Episode 9. Knowing Your Guest

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This episode takes up Luc Delafosse’s definition of hospitality as the craft of knowing in advance what guests need and want, and asks how a property builds that foresight. The hosts walk three ends of the guest profile: Krister Svensson on Marriott tracking preferences across 6,000 hotels, Pinar Kartal Timer on online sleuthing at the Pera Palace, and Axel Bethke on conversation as the richest source of all. Taljinder Singh’s 250 guests held in memory and Philip Barnes’s warning that a guest history goes stale lead into Nicholas Yarnell’s story of a card in Portuguese for a guest with a peanut allergy. The Anticipation Ladder follows, from reactive to generative, with Mahmoud Skaf on the proactive rung and Ayman Gharib’s flown in butler at the top. The chef side closes the hour: Daniel Boulud’s maître d’, Niki Nakayama’s pacing, the pre service briefing, the five part recognition floor, and the bridge to Episode 10, The Recovery.

In this episode

Luc Delafosse defines hospitality as knowing in advance what guests need.
Marriott’s 6,000 hotels, Pera Palace sleuthing and Qasr Al Sarab conversation.
Taljinder Singh knew the history of 250 guests before any database existed.
A card in Portuguese opens every restaurant beyond the hotel’s walls.
Four rungs of anticipation, from reactive to generative, with Gharib’s butler.
The pre service briefing and five rules that keep recognition from becoming surveillance.

Transcript

Automatically transcribed from the audio and lightly corrected. Speaker turns are not marked.

