Hi-Tech and Hi-Touch: a Delicate Balance

In my early years I was the General Manager of a full-service three-star hotel in Budapest, Hungary.

We hosted a gala dinner in our ballroom one night for highly ranked executives of the travel industry. A guest from Sweden, an executive of a hotel chain Called Reso Hotels at the time, waved me over as the cold appetizers were served. He asked me if he could make a special request and swap the main course. He said it was from one hotelier to another, peer to peer.

He asked me if he could get a different main course than the one on the carefully composed dinner menu. He told me he loved that special Hungarian halászle (fish soup from carp and catfish seasoned with paprika) that he had tasted at a specialty fish restaurant the day before. He wondered if he could have a portion of that famous halászle instead of our main course.

A true fact: we never had fish of any kind enter our hotel's kitchen. Ever. We decided to not include sea food on our menu. Before I continue telling the story, let me entertain the possible answer for the above situation if we consulted an artificial intelligence platform and ask what would be the finest response to a guest if he requested an item we're not equipped to prepare?

ChatGPT was tested with the following query:

"What to tell a guest in my restaurant when he asks for a meal we don't have on our menu?"

The OpenAI platform took almost one second to generate a response: "It's important to handle this situation with tact and empathy. You could say something like, "I'm sorry, that dish isn't currently on our menu, but we do have many other delicious options available. If you'd like, I can recommend some of our most popular dishes, or our chef can possibly prepare a custom meal for you based on your preferences."

It's important to offer alternative options and show a willingness to accommodate the guest's needs. This can help the guest feel valued and appreciated, and can also leave a positive impression of your restaurant."

The above story from my years in hotel operations happened decades ago. Cooking fish soup was out of question as we had no ingredients in-house. However, my response based on my instinct, was a positive, "Yes sir, not a problem. We'd be delighted to." True enough, we never had fish in our kitchen. When we opened the hotel a couple of years before, we had encountered space constraints during the design and construction phase of our kitchen. We had one way to deal with the design flaw: we found room for storage, ware washing, and food production by eliminating fish and seafood from our menu. These items must have separate cold storage, cleaning, and preparation areas allocated to them according to public health regulations to avoid cross-contamination, so we decided to operate our restaurant without any fish or seafood offerings on the menu. We never had any difficulties with that decision.

I flashed a friendly reassuring smile at our guest from Sweden and told him with a straight face that I would be indeed delighted to treat him to that special meal. Then I added that since halászle was not one of our regular menu items, a little extra time was needed to prepare it for him. He said he didn't mind the extra wait and understood that extraordinary items take extra time. He appreciated the personal accommodation.

I walked back into our kitchen then used the back stairs to run down to the lobby and grab our bellman. I told him to take a taxi and go down the street as fast as possible to the fish restaurant located about five minutes away to get take-out. We needed a generous portion of halászle that he should bring straight into our kitchen. Our chef there would make the most professional presentation in our hotel's branded soup bowl. It all went as planned and our guest was delighted.

I tell this story because it represents the best of our profession. Service is the name of a game that is intuitive, detail-oriented, and as personal as necessary. Service is at the very heart of our business, whatever it takes. The fact that we never served fish at our hotel could not get in the way of great service. Can even the most sophisticated technology help us resolve unforeseen challenges with creative human thinking? Finely crafted answers won't necessarily cut it.

It is an ongoing challenge for hoteliers to find the right balance between the human touch and the convenient use of tech solutions. There is no doubt that the application of smart technology makes a hotel's operation more efficient and less labor intensive. However, when it comes to a service industry, it is the human touch at the core of hospitality that makes guest experiences memorable and meaningful. How to balance it right? There are no easy answers for hotel management to finding the right balance between hi-touch and hi-tech.

Technology is improving continuously at a breakneck pace and hoteliers have to work hard in order to keep up. The customer journey between the inspiration stage to traveling and the final act of booking accommodation involves multiple steps and we already had several hi-tech solutions at every stage of the booking funnel for both guests and service providers even before the global pandemic. Covid-19 created a health emergency of global magnitude which catalyzed the embracing of touchless solutions and use technology to help hotels manage staff shortages. Robots and self-service options at the operational level helped eliminate virus exposure at the same time. Looking back, these were just the lead-up to the most recent developments when artificial intelligence exemplified by ChatGPT entered the frame and shook things up.

The key word lately became: justify

The post-pandemic world requires justification at every decision of trip planning:

• Employers who want their employees return to the office need to justify their rationale: the offices are re-imagined, redesigned, reconfigured and upgraded to make sure it will be worth the commute. Better work conditions will justify leaving the home office and return to the workplace on certain days for many, even if it involves accommodation booking;
• Business travel is not leading the return of occupancy to hotels, unlike after previous market slumps. This time corporate travel is lagging behind the pleasure business. A business trip now needs more convincing justification: the numbers have to justify the expenses of a business trip when measured against outcomes;
• The selection of a hotel has to be justified for a traveler versus other forms of accommodation and versus other hotels. Location, amenities, service and value have to all fall into place to justify a booking for discerning travelers. Comparison shopping became more prevalent than ever.

This is where high-touch, intuitive service can make a difference. The value proposition of a given hotel will help justify a booking with the availability of perception enhancer hi-tech solutions coupled with second to none, high-touch guest service. From touchless arrival management to voice command control over room settings of lighting, temperature, in-room entertainment, etc.; the options are abundant. The increased frequency of using hi-tech during the hotel occupancy stage of a trip invites a logical conclusion: the less frequent occasions for meeting face-to-face a guest service personnel have highly elevated its significance. These touchpoints offer hoteliers to make a positive impact. In light of endless tech-options, a lot more is riding on the personal touch.

Embracing the concept of "justify" applies here as well: personal interactions need to matter. Well trained staff is able to leverage technology both for developing information rich guest profiles for needs, wants, preferences, history and propensity to spend. Tech resources at the fingertips of staff are enablers to answer inquiries and transact if needed for placing orders (e.g. in-house: for a spa treatment, in-town: table reservation in a specialty restaurant or securing tickets for sold-out entertainment events). The measurable impact of guest service that exceeds expectations will be quantifiable through guest satisfaction ratings, social media mentions, upselling, total revenue increase and even market penetration.

Hotels that understand the importance of attention to high-touch customer service will have to provide adequate underpinnings to impactful services. Best practices are well known from ensuring staffing level and honing hiring processes that focus on an applicant's attitude, to enabling and empowering employees to make decisions that increase guest satisfaction.

When we discuss the importance of guest service it is noteworthy that one of the leading luxury hotel brands that became the hallmark of the highest level of service, Four Seasons Hotels has arrived at the strategic recognition decades ago regarding meaningful differentiation. During the time when its founder Isadore Sharp was still the CEO of the hotel company, Four Seasons Hotels has explicitly stated that the real luxury was not in opulent design and architecture; it was in intuitive, high-touch guest service.

Delivering the highest quality of guest service should be a significant ambition for hotel operators in the age when the barriers to the application of high-tech solutions are coming down and temptations to focus on high-tech are strong. Finding the right balance is never easy but it is achievable.