Keynote: Guest Experience in the Hospitality Sector by Alec Dalton.

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EVENT INTRODUCTION:

Realizing that the Covid 19 pandemic has ravaged all industries and the Hospitality industry not being spared in this tragedy as activities have been brought to a halt because of this new normal, on the 3rd of June 2021, CX-Centric in partnership with CX-Brussels together with Freshworks hosted a very successful and befitting event on Driving growth in the Hospitality Sector through exceptional experiences in bringing out some of the most common challenges faced in this sector and some of the workable solutions which hospitality companies can make use of. It goes without saying that many organizations have struggled to stay afloat amid this pandemic, this has then forced these organizations to take their Guest Experience seriously in trying to increase their success rate. It is the Guest Experience with which the keynote speakers of this great event gave much more attention to, in their presentation.

As part of the event, we drafted out some of the key challenges in the hospitality sector in which the attendees were very much participative when it came to discussing these challenges. These challenges included:

• How can hospitality companies convey hygiene and restore confidence in safe travel?

• How can companies like Marriott prioritize tech investment to drive guest engagement?

• How can hotels entice the return of more dominant guest segments like business meetings/events?

• Being a highly competitive industry with extensive players, how can hotels compete for a share of leisure demand?

• How might Franchises communicate the value of brand affiliations and the need to deliver great experiences to preserve brand equity, to their Franchises?

This event consisted of two keynote presentations. The first part of the keynote was done by Alec Dalton and the second part was done by Sharon Head.

KEYNOTE PRESENTATION BY ALEC DALTON:

Alec is the co-founder and partner of the prestigious Hospitality Leadership Academy. He currently serves as Senior Manager of Global Quality for Marriott International. In this role, Alec balances improving worldwide guest experience while maintaining profitable, on-strategy hotels across 30 award-winning brands. Alec has vast experience under his belt which fuels his leadership in hospitality. From hotels to headquarters, his experience ranges from operating five luxury properties to holding various corporate positions with industry powers like Mariott International.

Alec’s presentation comprised of four parts which were:

Summarizing the state of the hotel industry

Explaining some emerging guest trends

Introducing an approach for ‘staying safe’

In bringing out the state of the hotel industry, Alec based it on the USA hotel occupancy over the last two and half years (2019 - 2021). He mentioned that in 2019 the hotel occupancy was booming as more people were booking into hotels, but at the beginning of 2020, the industry literally crashed all because of the travel restrictions and the government imposed lockdowns which limited people’s traveling. However, he mentions that in 2021, there has been a progressive recovery in terms of the hotel occupancy rate in the USA which might be due to the gradual easing down of the travel restrictions.

Further, into his presentation, Alec mentions the emerging divergent customers, which he mentions it's something they have never seen before in the hospitality industry. These customers, he mentions are divided into two categories thus the risk-averse (hesitant about contracting or spreading Covid 19) and risk-tolerant (accepting of risks [vaccinated, defiant of rules, value-seeking]).

Alec also touches on a very important aspect of delivering an exceptional Guest Experience with the ‘stay safe’ approach. Here he gets to ask a very poignant question, which is, ‘How can we restore customer trust while operating safe experiences that deliver fair value?’ For this approach, Alec mentions that he uses the cleanliness theater concept which involves three steps. This concept first involves providing a preview of the experience to the Guests (proactively communicate the policies and practices of your organization), Set a clean scene (Evidently make key touchpoints safe to touch), Play the part (carefully deliver value to customers).