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The Dilemma for Hotel Groups of the Energetic Guest Experience | By Peter McAlpine 
When a major new direction comes along, it is usually met with opposition or even outrage, or maybe just with a cold shoulder, as it involves change. The upholders of the status quo may try to ignore the new direction, but as people show interest, they have to choose between jumping on the bandwagon or rejecting it. If a company chooses wrongly, perhaps out of arrogance and self-importance, it may fall by the wayside. The concept of the energetic guest experience is an example of such a new direction.
Although I thought it would take at least ten years for the change to occur, within just a few years hotel groups will most certainly be forced to choose between sticking to their venerable traditions or using energy to create their guest experience. Why? Because change is happening so quickly in all industries and the hotel industry is no exception. Indeed, the glimmer of the new dawn has already appeared, perhaps because hoteliers know that the western concept of SOP-Customer Satisfaction is obsolete and that it has reached a dead end.
But the competition for the large hotel groups will not be from other large hotel groups because they will lack the inertia and will to change. No, it will come from upstart and daring independent hotels and small or fringe hotel groups. Remember that it was not a fellow giant who brought Goliath to his knees, but an ordinary man with a clever idea. Already I can think of one major tourism country where the big hotel groups will be forced to adapt to the new reality or just accept being second best.
Hotels and hotel groups, which make the changeover to creating an energetic guest experience, will enjoy much higher occupancy rates and revenue because this is exactly the kind of guest experience, which people want nowadays.
The obsolete left brain, western model of SOP-Customer Satisfaction, which hotel groups, such as Starwood, Marriott, Accor, IHG, and hotel groups in India and China, for example, continue to sell, is a pale reflection of how hotels can be and will be in the future. Very pale! No, a mere shadow! Their CEOs seem to be unable or unwilling to see this, perhaps because they are so deeply entrenched in an old paradigm. But their successors will have sharper vision.
It is very easy to create an energetic guest experience once you know how, but you have to throw out or change much of the ballast of tradition while adding elements, which will cause the conservative corporate black suits to spill their Cognac in horror. But they must first admit that there is something wrong with the experience, which their hotels are serving up. Where is there a corporate office, which can see anything wrong with SOP-Customer Satisfaction? Their customers can see it, even if they cannot or will not.
Hoteliers would be wise to start to study energy, especially thought energy and heart energy, and to work out how to apply it to increase the vibration of the guest experience in their properties. The difficulty they will face, however, is that everything they discover will seem like New Age fantasy because it flies in the face of everything they learned at school many years ago. The science will just not fit into the pervasive, narrow, traditional, left brain paradigms, and so for sure, the western chains will ignore the use of energy, probably until it is too late for them.
Can you imagine someone standing up in a corporate meeting, and saying to the assembled black suits, "We can increase our revenue manifold and compete better by showing our employees how to influence their environment with their thoughts and emotions." From that day on, wherever that person walked in the corridors of power, people would snigger and giggle as they walked past. That person's hope of ever again climbing the ladder to Corporate Heaven will have been dashed.
Western science is still trying to get to grips with the undisputable fact that our thoughts and emotions affect our DNA and that our DNA affects the environment around us and far beyond us. Indeed, the effect of heart energy can even be measured by satellites when there is intense emotion around the planet, such as when the planes hit the World Trade Centre. Thought energy and heart energy are real and palpable, and the hotel industry is failing to take advantage of it. It is almost as if the corporate people say to each other, "It's all balderdash! No, we must stick to our traditions! Our Founder would wish it that way!"
Knowledge about the effect of our emotions on people and the environment is ancient, but about 400 years ago western science made two false assumptions. Firstly, that the space around us is empty. Secondly, that we cannot influence the world around us, and if it looks like we do, it is a coincidence. This is part of the science that corporate folks have learned. So what hope is there that 50+ year old, decision-making, corporate folks, who are perhaps just playing it safe until they retire, will accept quantum science, let alone want to revolutionize the Group's guest experience with the knowledge?
But what if the 5,000-year old traditions, the Writings of various religions, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the mountain of evidence from quantum science were indeed correct? They are all saying essentially the same things about energy. What if Albert Einstein was correct when he said that everything is made of vibrating energy? It would truly be the epitome of arrogance for a CEO to reject it all, but this seems to be what is happening. I am sorry about being so direct, but I am not writing this article to please or to pander to anyone.
All of this knowledge poses a major dilemma for corporate offices because if they reject the new science and the huge body of knowledge about human energy, they will fail to make the required changes in time, and they will find their market share eaten away by upstart hotels and small or fringe hotel groups. But on the other hand, they risk looking stupid by even considering the use of human energy as it is not mainstream yet. Indeed, it is still far from being politically respectably correct and corporate.
Chain hotels should make a decision soon because it will take a long time to change people's perceptions about the big hotel chains, which all represent conservative and traditional thinking about how a guest experience should be. They do not realize that this obsolete thinking will be the cause of their demise, if they do not accept change. In my heart I believe that they will not change because of the weight of tradition and the need to conform to the norm, but this is the way of nature. Some organisms adapt and survive while others do not and die.
