Inspired by the principles developed in the “Service Profit Chain”, Mike Hohnen takes you through each of the steps needed to create an outstanding service business.

You will find it here on Amazon

Best!

We live in a world of abundance – there is plenty of choice everywhere. And since 2008 we have experienced significant drops in demand as consumers became more careful. The result is a widening gap between supply and demand in virtually any category you can imagine.
When that happens, many companies have a knee-jerk reaction, and the recipe is more or less always the same: initiate rigorous cost-cutting programs, reduce staff and/or services, offer discounts in many forms, and increase advertising aggressively.
This, however, is the equivalent of trying to steer and brake as your car begins to skid on black ice while going through a sharp curve.
As you hit that declining demand curve, you need to perform what at first seems like a counterintuitive move: hold your price, increase your services, improve your quality, and narrow your focus in the market.
In this book, you will not only understand why but also see how you can do that.

One that struck me in particular was the story of when Jobs returned to Apple after his years of involuntary exile. At that point in time Apple was on the ropes and the market was rapidly losing faith.

Jobs convened a product review meeting – Apple at that time had 10–15 different versions of the Mac on the market and even more in the pipeline. Jobs went to the whiteboard and drew a 2 x 2 matrix. On the one side he wrote home/professional on the other he wrote desktop/laptop. Jobs then announced: That is it – four products. A laptop for professional or home use and a desktop for professional or home use. Everything else is as from now abandoned/discontinued.

The lesson for us all of course is: focus. Decide what it is you want to do and do it well.

Trying to be all things to all people invariably results in being nothing to anybody.

We don’t yet know what is next – but we do know it will be different. One thing you can be sure of is that in the next 5 years you will see more innovation than you have experienced the past 15 years – what will that mean for your business?

The future will belong to the bold. The world of business is now so crowded that only those who have a significant and dramatically different story to tell will grab the attention of consumers.

In a world of ‘green wash’ and PR spin, authenticity will shine through. In the face of unprecedented levels of marketing spend an increasing consumer cynicism, simple recommendations from ‘consumers like us’ will carry the day. In an age when we have come to expect good levels of service and product quality as a given, only in exceptional and memorable experience will earn customer loyalty. At a time when legal loopholes and corporate caveats allow companies to wriggle out of their responsibilities, those who stand by their promises will stand out from the herd. It requires courage, conviction and imagination to be bold but the rewards can be immense.

The first paragraph from:

“BOLD – How to be brave in Business and Win”
by Shaun Smith & Andy Milligan

Need I say more ?

Almost any surface or fabric in the 2030 hotel room will be capable of electronic enhancement, whether it is scent production, acting as a visual display or speaker, or as a source of ambient sound.

Read the full article her

Interesting because for years and years the traditional banquet room has been a ‘set piece’ and precisely for that reason something one tried to avoid for anything remotely creative..

Read more trends from the article: Hotel Trends Driven by China’s Next Generation of Travellers

Ensure your property can be reached in the fastest growing sales channel, with a revenue-driving mobile website. With more than 15 million people projected to book hotel rooms on their mobile devices in 2012, the time is now.

Read the full article on Hospitalitynet

These two graphs may look quite harmless, but actually together they illustrate a dilemma that faces many hospitality and service companies today.

Diminishing returns

The blue curve illustrates the phenomenon know as diminishing returns. Well known in the sports world but also observed in the business world. In short it is the experience you have when you start out on something and relatively quickly get a sense of progress – but once you have dealt with the ‘low hanging fruit’ it gets harder and harder and you need to put in more and more effort but at the same time you are getting less and less in return.
Shaving 1/10 of a second off the world record takes a lot of work

In a big picture perspective my experience is that the service industries in general went through significant innovation and improvements up through the 90‘s but that in the 00’s we have by and large, mainly seen incremental improvements. Slightly better versions of already well known ideas. In a sense several service sectors are finding them selves in a ‘cul-de-sac’ conceptually.

Speed of Change

Opposite this, is the red curve. A model that especially Ray Kurzweil has used to draw our attention to the fact that change is not linear, slow and orderly. But change is occurring around us at an exponential speed. And if you listen to the futurists we ain’t seen noting yet. We are just at the being of this curve, on our way into the steep climb. (If you are not sure that the speed of change is exponential, try and locate a mobile phone that is 5 years old and compare it to the one you have now)

You can see a great clip with Kurzweil explaining all this here

You may even feel that you are not experiencing big changes in your own company just now – but that you are doing things in more or less the same way that you have done for a while – well then there is all the more cause for alarm because you can be sure that your clients are experiencing exponential changes in their lives – and you will not be part of their stakeholder map very soon if you do not realize that.

If you feel that things are under control – you are probably not going fast enough”
Mario Andretti (World champion racing driver)

Where is your focus?

When we look at these two graphs together – it suddenly becomes very clear that the way forward is not to put a huge effort into becoming perfect. I.e working very hard on what we already do in order to get just a little bitt better. Firstly the effort invested will probably not produce more than the famous incremental improvements, but the real danger is that after all that effort we risk getting really good at something that is no longer needed!

So ask your self: What is your focus: Perfection or Differentiation?

This post was very much inspired by this post by Seth Godin

While the fundamentals of hospitality remain steadfast, the
context wrapping around the offer of hospitality services has
changed tremendously, and it will continue to change. In looking
to the year ahead, there are any number of possible, and even
a few probable, futures that we should consider. As we do this,
it is vital that we do not ignore the forces of change around us
that are constantly molding our story of tomorrow as we write it.

In the article Chris Luebkeman asks some poignant questions that are suitable for your next future scenarios planning session :

• What if energy were free ? What if it were rationed ? Or each
individual had a personal resource account ?
• What would happen if oil hit US$ 200 per barrel ? What will
happen when carbon is taxed ?
• What if wealth continues to flow East and South ? What if
disposable income continues to disappear in the US
and Europe ?
• What will the new wave of tourists bring ? What will the
growing middle-class Indians or Chinese expect in a hotel ?
• What does a property look like that is fit for Korean
teenagers ?
• What if the « staycation » replaces the global grand tour ?

As you answer each of these questions, consider how our industry will not just survive, but thrive

About The Hotel Yearbook: The Hotel Yearbook is a uniquely forward-looking annual publication. Each year, dozens of CEOs and other senior executives from the hotel industry worldwide, as well as leading analysts and observers, use this platform to share their expectations for the coming twelve months. Each of the 70+ contributors looks specifically at his or her area of expertise, describing the likely developments for the year ahead. As a whole, The Hotel Yearbook thus offers readers a comprehensive overview of the trends and factors that will have an impact on the performance of the hotel business in the year to come – as perceived by the industry’s leaders themselves. For more information visit www.hotel-yearbook.com.

In today’s world of networked individuals, new behaviors are emerging. Some are creating new rules and systems of behavior, even within face-to-face experiences. Some are defying old patterns of beliefs.

Here are some of the questions you should be asking our house anthropologist to consider:

* What patterns of attendee behavior are you observing?
* Where are attendees congregating?
* Where are they not congregating?
* What venue and environmental pressures are shaping the attendee experience?
* What parts of your venue are attendees avoiding?
* What are attendees carrying with them to sessions?
* How are attendees communicating with each other?
* How are attendees reacting to the flow of the conference experience?
* What are attendees feeling about this experience?
* How are attendees behaving in education sessions?

This idea is further elaborated in a great post from Velvet Chainsaw Consulting here