I recently asked a general manager how hard it was to manage over 300 staff. She surprised me somewhat by answering “that is the relatively easy bit because we are trained for it. The hard bit”, she explained, “is making the hotel different from all the others.”
Indeed in today’s market the contemporary hotelier needs to be focused on making their property stand out from the crowd more than ever. Hoteliers can no longer afford to let their property be seen as a commodity product if they want to attract the most valuable guests – the high spending, repeat visiting kind. Making sure they choose your hotel over others in the same destinationis the key to a successful and sustainable business.
Impressive architecture, tantalizing interior design, angelic service, and mouth-watering food are all well-known ways of endearing customers to your property and separating the good hotel from the bog standard. In my second column about sound and music in hotels, I’m going to explain the essential part music plays in differentiating your hotel brand and your guest experience from the competition: The role music has in helping a property rise above the commodity end of the market, so that valuable customers choose you over others in your destination, and how putting a music strategy in place affects your bottom line.
Let’s start by looking at what music does to people. We all know it can irritate when it is not controlled – when the sound quality, content or volume are wrong. But when controlled and presented properly, music affects your guests in three ways. Firstly it can create a powerful emotional bond and consequentially loyalty. Secondly it affects the way they perceive your brand and the quality of the product. And thirdly it can influence them to spend more time in the hotel itself,most notably in F&B outlets.
Creating a lasting and honest bond between customer and hotel brand
If there is one thing that successful hoteliers need to do above providing a great night’ sleep and hot shower, it is to create memories for their guests. Whether it is a desert island hideaway; a funky business hotel; a traditional country house; an iconic luxury institution, or simply a quirky urban bolt-hole – all guests want their experience to be slick and comfortable, but they’d also love it to be inspiring and memorable. This is what creates connections between us to our favourite hotels. What’s more it generates word-of-mouth promotion over dinner party tables both physical and virtual as those high-spending ambassadors champion your brand to the world around them.
Hoteliers have long known that art, books, music,scent, and to some extent technology when it is playful (and easy to use!), can engage and impress customers. Together with the hotel design, these things form the glue that binds people’s aspirations and tastes to your hotel name. By making your mark through well-chosen morsels of culture, innovation, or sheer good taste – you are enabling guests to make an emotional connection, bonding to you with their heart, not just their purse strings or stomach. These are the bonds that will last.
Sound has an incredible potential for creating impressions. Brands like Apple, O2, and Bacardi have long seen music as a powerful medium that can help bring the emotional qualities of products and services to life. We all know that music has an innate ability to connect on a profound human level. Most of us love music.
But it’s important to realize that music not only emotionally tugs on our heart strings, it also denotes complex social messages, together with a honesty that cannot be contrived. As a resulta level of music literacy is required so we can understand what resonates with guests. Using tired, dull, or poorly thought-through music is no longer an option. Today’s well-informed guests can spot brands imitating, or those with simply no personality, as soon as they cross the threshold.
Making the right impression and keeping them coming back for more
So a carefully considered music strategy can help create emotional bonds with customers and therefore build loyalty. It can also enhance guest’s experience of the hotel as one of quality. By partnering with the right music and artists it can increase people’s perception of quality and create the right associations around the brand. High quality music carefully chosen to be relevant to an audience will positively affect their perception of you.
For instance in London the iconic American Bar at The Savoy uses live and background music to underline the glamour it derives from its Art Deco meets Cole Porter heritage. Whilst The Connaught’s award-winning David Collins designed bar juxtapositions itself as an extraordinary place for cocktails with a cutting-edge soundtrack tailor-made for those ‘in-the-know’. Morgan Hotels’ Sanderson meanwhile has used live music from break-through artists to speak relevance and credibility to a younger audience who would not normally frequent designer hotels with its ‘Sanderson Predicts’ series of showcases. In all these cases music is used to convey personality and complex social meaning,whilst denoting relevance and quality.
Once they are there, you need to keep them there
Yet music and sound don’t just have a cultural, social and emotional resonance with us. It also has a physical impact. Numerous studies have shown that music changes people’s mood as well as their behavior. Playing uptempo music energises people, whilst slower, relaxing music slows people down. So if your F&B manager is playing fast music in your fine-dining outlet, you need to be aware that it probably is not encouraging guests to dwell and have adigestif.That’s not to say a restaurant’s aural identity doesn’t demand a buzz and a bit of theatre and this can also be conveyed through a well-conceived music concept. Likewise bars often need a real sense of occasion, so that they draw people in through a tangible feel of being the most happening place in town. Music with life, passion and kudos is far more essential to achieving this than any guest list with VIP names on it.
As we have seen, the returns of investing in good quality sound and music are manifold. It complements the brand identity, and can position you away from competitors, whilst encouraging guests to stay and make use of the restaurants and bars. In the next issue we will look at how to implement an effective music strategy and what is technically and operationally required to control the atmosphere in a hotel. This needs to be done properly because it is a great way to add the all-importantwow-factor that makes sure your property stays with guests as much as they stay with you.
Rob Wood is Creative Director of the award-winning music consultancy agency Music Concierge.
‘Article reproduced courtesy of Sleeper Magazine – International Hotel Design, Development & Architecture’