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We are focusing entirely on chapter 9 knowing your guest right from Rahim B. Kanani's book the luxury of attention exactly and The mission for this deep dive is to basically unpack the ultimate Operational discipline of luxury hospitality and the culinary arts too. Yeah, because they both rely on this same exact machinery Yeah, the art of anticipation. Yeah, and you know free listening whether you are managing a team right now or Maybe closing a massive deal or honestly just trying to navigate complex relationships Which is all of us really right the ability to anticipate needs before they are actually spoken Well, that is the ultimate differentiator It separates competence from true mastery. It really does because true luxury isn't just about giving people what they ask for You know exactly it's about observing them so closely that you saw problems Didn't even realize they had yet That's the perfect way to frame it and in this deep dive We are going to travel from like the digital guest profile all the way to the incredibly sharp real-time Observation of a maître d', which is just a totally different skill set it is and we'll be climbing what Kanani actually calls the anticipation ladder just to see how the absolute best operators in the world achieve this Invisible standard the invisible standard. I love that phrasing So let's just jump right in we have to start with this core definition of hospitality that the chapter gives us Yeah, for a Luc Delafosse, right?Hospitality is the craft of knowing in advance what guests need and want knowing in advance That is the critical phrase right there. That is the critical phrase right there It totally shifts the perspective doesn't it completely because I mean the craft is not about responding well to a guest's request Even if you respond perfectly exactly even flawless execution of a request is not the craft he's talking about It is entirely about the time before the request is even made it kind of reminds me of The difference between playing checkers and playing chess. Oh, that's a good analogy like checkers is completely reactive, right? You make a move based on what the other person literally just did on the board, right? You're just reacting to the immediate past. Yeah, but chess. I mean chess is about playing five moves ahead. You're anticipatingThe board state before it happens Exactly, but I have to push back a little here because if anticipation is chess, how does a property even begin to know what the board looks like? I mean before the guest even arrives at the hotel Well, that is the million dollar question, right? And it transitions us directly into the foundational tool that these operators use to map out that board the guest profile Yes, the guest profile. It's how they build their knowledge base on you But it's not just one standard way of doing it, right? Three completely different philosophies on how to gather and use that data. So let's start with what Kanani calls the most ambitious end This is Krister Svensson's account of Marriott International Yeah, the sheer scale of Marriott's approach is kind of staggering honestly I mean they are tracking preferences across something like 6,000 hotels 6,000 just let that number sink in it's massive So for you listening imagine you stay at a Marriott in Singapore and then say three years later You arrive at a totally different property in Bangkok Yeah, completely different country years later and you walk into your room and your exact same pillow preference is already there a Highly specific dietary note is already logged with the kitchen. They even have your favorite in-room snack waiting on the table. It is incredibleI mean to execute that across so many locations requires insane data infrastructure But I mean it does feel a little I don't know a massive automated system tracking my snacks for three years It almost feels a bit cold. Well, that's attention, right? And it's why we have this intermediate end of the spectrum too. Ah, right Pinar Kartal Timer at the Pera Palace exactly Her approach is so different It's intermediate not because it's worse but because it relies on human sleuthing rather than a giant automated network Right, they act like detectives. They do but and this is so important They are strictly researching a guest's public facing online presence strictly public. That's a key distinction Yes, absolutely no invasive searches. No buying data from brokersThey look at published interviews professional records things the guest has willingly put out into the world to tailor a welcome amenity Right like the example given is a writer arriving at the hotel in Istanbul Oh, I loved this part and they find a chocolate box in their room that is literally embossed with the cover of their latest novel That is just brilliant. It's so thoughtful. It's so thoughtful But then we go to the third method the dialogue driven end. Yes champion by Axel Bethke at Qasr Al Sarab and this one is entirely about conversation, right? Exactly For Bethke noticing is the actual currency of the property noticing. Yeah, I like that He emphasizes that you know coaching staff to engage in genuine conversation is How they harvest a profile so they aren't just looking at a screen before you arrive No, no, they are talking to you while you're there and that yields a profile That is far richer far more nuanced than a pre-arrival lookup But wait, let me jump in here it really feels like there is a tension between these three Also, well is a massive automated system like Marriott's just inherently superior because of its scale or is Bethke's Conversational approach better because it's human like are these just different tools for different scales. That's exactly it They are simply different methods of capturing the exact same essential resource, which is a tension. Yes attentionThe database like Marriott's that scales memory It remembers things across time and space that a human just couldn't right, but the human conversation Bethke's approach that captures nuance and captures how you are feeling right now. I see Which kind of exposes a major limitation of just relying on the profile, right? completely and that brings us to the whole concept of the art of Observation because the digital profile is totally static, but the human being the guest is dynamic exactly You are not the same person you were three years ago in