[Matt Landau]

IDEA: Make people feel special. The best hospitality organizations in the world do this intentionally. One way is through process: having procedural steps to ensure that every guest (not just the VIPs) feels special. Another way is through one-off decisions: individualized choices that a team member exercises to achieve the same goal.

ACTION: Ask yourself before your next interaction with a guest, "how can I make this person feel special?" If via email, consider taking the time to write a personal story relevant to the conversation. If in person, consider bringing a local treat. If on the phone, consider taking notes so that little bits of personal intel can be used during or after their stay. Take note of the gestures that seem to produce the right result. And make it standard operating procedure. Do this over time and build an organization that makes people feel special for a living.

 

[BrendaS]

Just coming off a stay in a remote mountain property managed by Vacasa and although the house was really awesome, Vacasa was terrible in terms of making us feel special to the tune of blaming the HOA for not plowing the driveway and referring us to a place 100 miles away to buy firewood. WHAT??? Although we were responded to very quickly by 10 or 11 DIFFERENT people via phone and email, we were always give generic responses and NO ONE took responsibility for anything. They did offer a $25 refund since we had to shovel the sidewalk! Did you not hear me say 2 hours shoveling a driveway upon arrival??? Infuriating and definitely NOT special.

 

[Matt Landau]

Well put, another way to look at this is "what are we doing that makes people feel NOT special?" Don't do that stuff.

 

[JamesO]

Just look at all the calories you burned doing all the shoveling? I guess Vacasa may get a kickback from the local restaurants to get the guests very hungry.....

We are all in the vacation business. Our job is to not mess up our customer's vacations. This isn't rocket science since we all have been on vacation ourselves. Manage guest expectations, then exceed them, and then get out of the way!