
Settling in at the Son Brull Hotel and Spa – one of our better 'meet and greet' experiences.
As we’re off the guidebook treadmill these days and won’t be staying in any hotels this year (read about our new project here), I thought I’d reflect upon our recent months (it’s actually years!) of hotel living.
I’ve been mulling over a few aspects of hotel service for the past few months that I will collectively call the ‘meet and greet’.
One thing that became clear on the last never-ending trip (Melbourne-Singapore-Dubai-Venice-Mallorca-Barcelona-Venice-Dubai+too-many-other-Middle-East-countries-to-mention-then Thailand) is how important it is for hotels to meet and greet their guests.
I’m not talking about Ibis-level hotels (that’s not a diss on Ibis, they serve their purpose), but generally four- and five-star hotels, boutique hotels, and resorts that claim to be a romantic getaway or destination hotel. You know, the ones where you go to get pampered and where you expect a high level of service.
Let me explain what I mean by my version of ‘meet and greet’. It’s pretty simple. When a guest arrives at the hotel, there should always be someone to meet them. At a five star, staff should open the car doors, welcome guests warmly, take their luggage from the boot without asking, and guide them to the entrance. If it’s a small boutique place with just a couple of staff, they should at least invite the guests into the hotel, then take care of the luggage and car while their checking in.
While hotel groups such as the Four Seasons, Mandarin Oriental, InterContinental, and Anantara do this so well, you’d be surprised how many times on this trip we stood wondering whether there was a fire drill on because there was nobody around when we arrived. Several times I had to ask Lara whether the hotel that we’d just pulled up at was “one of the good ones” on our list, because they could have fooled me. At one highly fancied resort we could not even find the hotel entrance and lobby. It actually didn’t have one.
Now to the ‘greet’. Anyone who has stayed in the great resorts of Thailand will know that it’s not an accident I mentioned Asia’s Anantara brand. I don’t know anyone who isn’t impressed by a typical Thai welcome* to a hotel – the traditional Thai greeting of ‘Sawadee-ka’ is quickly followed by a warm smile, a gesture to sit down and relax, a refreshing drink, and an icy cold towel. They just do it so wonderfully. In the UAE, where the tradition of Arab hospitality is highly valued, Dubai’s better five-stars greet their guests to a level approaching that of Thailand.
The ‘greet’ part of the experience is so very important and yet so many hotels don’t make guests feel welcome. Think about it for a moment. It’s mindboggling. At the very least, the lack of a warm greeting makes guests unwelcome and uncomfortable, if not suspicious, and gives their critical facilities a wake-up call. A warm welcome rewards hoteliers in the end because guests are immediately more relaxed and, in turn, more forgiving of things that might otherwise niggle at them during their stay. In other words a great ‘meet and greet’ is a no-brainer investment in the success of a stay by a guest.
So what’s going on? While I’ve noticed that there are fewer members of staff floating about hotels these days, I have not seen a reduction in prices to match the reduction in service. If you’re a five-star hotel giving me an Ibis-level greeting, we have a problem before I’ve even swiped my card to the room.
We have also noticed that staff training at anything that’s not one of the large luxury groups is hit and miss and generally reliant on the staff members’ personality or previous experience – usually at one of the large luxury hotel groups. But shouldn’t guests expect more if they’re paying Euro 200+ a night? What are your expectations when you arrive at and check into a good hotel?
* I have to make a notable exception in Thailand for The Metropolitan Bangkok, one of the worst of any ‘meet and greet’ we’ve ever had in Thailand, where trying to be ‘cool’ translates to aloof and disinterested – until they found out after check-out that we were there to review them… suddenly, there was someone to help with the luggage. Bit late unfortunately.
In Part 2 I’ll be giving examples of both good and not-so-good meet and greet experience from the last few months. Some of the bad ones do boggle the mind!
One way we gather content…
Over at Lara’s often sadly-neglected blog (we’re busy, busy, busy) there is an update of our latest work in print and online.
Lara has just posted an update of our work in print and online. Seeing these stories and photographs in print is sometimes like seeing an old friend, they take so long to get published!
One of the things that we’re often asked is how we gather materials and stories on the road. It’s all about talking to the right people and listening. We were in Doha, Qatar on a bunch of assignments and staying at the new W hotel, where we met the manager of the chic Wahm bar, Edgar Vaudeville formerly of Paris’ hip boutique hotel Costes and Sydney’s The Ivy. While chatting to him he explained how he had commissioned a new design of the sheesha pipe (otherwise known as a narghile, hubbly bubbly, hookah, water pipe – take your pick!) and as soon as we saw it Lara and I both went ‘OK, story right there!’
While I thought of the best way to shoot it – and having the handsome Edgar keen to be in the photo – Lara thumbed through her mental Rolodex of editors who would be interested. Emailed, approved and shot the next day. You couldn’t work by this method alone – but often it’s all about spotting a story that you think would be cool and having the contacts (who trust that you can pull it off!) to get it commissioned.