One of the most incredible things about working in hospitality is the instant feedback loop. I’ve worked across e-commerce, tech, consumer goods, and B2B services, and in every one of those sectors, there was always a goal to make customers happier. But nowhere have I found the kind of rapid, tangible cause-and-effect loop that exists in hospitality.
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In most industries, you launch a product, gather feedback, iterate, maybe launch a new version six months later (when you’re good), and hope it solves the problem. By the time it reaches the customer who gave the original feedback, other problems have come up and nobody really cares so much.
But hospitality isn’t like that. Hospitality is live. In-person. Immediate.
A friend who worked at a hotel front desk recently told me how he’d try to predict guests’ names from flight details before they arrived. He’d prepare the check-in, guess the names, and welcome them as they stepped out of the taxi. Most of the time, he got it right—and the guests were floored. That moment of surprise, that little spark of magic, took seconds to deliver and created lasting joy.
You don’t need to redesign your entire product line to make someone’s rainy day better. Send a bottle of champagne to the room and say, “We’re sorry the weather wasn’t great, we hope this makes up for it.” It takes 5 minutes and changes everything.
And these moments add-up. Every shift, every day, you get dozens of chances to make someone’s day better, sometimes by simply smiling. That’s a feedback loop no algorithm can replicate.
Now here’s the interesting bit: it’s not just the guests who get happier. You do too. The feedback loop works both ways. Making someone else feel better is a proven path to personal satisfaction. You see the impact of your actions. You experience their gratitude. As a GM you go home exhausted, but fulfilled.
Technology can help (and must) with real-time analytics, personalization, but it still can’t match the human immediacy of hospitality. While everything is becoming more digital and disconnected, hospitality has something deeply human to teach us: happiness isn’t an NPS score, it is what humans bring to others.
And this is why I love this industry.
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About me: I’m a fractional CMO for large travel technology companies helping turn them into industry leaders. I’m also the co-founder of 10minutes.news a hotel news media that is unsensational, factual and keeps hoteliers updated on the industry.
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