by Osvaldo Torres Cruz,
September 2011

The Experiential Hospitality offers to the huge hospitality industry useful tools to enable Hotels to differentiate into the highly competitive international market. These tools are based on new insights into old concepts and definitions.

The term ¨GUEST¨, the primary client of a Hotel as a business, is just one concept of the many that have undergone a shift in meaning. The guest is nowadays not only considered as a person who pays a rate to use the Hotel services and then leaves, but is defined first and foremost as an emotional being who pays a rate to achieve his aspirations, checking out convinced of his return.

The guest has become the primary cause that sustains a Hotel to be maintained and positioned in the market; he has the ability to make this happen and it does thanks to his three fundamental powers:

1. His power of choice.
2. The power of his source of information.
3. The power of his opinion.

Power of Choice: The guest is the person who can choose the Hotel for his stay at the selected tourist destination. In a highly globalized economy where everything is similar, the choice is increasingly difficult, since Hotel products and services are becoming commoditized making less differentiated offerings and thus diminishing their power of attraction to the guest.

The tourist choice of a hotel within a tourist destination means not only one more guest won from the competition, but also a big commitment, because we must ensure that he is satisfied with the choice he has made.

Power of Information: The Experiential Hospitality is based on the design principle of unique experiences, specific and identifiable, to which purpose it is essential to know and master the emotional and behavioral patterns of the guest who selects the Hotel to tailor services so as to match his wishes and desires.

The personalized relationships, which allow establishing high levels of empathy between the  experiences makers ( hoteliers) and the guest assisted, makes it easier to transform moments of truth in times of unique opportunities to get to know the guest as he let us intrude into his inner world, because there is no better and more reliable source of personal data from a guest than himself..

Power of opinion: When the guest leaves the Hotel, he has already formed an opinion about the choice he made, determined by the perception of his experiences at the Hotel. The development of communications technology (Internet and the social media) will let him share information with thousands of people to influence greatly in their power of choice, so the guest can become a major sponsor at no cost to the Hotel.

The achievement of guest satisfaction during his stay will enhance these three powers, ensuring the fulfillment of the latest and most valuable asset: his power to return.