medium, and you're unlikely to find anybody in the silent generation to, uh, to, to be attracted within that medium.
So this is my own sort of,
uh, simple observation over the years, uh, would love to hear your own perspective on, uh, your earliest, uh, feelings about, the different media channels, which ones, uh, you, you first recalled as being important and how those have morphed over the years.
Adam Mogelonsky: I am a millennial, so I've seen the rise of Facebook into Instagram into TikTok. I'm not on TikTok. I don't keep Instagram or Facebook on my phone because I'm sort of a digital minimalist, and here I am recording a podcast. But I've seen the rise of that, and I do know that Statistically, if you want to target boomers and the silent generation, you have to be on Facebook, and that the pandemic, because of the social distancing that happened, it forced a lot of boomers and silent generation people to get caught up to speed.
with various technologies, mostly how to use Facebook and how to use video conferencing. So there is a lot of techno literacy that's happened in the past four years simply by by threat of isolation that happened from the, uh, from the pandemic. But what I want to talk about Going away from just the medium is the message onto this whole idea of individualism and how people really this whole idea of identity and uniqueness, we could call up some specific statistics from the book, but that really started with the boomers.
And it's just gotten more and more with each generation. So even though each generation, and now we have terms like snowflake and, you know, derogatory terms, but really, the whole idea of thinking as yourself, that started with the boomers. So if you think about the messaging of a hotel, And how different hotels really try to make their products unique through service, amenities, interior design, great restaurant concepts.
If you target the messaging properly across different mediums, you can effectively reach boomers as well as Gen Zers and the two generations in between.
Neil Foster: That's a really, really interesting perspective and, uh, the one thing that social media has really enabled is the ability to divide and conquer. So you can have a media campaign that basically isolates these different groups. and hands them maybe slightly different messaging. What I find really interesting is the VR headsets, which are just emerging at the moment.
So with, with Apple's recent release of this 3, 000 headset,
imagine the possibility of having a unique message that nobody else can hear or see. So you put on a headset and it authenticates you through your retina scan. And this is, this is the only way that you're able to enable this device. to share content with you and of course you're in your own little bubble. From a marketing standpoint it is absolutely, it's an incredible tool to be able to divide and conquer and to look at the individuals as individuals and to deliver unique and individual messages that nobody else is able to see quite the same way. And if you couple this medium uh, with the engine of, uh, of, uh, AGI. you're able to, find simplicity in what, what, what would other be a very complicated process in, coming up with, uh, sort of all of these different tentacles to your marketing strategy and to basically lay out a campaign that hits all of your key demographics with very specific messaging. that doesn't overlap necessarily, uh, or, or, counter, uh, that isn't sort of counteracting some of the other, uh, interesting market segments that you're focused on. So I guess the, the future of marketing is, is really interesting and the, the medium and the technology is really enabling communication. business, service at a whole different level. it's fascinating, but terrifying at the same time.
Adam Mogelonsky: so moving into our second topic here where we've discussed the slow life strategy in a general sense, people are taking longer to mature, they're becoming more individualistic. Let's focus that just on the Baby Boomers, which is the first generation in the book that's discussed and it gets about a hundred pages.
On The Baby Boomers, just discussing the key influences in their life and where they're headed. and what they've gone through in various charts. So one thing to touch on here with the whole idea of the baby boomers is they are exiting the workforce right now, but that's also marking a profound shift in traveler behavior that's happening because this generation, even though they're exiting the workforce, they still represent half of the household wealth in the United States.
which is pretty crazy to think about where on the one hand, you could say, okay, they're going to be a little bit more spendthrift because they're not, they don't have a job to support discretionary income. Yet on the other hand, they might think, well, now I have so much more time to travel and discover the world.
Where do I want to stay? Do I want to just, um, stay in a regular Marriott or Hilton or do I want to explore? Uh, one of their, you know, curio or autograph or tapestry collection, one of their more independent brands and use up my points.