Singapore. I'm certainly not right So train concierges the maîtres d'hôtel They have to see things that a profile simply never could and this leads perfectly into the story of Taljinder Singh Oh, he's early career at the Taj Mahal hotel. This is a crazy story It really is so this was before CRM technology even existed no customer relationship management software at all Just pure human memory. He was expected to memorize the history of the hotel's top 250 guests verbatim verbatim How they were served what specific things they asked for even which staff members they liked interacting with 250 people Well, the computer can store the data sure But the staff still has to execute the hospitality in the physical world, right?You still have to recognize returning guests by name as they walk in the door Without just staring down at a screen because if you're staring at a screen you aren't present with the guest exactly And this introduces a massive danger that Philip Barnes talks about the danger of stale knowledge Stale knowledge think about it a guest history in a database is just a snapshot in time like a frozen moment Yes, but diets change habits change Relationships change the person you traveled with last year might not be the person you're traveling with today Oh, that could be an incredibly awkward interaction Exactly So a CRM arriving with last year's data can actually be worse than having no CRM at all because you're acting on bad Intel. Yes The discipline requires validating the information in person the moment the guest actually arrives It's kind of like okay imagine an algorithm recommending baby toys to you Okay, but it's recommending them five years after your child was actually born right because it just knows you bought baby stuff once exactly Yeah without real-time human validation that data quickly becomes an annoyance It stops being a luxury and just becomes like spam. That's a perfect analogy And to see the absolute pinnacle of what human observation can do to fix this we have to talk about Nicholas Yarnell's story Oh from the Six Senses Douro Valley. Yep. This story is just Amazing. It's the ultimate example of observation. So a young American woman with a severe peanut allergy checks in right life-threateningAllergy and the internal layer of anticipation at the hotel works perfectly the server Immediately assures her that the kitchen is fully aware, which is great. Okay. That removes the immediate friction Yeah, she doesn't have to worry about eating at the hotel But then as she is leaving that meal the server hands her a small card and what's on the card? It's a note written in perfect Portuguese explaining her allergy Oh, wow and the server tells her just hand this to the manager of any local restaurant outside the hotel This gives me chills honestly. It brought the guests to tears I believe it because look at the impact of this it costs the property absolutely Nothing right a piece of paper and a pen but the emotional resonance is massive because it anticipated a friction point the language barrier Regarding her medical safety at a future meal outside the property's own walls They cared about her safety when she wasn't even paying them anymore Exactly and this kind of service it doesn't just happen by accident No, you have to build up to it which brings us to Kanani's framework the anticipation ladder. Yes Kanani distills this entire discipline into an ascending four rung ladder and you really have to walk through them in exact order?Okay, let's climb the ladder for you listening think about where your own business or team currently sits on this ladder So rung one rung one is reactive Reactive so the guests asks and the property delivers well exactly and I want to make this very clear Kanani notes This isn't a failure right if I asked for extra towels and you bring them quickly. I'm happy exactly It's good service. It's just a property that hasn't yet engaged the specific discipline of anticipation. It's the baseline if the baseline So rung two is proactive Proactive this is where things start to shift. Yes The team notices a need before the guest actually articulates it and they act on it But this requires like a specific culture doesn't it it requires trained noticing and empowered action Empowered action. Yes, which brings up Mahmoud Skaf. Yes, his posture is a leader is fascinatingHe basically operates on the principle of never saying no to a guest request Which sounds exhausting? It does but the key is that he empowers his staff to act independently They are the prime example of this rung. They don't have to ask permission to solve a problem. They just notice So they see a need they just fix it boom proactive exactly then we step up to rung three Predictive predictive So this is where the data really kicks in right using accumulated data and pattern recognition to anticipate Unexpressed needs. This is exactly where Marriott's Singapore to Bangkok system lives, right? Yes, tracking the pillow preferences and it's also where timers sleuthing at Pera Palace lives Oh, right because they predicted the writer would love the chocolate box with their book cover exactly They are predicting a future delight based on past data Okay, so reactive proactive predictive And then we reach the top rung four rung four is generative generative the ultimate rung It really is this is creating an experience the guest didn't even know to want because it hadn't even been imagined yet Right and the primary example of this is just wild. Ayman Gharib at raffles Dubai. Oh this storyLet's unpack this for the listener because it's insane It is the pinnacle of generative anticipation So Gharib had a regular guest in Dubai and this guest was making their very first visit to another raffles property Overseas a completely different hotel in a different country, right? So just to surprise the guest Gharib's team flies the guests regular Familiar butler all the way to that foreign hotel Just to welcome them just to welcome them and serve them for the stay unbelievable Yeah, but the story of that stay that guest has undoubtedly told that story in countless conversations over decades Oh totally dinner parties and boardrooms exactly you will believe what raffles did for me The word of mouth marketing among high net worth individuals is priceless The return on investment is astronomical when you look at the lifetime value in the network effect astronomical but and