1) Turn off internet / screen-time each day (how & how long?)

2) Give acknowledgments: what are you thankful for each AM. Choose “word of the day”. Do mental check-ins.

3) WELLNESS & FITNESS: Exercise, don’t drink too much, eat well. BREATHE.

4) Daily art therapy: Puzzles, paint, write, play music, photograph spring & wildflowers (social distance tho!)

5) Routines & Rituals – we start our day w/ a conversation during pour over coffee. Slows us down.

6) News only 1-2x/day, read it if possible. No press conferences. Meditation, which can be not doing things. Like don’t check social media. Don’t stress. Stare at something beautiful.

7) Meditation, which can be *not* doing things. Like *don’t* check social media. Don’t stress. Stare at something beautiful.

8) Focus & be efficient: Find honey-do, project, your todo & org lists. Make space & time to accomplish things vs overwhelmed by media. READ BOOKS & MAGS!

9) Don’t waste this! Learn new things, *BE PRESENT & TOGETHER*: Learn chess or try out a new language.

10) Professional growth! Take online courses for biz (Neural plasticity is one, some hotel learning too!)

11) We’re tired of zooms, but check-in, esp. w/most marginalized.

Summing up:

It’s easy to default into normal behaviors that can become toxic, unhelpful, or do personal harm, in this time. Remember we’re not going to be our best selves every moment of every day, and give yourself space for grief.

This helped me a LOT w/ anxiety: https://hbr.org/2020/03/that-discomfort-youre-feeling-is-grief

Reminder: this isn’t happening to you, nor me. Nor us. This is happening to everyone worldwide. While everyone is in a similar situation, every situation is different.

Patience, support, calm, togetherness, planning, & hope that this is just a moment in time serves us well.

So while this isn’t a economic crisis as much as it is a human crisis, slow down, give yourself space, and especially give yourself a little structure.

This is a marathon, & while the industry will return, it’s time to focus on well-being, & familial health. Good luck.

Original twitter thread: https://twitter.com/HHotelConsult/status/1245483355300196352

I’ve been through all the machines. All of them. Single cup pour over, burr grinder and automated start coffee machines, large industrial brew and air pots, french press, and probably a few more gizmos, doohickeys, and the like. Well, my wife helped out, and brought something home I had been curious about for about a decade, but I thought it was a gimmicky bit o’ nonsense.

Chemex. Simple and easy to make the best cup ever.

FOR YEARS, I thought this was a joke or scammy a bit, just “because it’s pretty”, and some hipster thing. So I was interested but discounted it, and voila… it appears one day after wifey was out shopping! =)

But we’re super snobs about coffee in our extended families, especially the ones of us trying to find coffee service for hotels.

Keurig is not coffee, so you can’t stop reading if you’re fine with that. LOL Nespresso is this weird not nespresso and not coffee that the planet ran too. It’s fine. But burr grinding in a cuisinart, or a french press, also seemed fine. But I think I am altered forever!

nb: If you are doing pour over in your hotels, this is a no brainer, if you’ve worked out the operations for housekeeping and clean up. I will say, the learning curve on folding the filter is like the learning curve of remembering how to fold a paper airplane, and the way the filter holds together actually means it’s a simple disposal *that the guest will likely handle and do themselves*. If you are not doing pour over, you would need to actually care about giving your guests good coffee vs pods, and you would need to figure out ops, as well as what local coffee producer you might partner with. That being said, here’s my thoughts after a relatively few, but miraculous, usages….

A) the filter is the secret, and filters out impurities and certain cholesterol oils… I like the oils and the “dirty” aspect of a french press, and thought I wouldn’t like this. It’s a REALLY thick, special filter, and makes a “clean” cup of coffee where you only taste the coffee. I don’t think it’s zero sum, and having a french press and this might be all you need in the end. But my first few uses, with different types of coffee, I think it’s the most enjoyable cup of coffee I’ve had.

B) a drip coffee maker has water pour through a hole, and immediately hit and drown a single spot of grounds, and then fills up and leaks through. The pouring method (as you know) of a kettle means you can slowly engulf all the grounds, consistently, and evenly. It’s immediately obvious how important it is.

C) It’s a nice ritual. Instead of an auto coffee maker, you wake up and SLOW DOWN, immediately, and take 3-6 minutes to be slow. It’s healthy and nice vs “WAKE UP MOVE FAST AND PANIC”

It’s more than worth it. Anything to reduce devices and objects and all that. I hate things on the counter, and we’re thinking this might get rid of our drip machine and our nespresso, opening up the counter for a french press and Chemex. It’s an exciting thing, because the entire goal of life is to reduce complexity, enhance experience, and get rid of clutter and “stuff”. The less you own, the less you see, the less your life and mind are cluttered, literally and figuratively.

I think I’m on a new path, and I need to acknowledge thy wifey, who’s curiosity and mirthful nature countered my stoic skepticism and furrowed brow cynicism by just bringing it home and changing our lives!

Of all important and viable marketing trends right now, and for 2020, it is video who shall be king.

However, It’s a REALLY tough nut to crack because aesthetic is something painful to negotiate by council, and no one is ever happy with the sausage making, and the process of creation is so grueling it even impacts the perception of the final product, for all involved.

Four Seasons Moscow produced a slick, playful, spirited Christmas / Holiday video that is a delight, charming, mirthful, and fun. This video appears to be a masterclass in how to execute. Absolutely remarkable how well done this is.

I am proud of everyone’s efforts, in this difficult industry during complex times. However, it is extremely rare I am this impressed. Bravo.