Neil Foster: the Boomer generation is, is really a fascinating generation. they're probably the most dynamic generation, that Jean Twenge certainly outlines in, in terms of how in the early years, the Boomer generation was about rebellion, about Paving their own way, the advent of birth control and having more control over one's, uh, one's destiny. there was a bit of a flip later where the idea of peace and love changed and it was a case of, uh, going to school, getting that, attaining the higher education. Uh, moving into dual income households where the, both the, the man and the woman, could achieve their ideals. and really sort of work hard, establish some, some savings, uh, buy houses and assets. and so this was a really interesting and ultimately a successful generation. And as this generation is retiring, they realize, you know, Uh, perhaps by and large that, they've missed out on, on a lot of, of life and life's experiences because the demand of the corporate ladder was all about putting in long hours and, with both, the man and the woman working in, in the nuclear family that it was, you know, Uh, really hard to, to have that, that sense of recreation in the same way that maybe previous, uh, generations before it. and so now it seems that, that all of the savings that otherwise might be spent on recreation are gone. Uh, are there to, to really enjoy life, and with that, slow life strategy, that the boomers are, sort of embarked on, that it's really about, um, it's about having those experiences, having the cake and eat it too, that you worked a long, a long career. made a lot of, prosperity and, and success career wise, and it's a matter of, trying to sort of live a, an authentic life. So all of these experiences that are available are really, really a perfect fit for, uh, for this demographic. And it seems like the industry has responded. Uh, there are, uh, bigger and bigger cruise ships that are out there.
there are more experiences that are being developed. And really, this is a great silver lining that our industry has been able to respond to. And, and it's a fun side of well, I, I guess what, when you consider all, all of the different options to spend your money on, being able to spend your money on experiences and, uh, enjoying a quality of life is something that we can, uh, stake a claim to collectively as an industry.
So there's a lot of fun potential there.
Adam Mogelonsky: \ Well, just to pull on a thread, there's more cruise ships, I'd also say there's more, there's more cruise ship brands that are offering more intimate cruising experiences. two that immediately come to mind, or three I should say, is the Virgin, Virgin Cruises, and the Ritz-Carlton ones that's launching, and the Amman Cruises as well, or the, the Amman, selling journeys At the luxury those are that we've learned during the to put this in the focus the phrase that I'm reminded of, and this is called the silver tsunami. Just to put this into focus, I will list off some statistics for everyone here, just to give a proper framework to the marketing and revenue opportunity for hotels.
So, according to the U.S Census Bureau. In 2020, 35 of U.S citizens are over 65 that's 2020, which is 111 million people, with over 10,000 baby boomers turning 65 every single day. Where the silver tsunami comes in is that by 2035, people over the age of 65 will outnumber people under the age of 18 in the U.S And the U.S is often lagging behind in this eldership pyramid behind other advanced economies like those in Western Europe, Japan, and South Korea. Now, when we tie this in, this idea of the Silver Tsunami, that people that are silver haired are going to be a dominant factor, not just in spending power, but in sheer population size in a very short amount of time, tying this together with the idea of individualism is two other statistics to call to mind, which is when they survey Older people, and I don't even like using that term, older people.
When they survey people over the age of 75, only 35 percent of them consider themselves to be old. That's number one. So only one in three people that are classically defined as old consider themselves to be old. Consider that with how you market, market and target these people and the on site features you set up for elderly people.
Then number two, 73 percent of people aged 75 or older feel patronized by companies. so much for joining me today, and I'll see you in the next video. You see that there's this huge gap in the market where there's going to be more people due to a variety of factors that are going to be older. And of course, we can't ignore medical advances.
And what I call the longevity revolution is People just living longer and sticking around and wanting to enjoy the world. So you have more people that are older and want to travel, want to see the world, and more individualism as well, where they really feel as though they are unique. Little, little birds and they want to experience, uh, the world in different ways and have different types of hospitality that appeal to who they are as a person, not just defined by how old they are.
So psychographic, trumping, demographic, and Neil, throwing this back to you, is lensing this through. The boomers, what hotel brands do you think are excelling at targeting this generation as an example of success? And number two is, from a technology standpoint, how can we excel at helping people of this generation to have a better hotel experience?
Neil Foster: Really great questions, and I guess without sort of getting into naming any specific brands, that may be, may be doing better or, or worse, I think really this is the golden opportunity for all of the brands to take note and to understand the, uh, the problem as you've articulated. So, This slow life strategy, although it's sort of, it's affected Generation Z the most profoundly, the introduction of the technology has, has immersed itself into all of our lives.
