Richard Turen
After returning home from the Burj Al Arab in Dubai, I began feeling a tad guilty about the amenities I had "stolen" from my room. Well, I hadn't really stolen them; I had simply accepted them as in-room gifts meant to be taken home. Later on, I made contact with the salespeople at the hotel and they assured me that every guest walks away with their bathroom amenities.
"That is our intention," it was explained. "It is our way of expressing gratitude for your stay."
Once home, unpacking, I noticed that my wife and I had taken four products from Hermes: cologne, perfume, face cream and shampoo. They were his and her bottles. They were not travel-size bottles; these were the larger-size models. Every guest receives this bathroom amenity.
Out of curiosity, I went online and discovered that we had walked away with well over $300 worth of Hermes products.
Now a room night at the Burj, one of the world's best hotels, starts at around $1,200 per night, so you may imagine that bathroom amenities would be included. But this was, as with so much else at the Burj, over the top, and I spent a portion of the 15-hour flight home trying to figure out how the arithmetic makes any sense at all. Or, had Hermes figured that it was good business to get Burj guests to try their products?
But that really doesn't matter. What does matter is that every morning when I splash on a little something from the Hermes bottle, my mind drifts back to a very pleasant stay at a very pleasant property. I remember their generosity, and I think favorably about their brand. I feel a small sense of gratitude.
Someone could develop a great seminar series totally devoted to the topic of the expression of gratitude within our industry. Although seldom discussed, it seems to be at the core of what we do and how we do it.
How do we express gratitude toward our customers in ways that are meaningful and unique? How do suppliers express gratitude to their customers and those who bring them their customers? And, perhaps most important, how do we express gratitude to our staff, without whom none of this would be possible?
If I were to create a Gratitude Seminar, I might start out with the words of Josef Stalin, who said that "Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs." History has demonstrated that while Joe knew a thing or two about "sickness," he miscalculated the worth of both gratitude and dogs.
In fact, dogs almost always express their gratitude, and it makes you feel good. Cats feel it is your job to do what you do for them, so gratitude is not really necessary.
When it comes to expressions of gratitude to our travel customers, there are complications and roadblocks. Let's talk about a few of them.
I would argue that we should always, without fail, do something during or after a booking that is a simple act of gratitude. A discount is not a means of showing gratitude. Nor is an onboard credit. These are business decisions created by our industry's inability to demonstrate its own worth.
One respected agency owner who asked to remain anonymous told me that part of her "secret sauce" was to require every member of her sales staff to personally choose a gift book from Amazon for every couple under deposit. The book must be personalized, and a one-sentence explanation of why it was chosen is sent to management by each agent. The idea is that the agent must know the client well enough to select a book with personal meaning and a relationship to the trip they will soon be taking.
Another agency gifts guests with a personal note of appreciation and a subscription to The Week magazine. This is a wonderful publication, one that I never miss. It serves as a sort of briefing book in every field of human endeavor, printing summaries of the best articles and most important news from the sciences, art, movies and the news. The client gets to read the most important editorials and news summaries from the places they might be visiting in the future. Best of all, it is a gift that keeps giving. It arrives in your client's mailbox every week.
One of the most successful travel firms in Canada shows gratitude to returning clients by subscribing them to Conde Nast Traveler, while other agencies give subscriptions to Afar or Travel + Leisure.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention the most personal, most influential and least expensive way to show gratitude in this digital world: the handwritten note of gratitude, long a tradition in the South. Every Southern woman knows that it is always appropriate to express one's gratitude in writing, never via email. Some Southerners well-schooled in matters of etiquette actually keep thank-you notes in their car so they can write their appreciation on the way home from a dinner party and mail it that same evening.
Every host agency should provide beautiful, personalized note cards for staff to use as handwritten expressions of gratitude. This is a cost-effective antidote to digital sameness and the notion of travel planning by some sort of complex machinery.
Charitable expressions of gratitude can serve many purposes. It is always money well spent, and the client will walk away with an enhanced view of your agency. But it is extremely tough to implement. Over the years, I have turned to a website called Charity Navigator, which rates and evaluates charities based on their claims and delivery of services.
If you offer clients their choice of a donation to three or four top-rated charities, you tap into all sorts of ways to make them feel good about booking with you while allowing them the feeling that they have made the ultimate selection as to who is going to benefit from their travels. You go down a dangerous road if you make the decision.
I believe that staff ought to be evaluated, in part, on the basis of how well they gift their clients. We need to know, for example, that the Hamiltons are in need of new luggage or that Mr. Selkirk would love a set of noise-canceling headphones. Giving staff access to the company credit card and authorizing a certain monthly limit for gifts might encourage the practice.
Suppliers have a really hard time knowing what agents want in terms of a show of gratitude. Most of what we receive is wasteful; T-shirts, plaques, mouse pads. We never get a handwritten note of thanks for our business. And we, in turn, rarely send such notes. The process of instant communications has wiped out the need for civility. Expressions of gratitude now come across in mass emails. The face of the customer is disappearing while being replaced with small bits of embedded data blips stored on someone's server.
I am writing this note to you on a Sunday. The week to come, as with all others of the past 30 years, will be filled with challenges. We will continue to try to humanize what is an increasingly dehumanized profession.
We are sincerely grateful to our customers, as I know you are. I am really looking forward, as I always have, to the start of another work week. I feel lucky, so very lucky to have taken this travel path, and I know, because you've told me, that most of you feel the same way. The specifics of how best to express our gratitude is challenging, but it is a subject we ought to put somewhere high on our business agenda.