The guest technology inventory is a list of every tool a guest meets or that shapes what the team does for them, from the booking engine to the tablet at the table, walked from the guest’s side of the operation. For each tool it asks one question in writing: what does it replace, and is that a task or a person’s presence in a moment that matters to the guest? Then it takes a mark, adopt, resist or delay, with one sentence of evidence from what you saw this week rather than from what the vendor claims.
Where it comes from
Chapter 12 of the book is about the digital discipline, and the hoteliers in it are neither against technology nor seduced by it. Christian Hassing, then general manager of Mandarin Oriental, Singapore, set the test.
“Never underestimate the power of a genuinely caring, curious and kind human interaction.” Christian A. Hassing, then general manager of Mandarin Oriental, Singapore
Hassing’s longer point in the book is that automation and applications have given the industry real gains in efficiency, and that none of them replace the human touch. Torsten van Dullemen, then general manager of The Landmark Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong, said plainly that a general manager who does not understand the pace of technology cannot run a hotel today. The discipline is in the sorting: adopt what removes a task, resist what removes a person from a moment that matters, delay what you cannot yet judge. The inventory makes that sorting explicit and keeps the evidence.
What is on the page
A row per tool, with five columns: the tool; where the guest meets it; what it replaces; task or presence; and the mark with one sentence of evidence. Room for about fifteen tools. Beneath the table, two boxes for the second half of the exercise: the one adopted tool the team underuses, where for three shifts you act in person on everything it surfaces; and the one place a tool stands in for a person, where for the same three shifts you put the person back, even if only for a greeting or a reply written by hand. A final line for the marks you would change after the week.
How to use it
Walk the operation from the guest’s side on day one and list everything. Answer the replacement question in writing for each tool before you mark it. Run the two three shift experiments. On the last day, reread the inventory and note which marks you would change and why.
What to look for
Look for the tools that passed the test on paper and failed it on the floor: the app that was meant to remove a task and in practice removed a conversation. And look at what happened in the moments when you put a person back. Krister Svensson, then general manager of The St. Regis Bangkok, found that his guests were more comfortable texting than calling, which is the kind of evidence this inventory is built to capture: the guest’s actual preference, observed, rather than a principle on either side.