This is a guest post written by Douglas Nysse, my former colleague at Kahler Slater, a global architecture and design enterprise. A firm principal and award-winning designer, Doug heads the Hospitality Team, leading our work with world-class hotel companies and luxury resorts, including The American Club, Marriott International, and Hilton Worldwide. Doug was born and bred in Wellington, New Zealand. By the age of 16, he had traveled extensively—and experienced myriad hotels and resorts—while accompanying his father, a globe-trotting executive, on his business travels.
Smart hospitality leaders know one thing for sure: a great guest experience begins with a great first impression. And according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, hotels everywhere are energizing their efforts to “dazzle guests during the first, crucial 15 minutes of their stay—or at least avoid annoying them.”
Yet great first impressions shouldn’t be confined to hotels. They should exist in every environment. This includes hospitals, schools, stadiums, retail outlets, and corporate offices. (And even this blog.)
What’s the big deal with first impressions? And why is it absolutely bloody critical to intentionally design a great one?
The first impression of a person, product, or place sets the bar for any relationship. When you raise the bar, and manage to keep it there, odds are you can build an enduring relationship with a customer. Plus, today, first impressions are even more critical because of social media. People can tweet and post Facebook updates about an experience in real time. Their first impression—good or bad—can be broadcast in an instant to hundreds or even thousands of people.
It’s been said that the first impression is the last impression. In the hotel world, one high-end executive puts it this way: “If you lose them at the beginning, it is very hard to recover. In their mind they’ve decided it is a bad hotel.”
Moreover, many customers these days are turning their backs, often literally, on human interactions and, part and parcel, having real relationships with companies. Instead, most are gravitating to self-service, whether on the Internet or at physical locations such as airport kiosks and ATM machines. A post at the Harvard Business Review Blog Network reports that “corporate leaders dramatically overestimate the extent to which their customers actually want to talk to them.”
So the question is this: as a leader, how do you consider customers’ growing preference for self-service and, at the same time, make a great first impression on a human level? You can start by understanding the importance of the “arrival experience.”
Fine hotels, in particular, have known the magnitude of the arrival experience for decades. But it’s never too late for your business, and even small things can have a big impact. Consider these three tips, all practiced by fine hotels:
Follow the 10/4 Rule. Fine hotels know the value of a warm welcome. When greeting guests, many abide by the “10/4 Rule”: make eye contact and smile at 10 feet, and verbally greet at four feet. This rule applies around the clock, whether a guest arrives at 3 p.m. (a seemingly ideal time for a hotel arrival) or at 3 a.m. (“Oh, no—another flight delay”).
Make all your offerings visible. At fine hotels, a guest can generally see all the available offerings—valet, restaurant, bar, retail shops, etc.—on the journey to his or her room. If an offering isn’t visible, such as a fitness or business center, guests will almost certainly see photos in an elevator or some other prominent place. Resorts, specifically, expand on this approach. At the Arizona Biltmore, for instance, the main drive passes the clubhouse and porte-cochere, along with an exclusive residential development. And just past the registration area are the main restaurant, the fine-dining restaurant, and the lobby bar, which spills out to the terrace, next to the retail shops, all overlooking the picturesque lawn, fountain, and mountains. (You get the picture.)
Recognize that not all experiences are created equal. Fine hotels understand that an arrival experience can vary greatly from guest to guest. Some hotel experiences are short-term, such as a business lunch at the hotel restaurant. Other experiences are medium-term—a half- or full-day at the spa or conference center, for example. And other experiences still are relatively long-term, including overnight or weeklong stays. Each arrival experience, then, is designed accordingly.
Also, keep in mind that an arrival experience can begin well before a customer steps into a physical location. It can start, for instance, with a phone call, a visit to a website, a vehicular entry, or a pedestrian access point to a building.
Now, tell me: what could fine hotels learn about first impressions from your business? I’d love to hear about it.
Douglas Nysse is a former principal at Kahler Slater, a global architecture and design enterprise. Follow the firm on Facebook and Twitter.
