What hoteliers can learn from the iPad, product innovation, amenity creep and the myth that every amenity has already been invented.

Once upon a time there was an iPad
Recently, while reading about the iPad in the late Steve Jobs' biography, I started to see some parallels in the way tech companies innovate and how the hotel industry does it. Read on.

Launched not long ago, the iPad has seen great success and it has also spurred several reactive competitors that scrambled to compete with their own tablets.

Most competitors are simply playing catch up and are not succeeding for one simple reason: they are not innovating! They are not giving consumers any real reasons to consider their product vs. the iPad. They seek to distinguish their products with tech specs that most people don't understand, their prices are not any better and they are typically not as easy to use - hardly reasons to change.

How hotels are similar to the other tablet makers
Ever heard of amenity creep? it's industry speak for the ever-growing list of features and amenities that hotel brands must offer guests - and the operating costs associated with them.

It goes like this: Brand X just introduced FREE paper clips in the business center, we must innovate! I know, here's how: we will offer "eco-friendly" paper clips in our business center, and ours will be larger than the ones at Hotel X, we've innovated now let's go pat ourselves in the back.

Laughable no? Well that's just how our industry innovates. From time to time a hotel brand introduces a nifty new feature and all other brands react by implementing the same feature (amenity creep) or by marginally improving the feature in an effort to innovate (amenity creep at a higher price).

Back to the iPad competitor analogy
Competitors offering undifferentiated products don't stand a chance against the market leader whose iPad is now a synonym with tablets.

Innovation is not just about bigger, faster or with more features! is about coming up with something truly different that others cannot easily imitate.

Sure, an Apple competitor may come up with a successful tablet one of these days (likely Amazon), but you can bet that such a tablet will be successful for something other than just marginally improving on the iPad.

You may say I am oversimplifying things, that coming up with true innovation is hard, and that every hotel amenity has been invented already!
Well of course it's hard, Apple didn't come up with the iPad in a couple of weeks and it was not a cheap undertaking either, it took a lot of work and it was a huge risk.

There is room for innovation everywhere, even in the hotel industry. It just takes effort, energy, money, and most importantly the willingness to take a chance to do something great.

Innovate away, because everyone else is already offering free WiFi, cookies in the lobby, spa-inspired amenities, etc... And because the day you introduce the next handy little feature all your competitors will react and your advantage will be short lived.

Enjoy your holidays!

Arizona Tourism's censoring of social media goes against the very principles that define social media

The Premise:
A recent issue of the "Facebook Ads Newsletter" featured one of Facebook's newest advertisers, the Arizona Office of Tourism. Upon reading the article, I imagined Arizona's Facebook page would face an onslaught of negative criticism related to the recent passing of a controversial immigration law. So, naturally I clicked on the link and went to the page.

The Shock:
Initially I was surprised to see a number of lively discussions and positive testimonials from many of the page's thousands of likers (Facebook's new term for fans). Nowhere to be seen were negative posts related to their new immigration law.

Digging deeper I came across a tab titled "Rules of Engagement" where they list the kind of comments that are accepted and the kind of comments that are not accepted, including comments that criticize state legistation or comments that could possibly offend or provoke others. Furthermore, the page states that they reserve the right to delete any post at any time for any reason, and they say "but we hope that it will never be necessary."

Setting a Dangerous Precedent:
By choosing to delete any posts that are not completely pro-Arizona, the state makes a poor choice when handling a negative publicity crisis in today's increasingly transparent Internet. Furthermore, they indicate that political posts will not be tolerated but they will happily leave posts that supports the state's political stance.

Finally, the fact that they opt to censor content on the largest social media network makes it clear that rather than embracing social media, Arizona is using Facebook to force its one-sided message upon millions of Facebook users, that's not social media, that's called advertising! If Arizona is unwilling to honestly engage social media users it should just not engage them at all and put their money on magazine ads where people cannot respond.


Resources:
> The Arizona Tourism Facebook page
> Another article on this topic, by Tnooz

About the "new normal" in business travel

A friend and client recently shared with me an article from Hotel Interactive that referred to "The New Normal" in business travel.

In it, the author argues that the decline in business travel caused by the recession is likely to be permanent. It explains that the recession has forced companies to evaluate the real benefit of moving executives half way around the world at great expense just to conduct face-to-face meetings. Here's a link to the article.

My opinion...

Of course the recession has caused companies to rethink business travel, and every other expense for that matter. I myself have traveled only a fraction of the time in '09 compared to previous years, and our company has become even more streamlined than it already was.

But it would be a stretch to say that this trend represents a permanent change. Experts have been wrong in the past. Remember how a few years ago during the dot-com bubble, some experts claimed that the Internet was growing too fast and would collapse under its own weight? More recently, financial experts claimed that oil would hit $200/barrel. Both expert predictions were entirely wrong.

The economy will recover (if slowly) and people will forget and go back to their old ways... and in 10 years or so there will be another bubble, and we'll have another recession (hopefully a short one!), and another war, and the same experts will come out with similar predictions, just watch.

However I do agree with one point made in the article. The arrival of better, easier, smoother video conferencing tools could greatly reduce the need for business travel, that should be a real concern for industry players. You may not remember but the arrival of the the fax machine impacted the courier/messaging business permanently.

Want to plan for the "new normal?"

Consider this: install state-of-the-art video conferencing facilities at each hotel and market them locally… local businesses could simply drive to your hotel in Atlanta, and have a virtual meeting with their big corporate client in Seattle or London without having all the hassle and expense of traveling.

Have a great day!