This is a nice companion to this article re: Yelp and TA changes over time vs Google:

https://www.hospitalitynet.org/opinion/4092845.html

Sort of need to sit and think on this, especially as google doesn’t rank hotels against the market, like TA does. Without that metric, I don’t think Google will get the attention it wants vs the TA popularity ranking.

% of reviews from which sites:

HOTEL #1

TA
2015 – 64%
2016 – 56%
2017 – 50%
2018 – 44%
2019 – 51%

*Google*
2015 – 1%
2016 – 7%
2017 – 13%
2018 – 17%
2019 – 20%

Expedia + Hotels.com
2015 – 23%
2016 – 24%
2017 – 21%
2018 – 25%
2019 – 24%

This was an open letter to someone in the Google Travel department/vertical that happens to be a friend.

I will 100% not be posting response, and I likely will not relate much if it is confidential. I will only relate what is said to be okay.

I am trying to move the needle for the independent hotel industry. We need help, and I am not sure there is anyone else (maybe tripadvisor) that controls the needle. At least not like Google.

—-
I am a deeply experienced operator with how google travel works, and we do find the metasearch opportunities a refreshing alternative to OTAs. Fighting the OTAs has been our priority, and getting people to come direct. In fact, 4 of our hotels do not participate in OTAs, but there’s drawbacks to that, too.

So:

1) One is about how Independent hotels struggle in your ecosystem. Independent hotels are the bread and butter of authentic, genuine, personalized travel experiences, something most tech companies chase as a trend, and we’re often leveraged for experiential marketing, but left in the cold because we don’t have a brand/flag behind us, we can’t compete with OTA marketing dollars, and the VRBO thing is nipping at our toes.

This article is important, for understanding what we’re up against w/ AirBnB, Brands/Flags, Tech travel vertical, OTA marketing, etc. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/21/business/independent-hotels-airbnb-boutique-chains.html

But brands/flags are specifically what people DON’T want (save corporate loyalty, etc), which is why they’re creating so many sub-brands to confuse consumers into thinking they are independent, boutique, hip, etc.  And VRBO/AirBnB have zero consistency, or brand standards, and corporate people are aware of the issues from rental to rental.

All that being said, independents also are the shining jewels of american hospitality, and there are legitimately zero ways to “find” us in search. There’s no filters, no check boxes, etc.  What’s worse- that consumers love independents, but the word they use is “boutique”, which was hijacked long ago.

I wanted to start this as a tech business, but I don’t have developers or any idea how to get this started, but my dream would be a boutique and independent hotel OTA, that charges the traditional 10% travel agency fee for bookings. I want a better consumer user experience, better travel experiences (which reinforce the booking process that google is the start of), and I want hotels to feel less threatened by technology who take a lot of cuts of our revenues.  If I can’t get something like this done, I am sure Google could. At least, create an educational campaign with new filters or check boxes to identify and allow filtering of independent hotels from larger brands/flags.

2) redirection of organic direct searches in search: Is Google acting like a traditional travel agent? I have data on this (I can send, but want to keep this short), but we see google’s travel ecosystem doing something sort of unfair to our hotels in search.

Someone organically searched a hotel’s proper name, exactly (“Waldorf Astoria New York City”), and the Google Travel ecosystems takes what was a click into our website and direct booking, by filtering users down the path into booking through the google ecosystem.  That seems seriously unfair to us.

But then, we see 10% charges with IATA numbers attached to google campuses/addresses.  Is this an algorithmic machine learning type of travel agent, or is this literally a bunch of people with different #IATA numbers.  I’ve seen a few different ones, and was wondering if those are literally human being travel agents at google?  We do appreciate the traditional 10%, but if it was already coming directly to our website, feels sorta iffy, and we’ve zero power to correct that.

Can anything be done about how google filters direct bookings into its ecosystem, after redirecting organic direct searches away from our website?

3) The issue of disambiguations in travel search, which skew resulting searches to a smaller area, ie when the term “napa” is pejoratively used for “Napa Valley”, and people don’t know their limiting themselves because search returns Napa city properties, vs Napa Valley’s full region.  When you search “Napa”, you get 30 hotels. Most users actually want all of Napa Valley, but don’t realize to search it.  How would we have that disambiguation end up giving people searching Napa Valley the entire valley, when they search “Napa”.  No one searches “Napa” and means the city alone, especially in travel search and trip planning.

4) I would also like to talk about a concept, if you deal with F&B, of a restaurant aggregator within google…. right now it’s easy to book if you know what restaurant you want. But even then, you have to juggle between opentable and seatme, depending where they’re at.

But general restaurant searches are really hard, because there are big blind spots, ie if you are in opentable, you miss all the tock and reserve.com and seatme restaurants.  I know you’ve added interfacing with restaurants based off tile cards, but those don’t help in general restaurant searches. An aggregator of opentable, reserve, seatme/yelp, and tock (and the 5 or 6 others) would be DIVINE.

5) What perks/benefits are you going to use with Google One? I haven’t understood how you are going to take storage plans and leverage those users into google travel members who will build loyalty within the ecosystem, but the new hotel search is pretty slick.

I am not sure you know the Google One thing, so here, regarding rewards and a sort of loyalty:

https://one.google.com/benefits/8ea43ea61a39905473a92d9198d1f3d0

6) When you jump off that page to search hotels, I do note search doesn’t work all that well. Note both searches pop up under hotels:

I don’t know how I returned post offices, but I just tried to recreate it, and searching “highest rated hotels” in the US returns state parks:

It would be a professional dream if I could somehow help our independent hotel industry. We’re loved by all, but brand / OTA / vacation rental / tech forces are making us struggle, and it would be amazing to be part of something “bigger”, in fixing this, and enhancing consumer travel experiences, from booking to enjoying. =)