This is Mona

After reading a substantive number of Monocle articles on the hospitality industry, with specifics to top quality ranked hotels around the world, I am more convinced now that the W Hotel on Lexington Avenue, New York has diminished in service. As the W Hotel is part of a chain, I’m feeling inclined to pass judgment on the lot as well. I will not, however. I’ll give the W chain of hotels the benefit of the doubt and assume that the sub-standard experience at the W Hotel on Lexington is exclusive. 

In a previous article on hotel service I read in Monocle, the title read “Room for improvement”. The nuance of the title should be applied to the W Hotel simply because the once venerable establishment needs to kick itself in the butt and realize that it cannot ride on the coat tails of its once well received “luxury” brand. At the moment its brand promise is far removed from its delivery. Here are a few suggestions on improving the hotel experience:

1) Improve the internet connection. The internet speed feels very much like a dial up connection in Lebanon. Its awful for businesspeople. 

2) Improve the sleep experience. The bed pillows leave my neck aching the next day. They are hollow and cheap. 

3) Improve the telephone reception. Every time I call Tina from Toronto, or vice versa, the telephone connection yields a continuous crackling sound. I am reminded of the telephone reception in Beirut circa the civil war when my Mom in Cyprus would try and get a hold of her family. Come on W, this is table stakes stuff!

4) Improve the lacklustre factor. The W hotel feels more like an evening lounge. Everything from the lobby to the hotel corridors is so sparsely lit with dark furniture. I feel like I need to be in an evening gown just to fit with the ambiance. This is just personal taste, however. I also feel that this look and feel has been around since their inception. It all just feels so old and tacky. 

5) Improve the bellhop presence. Where are the bellhops? They are scarce.

As many people fumble with the dreaded word recession, I personally think that there is much gain to be had as a result of the economic downturn. Let me put this into deeper context. The digital arena, which I classify as a service industry mainly because its success is based on a positive user experience, we all play in has not only emerged as a dominant communications channel, but has evolved from a single to a multiple track platform. The explosive growth in this domain has been realized in part ever since the advent of online community. I don’t mean to be absolute when I say that these movements, if you will, have marked digital in 2008/2009. They have set the stage for the next wave of trends we are currently and soon will be witnessing for digital, such as advanced mobile communications, location based services and citizen journalism. Its a lot to handle for the likes of brands and consumers as they equally try to reconcile some purpose and relevance among the many emerging technologies. Now more than ever companies have to recalibrate to offer compelling value based on understanding user wants.

Design provides much value in this context. There is a strong opportunity to capitalize on the effects of the recession by embracing design across a multitude of functions, all towards igniting innovation and a basis for human centred offerings. There is lots of room for companies and their brands to improve the customer experience. To highlight my point, I was reading an article in Monocle on how a recession can yield positive challenges for the hotels industry. The recession has seen a great halt of hotel projects. In tandem, user desires for an unparalleled experience is unabated. Times like these call for hotel management types and designers to really consider what the customer wants. What’s the difference in the evolved desires between hotel guests and digital consumers currently? Not much. Both are looking for relevance, originality and context. Realize, the intent here is not to isolate my point to the hotel industry per se, but to highlight a universal truth that applies to the digital communications industry.

Where momentum of new technologies is rapid, agencies offering digital capabilities are gradually witnessing clients seeking them out for thought leadership, rather than for production alone. Good move. Clients need to be just as savvy as their consumers when it comes to properly adopting technologies to meet a business objective and user need. If the outcomes of a recession are placing increasing onus on behalf of the clients to get creative with their value proposition, all the better.