And so the, the boomers, uh, that may have lived in, in a much more conformist, lifestyle, and myself as a Gen Z that lived in a more conformist lifestyle in some respects, are feeling somewhat liberate, liberated by, by the new norms that. Hey, if we can, if we can live the way that we want to live and there are no, uh, no forces that sort of confine us to, sort of subscribing to whatever the, the collectivist perspective is, then great, you know, we'll, we'll have our cake and eat it too and figure out how to, how to have what we want. Now, I guess this is a double edged sword, because on the one hand, I would argue that too much choice is not good for us. I say this having lived on a really remote island in the South Atlantic Ocean, where, there were a handful, there were, there were less, uh, grocery stores than there were houses of faith. Uh, you could count them on two hands, and, uh, often there were only One brand of whatever, one or two brands of whatever it was that, that you wanted or needed. At first, it seemed like an inconvenience. Where's my Heinz ketchup? Or where's my, you know, this or that? But eventually you realize that it's actually a strength to have a little bit more focus.
So when you're too overwhelmed, the old, term analysis through, or paralysis through analysis, is maybe what has caused the slow life in some ways. That in the absence of structure, in the absence of limits, uh, that it makes it easy to become overwhelmed with options. So the baby boomer generation, I, I think that there's sort of, um, there's almost a contradiction there in the sense that the baby boomer generation is not fully immersed in technology and to truly have everything that you want means that you've got to be adept to all the different media channels that might allow you to have all of the different things that you might want. But I think as with any generation, there are some technologies that come more readily to the younger generations than they do to the older generations. So whether you like it or not, that there's some stratification that's happening. And as you've described, that the older generations feel that they're being talked down to or that there's a condescending side to the way that they're being marketed to. That maybe this speaks to two things, that it speaks to sort of a misunderstanding within the technologies, that, uh, that there's an expectation, perhaps maybe an unfair expectation, that everybody is equally adept to all of the technologies that are out there that are mainstream at the moment. But maybe more importantly, that there's a failure for the generations to truly understand each other and what's important to each other. as a way of counteracting this, I would say that hotel companies that are serious, about delivering value, firstly, you need to understand the market segments that are interesting to you. That question might not be universal, it might not be the same for all brands. And I feel that by having more focus, and some brands are extremely good at being focused and even saying, no, we're not for you, if, if you don't know how to use a computer, you're not going to be able to book a room at one of our hotels. And we're probably not for you. There's something admirable about having that, uh, that sense of, of decisiveness as a business to say, this is, uh, this is how we're going to be focused on market segmentation. And the real strength is in allowing businesses to become, as they become more focused, they become really, really great at serving to the needs of all of their, of their targeted market segments.
Thank you. Now, by contrast, if you're, uh, of the philosophy that I'm going to be everything to everyone, it's going to be extremely hard to reconcile some of these generational gaps when it comes to the differences in preference. the differences in expectations and ultimately it's a good course to set one up for failure. I would argue that at the moment that there may be some brands or sub brands out there that have failed in their their ability to find focus and to really do one thing really great. So, maybe it's a long, long winded way of answering the question, Adam, that, really the, the great strength is in being able to use precision marketing to be more focused, to understand exactly who your target demographic is and what means something to them, and maybe this is a realm that you're intimately familiar with. If I was a brand that's looking to focus on the boomers, That are leaving the workforce, that are living part of the slow life, meaning that, that their last chapter of life, that they want to live well, they want to live healthy. Wellness would be an integral part of the business philosophy of a hospitality company really looking to, to cater to the needs of, of that group, that demographic. And I would argue that maybe one of the, uh, The underutilized elements to, um, so if hospitality is about care and it's about trust, wellness is something that can apply to all of our demographics, including the Gen Zs that may be struggling with mental health and anxiety. a hospitality environment could be a perfect escape from all of that, including, and this may sound really weird coming from a guy that's made his bread and butter from technology and hospitality over the years, but imagine you have a hotel where some of the rooms Block the Wi Fi signal, and you're basically marketing your service offering to a group of guests that are looking to be disconnected for a little while. Maybe it's an urban hotel. Maybe it's some, maybe it's a hotel that caters to people that are local to the market even. So how can we find curiosity? How can we find playful thinking and hyper focus when it comes to, as an industry, trying to understand what means something to our customers? to our different demographics and really being laser focused in our ability to deliver. What are your thoughts? Is it crazy to think that you could have a hotel without good Wi Fi for guests?
