Indifference kills

Posted by Allan Tear on May 30, 2007

Scott Williams, Chief Creative Officer for Starwood, has a television-trained eye for a story. But what he has learned at Starwood, a collection of well-known hotel brands including Westin, W and Aloft, is that the customer tells the best and most authentic story. Starwood leverages customer observation to learn what customers want (or don't want), and then gives it to them.

It all seems so simple when Williams shows hidden camera video from Starwood's lobbies, front desks, and valet areas. But for years - and today - hotels are stuck in what works for the hotel, and are indifferent to what works for the customer. By breaking free of this indifference, Starwood climbed over a decade from $10 behind Marriott on revenue per room to $14 ahead. The difference was grounded in design.

It all started with the Heavenly Bed. Pretty much since hotels started, hoteliers believed you couldn't have a white bed, because it doesn't hide stains. Otherwordly paisleys dominated hotel beds until Starwood introduced the Heavenly Bed, an all-white bed that screamed "clean and plush". Industry insiders called it "Barry's Folly", assuming it would be a spectacular failure for founder Barry Sternlicht and the Starwood team. But guest satisfaction immediately shot up, because guests felt that "white" meant "clean". The other hotel chains saw the light, and heavenly bed-like experiences are now standard in upscale rooms.

Since then, Starwood has continued to "execute the obvious", introducing spa shower heads, curved shower rods, and Ipod docks in their rooms. Individual hotel managers have localized their innovations. Cabs arrive with their trunks open to prevent the extra akwardness of the customer trying to open the trunk. Conference centers are designed with "swing bathrooms" in the middle of the standard Male and Female room, to account for gender imbalances and prevent queueing. Williams firmly believes that innovation in consumer services is obvious, if you just watch and listen.

Williams runs a lean design team that relies on external partnerships with market research firms (Envirosell), architects and consumer brands (Pottery Barn, Nickelodeon, Nordstrom) to come up with innovations. This both plays to their advantage - extending their brand and increasing agility - and constrains scalability. I got the impression that more work can be done in having a more purposeful experimental sandbox, where new ideas are prototyped, then introduced into a few hotels, and turned into templates for the chains. This would ensure that the "open trunks" or "swing bathroom" innovations wasn't just a good idea in a single hotel.

Williams also was upfront about today's challenges and failures. Starwood, along with other hotels, has not adjusted the role of the doorman/bellman to today's self-sufficient business traveller, who has wheels on their luggage and would prefer to pull it themselves. At the same time, lobby stairs and revolving doors present this same traveller with a dangerous and frustrating obstacle course.

Similarly, hotels have not adapted their lobbies and public spaces to the business traveller's use of the "third place" that Starbucks has mastered - the place between work and home where we meet, socialize, and decompress. Customers adapt Starwood's lobbies - the videos of forcible reconfigurations of furniture were hilarious - and show how their needs can be better and more profitably met.

Williams has these customer adaptations on tape, and I don't doubt that he's already thinking about how to "execute the obvious" by redesigning the lobby experience as well.