Some corporate offices may test the concept of energy by trying to incorporate it into the SOP-Customer Satisfaction concept. When they discover that you cannot combine energy with corporate office-driven SOP-Customer Satisfaction, they will draw the conclusion that it does not work and that it is New Age nonsense. I can assure them now that the two mix as well as oil and water. But I question whether there is even a CEO around with the courage and vision to test the concept.
If the chains refuse to make the change, their hotels will eventually become backwater places to stay at, and this will become part of the current CEO's legacy. In contrast, independent hotels and small hotel groups will create their systems around the concept and so they will be able to create their energetic guest experience quickly as well as make the energy stronger and stronger. As the small groups increase in size and allow each hotel to create their own unique, energetic guest experience, the group's hotels will become more and more successful. Nowadays it does not matter who you are. Your company can disappear as quickly as Harry Potter vanishes inside his invisibility cloak.
But what if the concept of energy really does work? Corporate offices will then discover that an energetic guest experience cannot be cloned to every hotel like the robotic SOP-Customer Satisfaction concept can. It cannot be replicated exactly in every hotel. Indeed, as soon as you try to clone the energetic guest experience, the energy will change to that of the SOP-Customer Satisfaction experience and so they will fail. Being unable to clone a corporate template is unthinkable to corporate people.
You cannot clone or turn the energy guest experience into a left brain, western, corporate concept. CEOs have to accept that Hospitality has spiritual and energetic dimensions to it, as indeed it used to have before the behemoth hotel chains redefined it. Indeed, the chains ignored these dimensions when the concept of Creating a Truly Memorable Experience (CTME) appeared as a replacement for SOP-Customer Satisfaction. CTME is a concept based on the core spiritual values of Hospitality, but the hotel groups ignored the spiritual element and westernized the concept by focusing on using material methods to create memorable experiences. Essentially, CTME became an extension of SOP-Customer Satisfaction instead of being a major break with the past. As a result, the past lingers on, tied firmly to the present.
Using heart energy, thought energy, and other forms of energy to create the guest experience WILL without a doubt become the new norm. Indeed, the new dawn is already breaking, albeit slowly. Our thoughts, emotions, and spoken words are vibrating energy, which influence the world around us, and this can be proved and measured scientifically. It is not New Age fantasy.
If you do not realize that your thoughts can influence the environment around you, here is a simple way to demonstrate it. Boil some rice. Put it in two plastic or glass containers. Allow the rice to cool down before you close the lids. Stick on one container a high frequency phrase, such as "I love you." When you write the phrase, say it or think it with emotion. Do the same with the other container, but write a low frequency word or phrase, also said with emotion, such as "I hate you." For thirty days say the appropriate phrase to each container for one minute in the morning and one minute in the evening. Observe how your thoughts or spoken words affect the rice. After 30 days the "I love you" rice will have hardly changed whereas the "I hate you" rice will have changed into a gooey, grey-black mess.
Staff have the ability to send positive energy to the guests in order to make them feel happier. They can also send energy to guest rooms to make them feel more pleasant, and they can even do this from home as distance is irrelevant. So, teach the staff how to send warm energy to the guests. It will make the staff feel amazingly happy, and it will send waves of energy to the guests, which will increase their feelings of happiness. Happy guests = higher revenue.
The hotel Training Department should be developing this ability, and teaching the staff about energy, and about how to change the vibration of their own energy field. When staff can change the vibration of their energy field, they will feel happier, and the feel of the hotel environment will change in a positive way.
I have hardly touched here on the application of energy to the guest experience because the hotel industry leaders and influencers have yet to wake up to see its business potential and relevance. Old paradigms and old-style thinkers still seem to predominate. But those CEOs, hotels, and hotel groups, which dare to make the changeover to an energetic guest experience, will become market leaders in terms of the guest experience. Those which refuse, perhaps out of arrogance and self-importance, will become "also ran's". The choice is theirs.
About the Author:Peter McAlpine is the Senior Consultant at Renaissance Consulting Ltd. in Bangkok. The company specializes in pre-opening and upgrading 5-star hotels and resorts, creating Heart-based Hospitality, in freeing hotels from the chains of Normalville, and in exorcising the spirit of SOP-Customer Satisfaction. The company's strength lies in creating a guest experience that is strong in loving kindness, heart-warming care, and compassion; and also in applying the discoveries of New Science to marketing bio-fertilizers and to increasing crop yields using thought energy and heart energy. His many articles are intended to be a legacy to the hotel industry before focusing entirely on applying the energy techniques and discoveries about energy to develop agriculture and to enrich farming communities in Africa and Asia.
CONTACT
Peter McAlpine
Bangkok, Thailand
Phone: +66-2-461-5164
Mobile: +66-7-054-8813
Fax: +66-2-461-5164
Email: info@renaissanceconsultingltd.com
ORGANIZATION
Renaissance Consulting Ltd.
99/192 Mubahn Place and Park, Soi 90, Tanon Pracha Uthit, Ampheur Prasamuthchedi,
Samuthprakarn, Thailand
Phone: +66-2-461-5164; +66-7-054-8813
Email: info@renaissanceconsultingltd.com
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