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah, I mean, uh, let's, let's not go into the wellness, uh, research that's being done on the effects of Wi Fi, and, uh, LTE and, and 5G signaling on brainwave patterns. Let's, let's not go into that. That's about 20 years away from being, uh, having any sort of, full research to say one way or another, whether there is a negative effect of all these.
signals going through our brain. But I look at it a little bit through the inside out. So there's a huge problem right now which with analysis, analysis, paralysis. You go on to the average the average customer doesn't know hotels, they go on to Expedia. And they see a bunch of names, and they don't know any of these brands, they don't know what makes them unique, what all their services are, and they just, they end up reverting to price and location, and those are always going to be the large factors for some people.
That's heads and beds, that's lodging. But to truly stand out, I've always found that with hospitality, it is care, it is design, it is sense of community, it's also soul. Which is to say, what if you were to, if you were to throw a dart on the board of what your brand could stand for, what is that one thing that it is that is your core?
And you start from there, your, your soul, and then, and then you say, okay, we understand that there's a market gap with boomers. With Gen X, with with whomever, how does our soul, our brand, our mission, how does that translate to this generation? How can we make adjustments in our messaging as well as perhaps in our amenities and our service delivery to better cater to this generation.
So one term that is being thrown around now with boomers, we know boomers don't like to be patronized. We know that they don't consider themselves to be old. That's what the statistics showed. Now there's something called stealth design, which is to say, okay, they don't like to be patronized, but their eyes are failing them.
People are getting a bunch of eye, eye diseases, macular degeneration, myopia, presbyopia, pick your, pick your poison, your eyes degrade over time. So, the going thing with design would say, okay, you need to make the buttons bigger, you need to do all these things, and then you end up with something that's so god awful in its look and feel that not even boomers would like to use it, and you've alienated not only your target audience with that feature, the boomers, but also everyone below the line.
Uh, as well, who's younger. So, this term stealth design is basically saying, okay, we have to find a happy medium between acknowledging that there are possibly physical or mental constraints that come in with stealth design. with aging populations, but at the same time, we have to do it in a respectful way that honors these people and treats them like individuals and like these lifelong learners and really experiential creatures that are coming into our hotels.
So, that's one thought to throw at you with the whole idea of baby boomers, stealth design and how that translates in. And going to that even further is the need for more ADA compliant products. And you think there is, as people live longer, they still want to travel, but they may be slightly. impaired in their mobility or their eyesight or their hearing.
And this is another growth opportunity where a lot of hotels, they say they're compliant on paper, but they may have slipped during the past renovation or done some upgrade. And they're slightly out when it comes to being fully ADA compliant, and also they maybe don't have enough room inventory that are in these.
So, Neil, going back to you is no understanding that there's this silver tsunami is here, it's going to keep getting bigger, the storm is brewing, and as well, this comes along with it with an increased demand for ADA rooms. Do you think there's an opportunity for hotels to have purely a DA products or a DA forward products that are messaged with that to boomers and to the silent generation or even just as a happy medium, a full a DA floor.
Even though from a compliance perspective, you have to have rooms that are closer to the elevator.
Neil Foster: That's such an interesting question. And so, with the silver tsunami, the danger of course is trying to convince Hotel operations that in that big investment is worthwhile because it's time sensitive it seems to me that when that silver tsunami subsides then whatever investments are made for all of these different, uh, different attributes that are important to that demographic may not easily be translatable to the next generation. And we've seen this time and time
again. We're actually a little gun shy as an industry. Consider our approach to technology, that we've been trying to invest in this, invest in that. Years ago, I remember, uh, that there was a push to put, printers and fax machines and two lines in every single room. and that involved quite a bit of an investment, that you had to upgrade your PVX switch, you had to buy, you know, buy these printers and service them, put ink and everything in them. And then all of a sudden, the consumer behavior changed on a dime that, with the cell phone, now no longer did you need that extra line. and in fact, communications happen a little bit differently. So, we've always been in a situation where we've tried really, really hard to, anticipate what the needs of our guests have been. A lot of times it's been reactive, and sometimes when we've been proactive, we've sort of jumped the gun a little bit and got involved with things that are, probably not of, of great use or, or scale. So I guess the, the danger is when we're considering, uh, these things, maybe there's a role of, of regulation.
