The luxury of Being understood

We are about to see the great separation. Self check-in, digital keys, chatbots, automatic personalisation, machines that know our name before we arrive: let them do their job. The more efficient the automatic hotel becomes, the more important it is to make the human one unmistakably human. There is no longer much room for the polite, anonymous, somewhere-in-between hospitality that has occupied so many hotel lobbies. Just like Oliver Corrin pointed in one of history’s posts, it’s dangerous to offer a “fine” experience. We only get one life, not a thousand… Receptionists should be concierges. Housekeeping should be thoughtful (and have room for it!). Breakfast should understand that the guest running at six in the morning has a different idea of breakfast from the one who has come to sleep until noon. Every person in the hotel should carry some of that old-fashioned instinct of looking after somebody. This is not only a commercial strategy. It is an affirmation of what a hotel is.

It takes courage to assume character.

Everyone likes fine, but extraordinary is just for a few.

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Airlines understood this rather well when low-cost carriers arrived with their admirable little seats, no food, no luggage and the exciting possibility of paying extra for breathing. The answer from the traditional airlines was not to become slightly less cheap. They made the other end of the experience more generous: even better seats, lounges, ground service, food, attention. Hotels will have to do something similar. The machine can make the arrival effortless; the human should make the stay meaningful. And perhaps this is where hushpitality comes in: a quieter, more intentional kind of service, where attention is more valuable than abundance.

Rest becomes serious territory. The business has also spent years confusing rest with wellness. Rest is less photogenic. It is darkness that is actually dark. A room that doesn't overheat at three in the morning. A trail instead of a treatment. A proper local stew instead of an international buffet pretending to be local. Someone travelling for work rests differently from someone escaping work; someone who comes to walk the mountains has little use for a marble spa. Strange that an industry selling beds has spent so much time talking about swimming pools.

Silence.

Understanding the guest's rhythms rather than simply collecting their preferences. The trekker, the early-morning runner, the writer, the journal keeper, the person following a paleo diet, the person who wants to eat slowly and taste the place through its food and wine. Different people arrive carrying different forms of tiredness.

We learned something about human care during the pandemic, although the hotel industry seems to have been in a hurry to forget it. A room prepared by someone who cared, a person who asked if you were all right, a meal brought quietly to a door, the simple pleasure of another human being paying attention. Technology will increasingly take care of the transaction. Good. It gives us the chance to take care of the person. For a romantic hotelier, this is rather exciting: to make the distance between automatic service and human hospitality wider, not narrower. To choose a side. To make hotels places where people feel understood, rested and, occasionally, a little better than when they arrived. Hushpitality, intentional honest service, valuable experiences, and a very human kind of care. The machines can have the middle ground.