this is a Massive but you absolutely cannot skip rungs on this ladder. You can't just jump to generative No, think about it if they fly the butler across the world But the room service is cold and the Wi-Fi doesn't work The guest is just gonna be annoyed like why did you spend money on a plane ticket instead of fixing the basics exactly? You must build staffing for the second rung Systems for the third rung and the deep culture of trust for the fourth you earn the right to be generative That makes total sense Okay, so we've talked a lot about hotels But the deep dive shifts here because the culinary world has quietly adopted this exact same discipline Yes, they use different vocabulary, but the exact same practice the art of anticipation in a kitchen serious kitchens We're talking places like Per Se, Alinea, Le Bernardin the elite tasting rooms in Tokyo in Paris exactly They brief their entire brigades on this stuff allergies Anniversaries prior orders even like likely moods right because it gets with a documented shellfish allergy should never ever have to remind The captain when they sit down the restaurant should just know in advance exactly Delafosse's rule applies in the dining room too and for Daniel Boulud's restaurants The CRM is just an assistant right just like we talked about with the hotels the maître d''s accumulated Familiarity with the regulars that is the true engine of anticipation the human memory and then there's Niki Nakayama Yes her per diner pacing it is so deeply rooted in the kaiseki tradition Explain kaiseki for the listener just in this context well kaiseki is a traditional multi-course Japanese dinner But at its core it's about extreme anticipation of the guests physical and emotional state Nakayama's kitchen adjusts the timing the flow of the meal based entirely on Observing the diners in real time if they are deep in conversation slow it down Exactly if they're eating quickly speed it up And how do they coordinate all this like in Western kitchens? It comes down to the pre-service briefing that 30 minute meeting before the doors open it is crucial They review the guest list table by table right yes table for is a fifth anniversary make sure we have champagne Yes table six pushes the protein and asks for extra sides right so the kitchen just Inverts the proportions on the plate completely unasked Unasked that's the proactive rung right there and table 11 is a food critic So the whole standard of the room gets lifted a notch They know exactly who is in the room and the maître d' is actively reading the table within the first three minutes of seating them Those first three minutes tell you everything are they in the celebration mode or work mode or Intimate conversation mode or honestly are they in a difficult tense mood? And the service is instantly calibrated to match that exact posture It's so much like a quarterback reading a defense before the snap Oh, that's a great way to look at it like the play might be called You know you're getting the tasting menu, but the execution of that play changes entirely based on the mood and posture of the people across the line of scrimmage you call an audible based on observation exactly, but All this observation all this knowing in advance it brings us to a really fine line the line between Recognition and surveillance yes because there is a very real danger here Anticipation can delight a guest, but it can also patronize or just straight up stalk them And no one wants to feel stalked by a luxury brand No, it's the invisible art, but if you become visible in the wrong way, it's creepy Kanani actually introduces a five-part posture for avoiding this exact surveillance trap Okay, let's walk through these five parts because this is the playbook for doing it right number one collect data with a named Purpose so don't just hoard data for the sake of it exactly know exactly why you need that information And how it will serve the guest number two use it with restraint only to remove friction Right don't show off. How much you know just smooth the path number three reveal it only through serviceThis one is huge. Yes, never tell the guest, you know exactly don't say we saw in your profile You like sparkling water just have the sparkling water waiting let the service speak for itself number four Refuse the invasive surprise So if you found out something through sleuthing that might make the guest go wait, how did they know that? Just don't do it right erring on the side of caution is better than crossing a creepy boundary and finally number five Return agency to the guest to correct or update their data Let them be in control of their own profile always because if you do these five things Yeah, the profound conclusion Kanani offers is that anticipation done. Well is completely invisible invisible The guest doesn't register the team's research They don't know about the pre-service briefing or the public sleuthing. They only register that the room felt right. Yes That the pacing was perfect the absence of the wrong pillow exactly The team produces an absence of friction and that absence that is the highest form of work Wow, I Want to ask you listening to just think about your own life for a second Think about when you have felt perfectly taken care of by a business or a person Versus when you have felt uncomfortably watched by a brand the difference is exactly what we're talking about today It's the difference between hospitality and surveillance And that leads to a really provocative thought to end on Because if the ultimate success of anticipation is invisibility, right?How do leaders measure or reward this behavior internally? Oh, that's a tough one I mean without ever pointing it out to the guest and ruining the magic You can't ask the guest. Hey, did you notice how we anticipated your needs? No, because that breaks rule number three Exactly, so it requires an entirely different metric for success You can't measure it in immediate applause or a quick tip. You have to measure it in loyalty loyalty The guest who comes back year after year just because everywhere else feels a little too difficult Because you removed the friction before they even knew it was there. That is the real luxury of attention Well, thank you all so much for joining us for this deep dive next time We'll be getting into episode 10 the recovery. We will see you then

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