So, uh, perhaps in Europe, maybe more so than, than in the States, maybe Canada, Canada may be closer to Europe in this respect, that there may be regulations that insist that there's accommodation for accessibility in this sort of thing, for those that, that have disabilities. in which case, it makes it a little bit easier to find, uh, ways to comply. Uh, but I think our industry, like any other industry, is trying to figure out how to find the most bang for the buck, whatever you're going to be investing in, uh, how's that going to translate to increased profitability? I just want to go back just a quick second to a point on, uh, so I know at the, the end of the last question, uh, I talked about rooms without Wi Fi. I actually meant something slightly different from the danger of the signals, but rather the, habit or the need to be always connected. and if there was, if there was a need to connect differently, if, If there were demographics that were sufficiently, destabilized by the constant need of being connected with technology, that an answer that our industry might be able to provide is, look, we can, we can put you in a community, where there are others, that are interested in connecting with you in ways that transcend all of the, being on the fast treadmill of, technology and all the buzzing and the beeping and. Uh, all of these different things that we're immersed in on, on a day to day basis. But just
coming back again, uh, to the idea of, of investment and trying to figure out, what's going to make sense, that we are very much in the creating an environment business. That this is what hospitality is all about. We're creating environments. And in fact, the cultures that we're creating are cultures that we're also trying to, trying to help, Well, I guess we're creating environments that are hopefully welcoming for our guests. But when you take Four Seasons as an example, and you look at the philosophy of Four Seasons, that the golden rule that you treat others the way they want to be treated, well, I guess this is a way of trying to, uh, bake empathy into our hospitality equation. And so when it comes to misunderstandings and accommodation and this sort of thing, I wonder whether Four Seasons has a philosophy of, really trying to understand as deeply as possible what makes a What makes the demographic tick? What's truly important to that demographic by being creative and asking them questions in a way that they're going to give you meaningful responses? Now, I think both of us have, have had various surveys thrown at us from hotel stays that we've been at over the years. How often are hotel surveys really effective at asking questions that really prompt us to give answers that are meaningful? What's your experience in this respect? Are you ever excited about answering a survey and do you find that questions are, pardon my pun, are they sometimes tone deaf?
Adam Mogelonsky: Well, now we're getting back to medium is the message, because if you think about it, the reason why the questions are tone deaf is because they aren't individualized. And now, with the advent or the public debut of Gen AI, you mix that with CRM data, what you know about the guests and how they've spent.
With you over time, you now can ask on a scalable level, a lot of very granular questions that are attuned to the individual. So with customer surveys, the slow life strategy, the rise of individualism speaks to people being turned off by generalistic guest surveys. How was your stay? Who cares? Not a meaningful question when you get it in an email.
But if you had a manager phone you up and say, hey, how was your stay? Whoa, the manager wants to speak with me? That's pretty cool. Or you put that through the post stay email marketing messaging system, which is to say, oh, hey, we noticed you got XYZ at the restaurant and you ordered this bottle of wine, but you didn't get dessert.
Can we ask you why you didn't feel like getting dessert right there? And with Gen AI, there's a lot of data connections to make that single question happen. But with Gen AI and with, and with putting all the pieces together, you can ask a question like that. And then you can use NLP semantic analysis to put the pieces together for what the guest types in.
And just ask them one question, just one. You don't need a star rating. Star ratings are, were a thing 10 years ago, 15 years ago. Now they're pretty useless because they don't tell you anything to improve the product. And, you know, to sort of shift gears back into Gen X and to move on here to multi generational travel to sort of talk about the next two topics is, it was found that by 2019, over 25 percent of new entrepreneurs were between 55 and 64.
Then that's up from 15 percent in 1996. Now, you think about that and you think, okay, the idea of elderpreneurship, elderpreneurship is growing. And how does that influence or open a gap for hotels? And you mentioned asking people about design features in a hotel and whether they're meaningful to them or not.
And you could start by asking them by saying, What do you want to do with your life over the next 20 years? What do you hope to accomplish? How can a hotel help with that? And one example where I see hotels potentially losing out is with the rise of working from one's laptop instead of a desktop, the advent of lighter laptops, the advent of working off tablets, working off phones.
What hotels have done is the office desk has gotten smaller. The desk space in a hotel has gotten smaller by around 25 percent over the past decade, because there's no real need to it, because people are working from their beds. And now, We bring in the latest sleep science, which shows that working from your bed isn't really the best for your health, all that blue light exposure, all that sort of stuff.
So, but then you look at that small little office desk, and it's not ergonomic, it's not conducive to doing high quality work in as short a period as time while you're traveling. So, now you think and you go back to, uh, for instance, something like an executive lounge chair with a little alligator clip on it for your, for your laptop and how that's the executive lounge chair was something that was very popular in mid century modern.
