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!
