🍍 Best ideas from Skift's Future of Lodging Forum, Day 1

I’m in NYC this week for the Skift Future of Lodging Forum. Today we’re going to look at four ideas I found most interesting around guest experience.

• Creative KPIs

• Certainty, not conformity

• Expanding the hiring pool

• Never taking guests for granted

Let’s jump in….

Creative KPIs

While many brands use the Net Promoter Score (NPS) or a guest satisfaction metric to measure their guest experience, Selina also uses something creative:

Yes, you still need to track your NPS and guest satisfaction scores. But I like adding something like this to understand if you’re delivering on your unique brand promise.

Certainty, not conformity

A lot of the conversation at this event is about short term rentals, and it’s clear that gone are the days guests will put up with a poor guest experience just because they’re not in a hotel.

But more and more guests want unique spaces (sorry Sheraton). In the words of Brian Egan:

Expanding the hiring pool

Much has been made of the hiring challenges in hospitality. It’s refreshing to see how brands are looking to new groups of people who may not have considered a hospitality career before.

Clearly, Autocamp and Standard are very different brands. For me, this shows regardless of the experience you’re looking to provide, you might benefit from looking to hire from unconventional career paths.

Never take guests for granted

Overall, the tone of the event was very upbeat. CEOs said demand was stronger than ever, pricing power higher than ever, and they didn’t expect a travel recession. But Highgate’s CEO had a word of caution during these good times:

That’s what this newsletter is all about: showing you how you can make your guests feel special.

You can follow #SkiftLive on Twitter, and I’ll share more ideas tomorrow from day 2 of the event.