That's where it started out in the 50s and 60s. In that design trend, then it sort of fell out of fashion and you could see something like that coming back where. You don't have an office desk in your room. You don't have a landline. You don't need those things. You just have this really great lounge chair that is ideal for work from a laptop that is not on the bed.
So there's one opportunity. I'm saying it if you're a hotel brand and you're thinking about doing this, I've already looked at a few scenarios to put this in place and the proof of concept is there. The feasibility is there. People want these features if you ask them the
Neil Foster: is really interesting and the idea sort of surveying your guests is a little bit strange. I would almost argue that you want to research thoroughly your guests and the target demographics and then you build something that you figure fits with the profile that you've already researched and you're leading the way. there's something that I feel is weak about the survey process in some ways, that shows potentially some insecurity, that you're asking questions that maybe you shouldn't be asking. if there's a trusting relationship and if the incentives are aligned in the right way, uh, both for your guests and for your employees. That you'll have potentially a more organic way of getting the kinds of feedback that are meaningful to you. So, if communicate, firstly, if communications are great, uh, between your employees, if your workforce, and I know we're talking about generations and some of the demographic issues. The individualism, uh, doesn't stop at our guests. Our employees are also likely to think from an individualistic perspective. And that hurts us. That if we can't bank on the synergies of really interesting, really positive, really brand loving, that they love the brand that they work for, employees. We haven't got a hope of delivering anything on the service that our guests are expecting and, and that we think that we might be, trying to deliver.
So imagine the double whammy of not taking care of our employees and they're all individualistic and they don't really have any sense of empathy for, guests. They don't really under want to understand the problems when they emerge. and then after the guest checks out, we're asking them to fill out a survey for free to tell us about a disjointed experience that they've had, when maybe it's too late.
They might never stay with, with your brand again.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah, I mean, disjointed or another word would be an apathetic about the brand, where, you know, I'd say just given the dominance in the marketplace, it would be inappropriate to say, I'm never going to stay at a Marriott. I'm never going to stay at a Hilton or IHG ever again, just because, you You know, there are, oof, how many hotels do they have worldwide?
And how many conferences are you going to go to in your lifetime where you want to be right next to the convention center? So, but they may be apathetic about it, which means they're not going home and telling their friends about it, like they would an independent or a boutique property where, you know, The guests really felt the staff went out of their way to make them feel special, to make them feel like individuals.
And that only comes from having the staff be individuals themselves. And I do think there's a place for technology to help staff become more individualistic. We've talked with guests on this show in the past about reducing dashboard fatigue in terms of reducing the amount of time that the hoteliers have to spend in front of a screen so they can be more guest facing.
So it's the high touch. The no touch of technology to enable the high touch of hospitality. So that's one concept. The other concept is I am seeing various platforms emerge to enable what I call utility players, which is cross departmental role sharing, where in the past it was, okay, I'm on a track, I'm a housekeeper, I'm a custodian, I'm a front desk agent, I'm a guest service agent, I'm a runner.
I'm a, I work in the restaurant. I'm a server. Now we're seeing a lot more cross pollination and how that can feed into the individual finding themselves within the hotel, finding where they best fit. And it's almost like the opportunity there is for hotels to start re devising succession planning and making that very clear, having more mentorship within their corporate structures, and also having more internal leadership programs, where people who want to undertake a career in hospitality can enter a leadership program where they're, bounced around for two years, six months at a time, to either different locations within a brand or different departments to really learn.
All the various aspects of hotel and from there to find their best fit and to go forward within that brand that really cares about them as individuals, as well as part of their slow life, which is to say they enter one department because they needed a job and it wasn't right for them because they are individuals and they want to try something new.
So let them try new. Really enable people to cross pollinate different departments.
