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Feelings, nothing more than feelings…

When James Brown belted out, “I feel good”, it required no spelling out. It set toes tapping. But as hotels look to measure guest emotion as a litmus test of brand success, things start to get complicated.

by Vijay Verghese

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How can hotels measure the 'feel-good' pulse at their property, the one takeaway that measures success? Some hoteliers would argue it takes a human to measure guest emotions — this is not a task for AI. Is it?

IF A BRAND is synonymous with an emotion, how can it be measured? This is a question that continues to elude many. Brands have historically been about trust, safety, and reliability. Later, they came to demonstrate status, luxury and aspiration. After David Ogilvy famously penned in 1958: "At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock,"  the company’s car sales shot up in the USA.

Distinctive logos for Mercedes, Audi, IBM, spoke volumes about these brands. Coca-Cola launched in 1887 with its formal cursive red-and-white Spencerian script and has remained largely unchanged over the years. McDonald’s golden arches, Disney’s Mickey, Apple’s big bite silhouette, and Chanel’s interlocking C’s continue to pull in the punters. Hotel logos like Marriott, the boxed Hilton, and the Mandarin Oriental fan reassured guests who had paid for the privilege. The Qantas kangaroo, the Air-India maharajah and KLM’s blue crown have been similar airborne flag bearers.

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The logo was the brand. It said, solid, safe, dependable, whether it was a Samsonite suitcase being vigorously trampled by an elephant or a Volvo being dropped upside down from a height. These ads were memorable. Needless to say that is not how you drive a Volvo and my Samsonite suitcases have cracked asunder so many times in New Delhi’s Terminal 3 that I’ve lost count.

{Some argue guests vote with their wallets, but room prices depend on brand familiarity, allure, and that feel-good takeaway so hard to define

Now brands have evolved into the realm of emotion. It feels good swiping your sleek iPhone — a slim metallic status symbol for the uber-cool — though any Chinese device will match it at a fraction of the price. People will cough up hard earned cash for that logo. For this, brands have to be ‘created’ over time and with use.

Many hotel logos today are a dim memory following the mergers and pell-mell acquisitions of the past decade. And the offspring of these parent brands are largely unknown. Travellers find them by accident to sometimes pleasantly discover they’re staying at a Hyatt, an Accor, a Marriott or an InterContinental. Some guests never make the connection.

Mega-hospitality groups are hoovering up random hotels to gain sumo size and muscle to knock others out of the travel ring. But these are not allowed to directly compete with established top-tier products. So they get bundled loosely into “collections”. This is not to rubbish any aggregation — Autograph Collection, Curio Collection, The Unbound Collection, MGallery Collection, Emblems Collection, Tribute Portfolio, Trademark Collection — but to underscore the breakneck speed of acquisition. This has both confused the guest and placed incredible pressure on room-gorged companies to recoup their investments.

Thus the frantic focus on ROI that usefully matches Google and social media preoccupation with clicks and best-price lures. Yet this approach has diluted the brand message and moved customer eyes from the product to the pocket. Online measurements, however slick, cannot measure emotion or, indeed intent — once seen as gospel. How would AI tell the difference between a husband buying his wife sexy underwear and a fetishist? Or the difference between an architect admiring hotel design and a would-be luxury traveller? Academics investigating child trafficking are likely to be hounded by sleazy sites.

Search engines measure clicks and other overt actions and then attempt to deduce emotion. This Chinese-whispers exercise is fraught with misdirection. Irony or humour confounds algorithms. Cultural contexts and idiom are a minefield. I have been blocked by Facebook for commenting “Wicked Canuck (with a heart emoji)” on a friend’s post. I jokingly type, “Oh boy! I just love spending weekends doing taxes,” and a very clever bot shoots back: “There is nothing quite like the unparalleled thrill of spending your hard-earned weekend staring at deductions and calculating your liabilities. If you are determined to maximize this joy, you can dive straight into GovHK to review your electronic tax returns, or check out TurboTax.” What sort of imbecile would say this?

A Linked In ‘impression’ may be a scrolling view of 300 milliseconds. Google counts an impression as your ad/post appearing anywhere on the search result page whether the viewer looked at it or not. An algorithm might adopt a profound world view in 300 milliseconds, not a human.

Today’s more enlightened hoteliers wish to make guests ‘feel’ good. They would like to measure ‘emotion’ and brand connection. This is a worthy pursuit but how?

Hotel revenue departments are quick to argue that people vote with their wallets, and room sales measure brand success. This is only partially true. Room sales depend on price, the city, the location, weather, bed supply, and brand familiarity.

Classic hoteliers will submit, rightly, that emotion can only be measured in person. A lobby pounding  general manager can gauge the temperature in one pass, greeting guests, shaking hands, and calling in staff to assist where required. He sees things that are unsaid. A music concert or play can be measured by the volume of applause, the encores, the expressions on the faces, the smiles, the tears. These visible cues are missing in online posts. Website comments toss up all manner of red herrings, from people gaming the system to curmudgeons posting petty criticisms in order to secure a freebie next visit.

New AI metrics have come to the fore to measure emotion. These range from sentiment analytics (scanning reviews) to surveys and feedback forms. None can do the job. Good hotel GMs know that feelings must be measured in real time on the floor. Great GMs will engage at these times to reassure guests, solve problems, or celebrate happy moments. But it needs a human to spot nuance.

And how do airline passengers ‘feel’ when their paid-for window seats are missing the window entirely and their faces are jammed into the fuselage? United and Delta are finding out the hard way in class action suits over misleading surcharges for window seats. United argues there was never a contractual guarantee of a view. Well…