Neil Foster: This is, the angle that, that you've presented is really interesting, but I, I feel that there are some contradictory things about our industry. So our industry has historically had more in common with the army or, like a military structure where there's formality, there's a top down authority structure. and your boss is your boss. You do whatever it is that's expected of you. You dress a certain way. You're in a uniform, which also helps to emphasize your role. that can conflict a little bit with the idea of, the individual, that's emerged in our society. So, there are a couple of organizations, uh, well, Citizen M, has I shared a little bit about the hiring process, and it's very interesting to see that they don't always hire from the hotel industry. And maybe it's seen that having too much theoretical hospitality knowledge, Maybe it goes against the grain of being authentic, that the view is if you hire somebody with a hospitality heart versus a hospitality brain, that's going to translate potentially more towards meaningful experiences than sort of the, translation cognitively, from sort of the, the left side of the brain into something formulaic that we think is going to deliver something that feels good. So the idea, I guess, of, Finding interesting people, people that are able to connect very well with guests, trying to find technology that's not invasive, technology that, uh, that doesn't sort of hijack, uh, the people from the ability to connect with others. and so I guess when it comes to hiring individuals, that if you're able to hire individuals, you don't want to hire an individual and then clip their wings. And say, well, you know, cover all your tattoos. We don't really don't want to see you for you. and by the way, here's a uniform that you've got to wear and try and hide in the back of the house whenever you can, because we really don't want you seen with all of the guests. There's something very contradictory and unfortunate about that perspective and I'll bet you that it still happens in our industry where you have maybe a group of VIP guests and there are some misconceptions about what the expectation of that hospitality experience is. I want to go back just for a minute to, to the idea of feedback and to sort of articulate something that's interesting as a trend that our newest generation is, uh, is experiencing. Now, by way of context, when I was in school, I'll never forget this. It was partially traumatic, but really interesting for me.
There were some really high ups and some low downs, but it felt all in all a good experience. My report cards all had number grades, and to make it even more interesting, there was a column where it ranked you in your class. So our classes had on average about 25 kids. And so imagine on your report card, with your parents knowing that you were 25th in class, that you get a, a D or a C, uh, or an F, and you're 25 in class. That's frightening. It's terrifying. Basically, you are being measured with very verbose feedback. And it's something that takes you away from the you're an individual, you can be anything that you want to be in life, that you're special and everything else. It puts you in a corner where you're forced to perform.
Thank you. Now, my kids generation, and I remember the year, so grades four to, grades four onwards, we had this ranking system. Uh, my eldest is in grade seven, and there are only four classifications for performance. There's developing, there's emerging, there's, proficient, and then there's extending. So all this to say that when it comes to feedback and crafting systems that are effective for feedback, if we're sort of considering some of these demographic trends, there's That feedback, gathering feedback is going to be far more complicated in the future where there haven't been any frameworks that have been shared. Now in the business world, it's do or die. There is no, you know, it's either you're, you're in business or you're out of business. If you're in business and you're doing well, you're able to understand, uh, very, very keenly the expectations that your, clients and your customers have of you. And it's a constant struggle. So if I may, one of the. One of the missing factors, I think, that we need to take really good care of as we're constructing our business ideals and when we're thinking about our aspirations with some of the demographic trends is that a healthy struggle is not a bad thing, that to struggle, to aspire to things is not a bad thing, but I fear that in some ways that we're moving towards a set of ideals that are too politically correct, that are too vanilla, that there are too many selections. And in order to Find success that having some Darwinism is probably not a bad thing. Having some structure is probably not a bad thing. And so, this is how I would sort of, I guess, frame some of the, some of the perspectives that Being too comfortable is probably not a good thing in business, being too comfortable as an employee is probably not a good thing either, but trying to find ways to work well with each other, trying to find ways to create an incentive structures where our clients work better with, the clients work better with the businesses, that the incentives are aligned and that even employees are incentivized in ways that, uh, that force a collective output. And rather than having to have the difficult conversations and the bad news between the managers and the employees, the employees who might be fearful, try and create an environment where employees are accountable to each other. And if they're failing, it's because they're letting their colleagues down. Maybe this is something that we can construct in, within our management aspirations and trying to find ways of having less control. And pushing more control to our people to create the culture and the environment that we think is going to be meaningful to these different demographics. What are your thoughts?
I know I've jumped around a little bit, but the key themes are finding more structure is not necessarily a bad thing. Having too much ambiguity, too much political correctness, it takes away from being able to have honest feedback, which you need in order to do your best.
Adam Mogelonsky: Well, there, there's a lot of thoughts, but we're going to wrap up for the full hour. So I think you've ended on a good note here with the idea of structure and thinking about it for different generations and just the idea of slow life strategy, individualism. thinking about that and devising a strategy by generations.
So Neil, I can't thank you enough for coming on. A great full hour to discuss and to unpack a lot of these issues and how hotels can get ahead. Neil, thank you.
Neil Foster: Thank you so much. Really appreciate it, Adam. And maybe there's something that we can build upon in a future discussion. Would love that.
