How Much Does A Smile Cost

Last weekend, my wife and I drove to Hocking Hills in Ohio for a couple of days of hiking and nature.

I had originally called the newly renovated lodge in the middle of the park and was quoted approximately $260. I mistakenly thought that was for two nights and was prepared to book it. By the time I called back, the lodge was sold out—and I discovered that the price I had heard was actually per night.

So instead, we booked a limited-service hotel in Lancaster, about forty minutes away, for approximately $40+ per night with an employee discount. 

When we arrived, I walked into the hotel looking for a luggage cart. What appeared to be the front desk was vacant, although I could hear employees talking somewhere behind it. After waiting, clearing my throat and finally asking whether anyone was there, a woman briefly appeared.

I asked whether this was the front desk. She said yes. I asked where I could find a luggage cart. She pointed down the hall, told me they were around the corner, and returned to her conversation.

She never smiled.

That may sound like a very small thing, but it made me wonder:

How much does a smile cost?

Almost nothing. How much can the absence of one cost? A returning guest. A referral. A future stay. A dinner. A celebration. Potentially, a lot.

Things didn't improve upstairs. Our room smelled musty. The tile floor felt sticky under my bare feet, and the shower didn't work properly.

Later that same day, we drove to the lodge inside Hocking Hills State Park to hike the nearby trails. We were hungry, so we took a table outside overlooking the forest. Service was prompt, the food was excellent, and although it wasn't inexpensive, it felt great to be there. It was everything our hotel experience had not been.

After hiking, we returned to our hotel. That evening, I went downstairs hoping to buy an ice cream bar from the small freezer near the lobby. Once again, nobody was at the front desk. After waiting, I gave up, returned to our room, and ate some nuts we'd brought for the drive.

The next morning we headed back to the park. A tennis match I had been watching the previous evening had been postponed because of rain, and I wanted to see its conclusion. I remembered that the lodge bar had two televisions and figured they would have the channel.

But something else had already happened.

I wanted to go back.

I remembered the previous day's lunch and had already decided what I wanted to order before we even walked through the door.

I asked the bartender if she could find the channel. She did.

"We're staying," I told my wife. So we ordered another lunch and some craft beers.

Before leaving, I stopped at the front desk and asked whom I should contact about entertainment and events. The employee was friendly and helpful. She went into the back and returned with the appropriate person, who greeted me with a beaming smile. I told her what I did for a living and asked for her card.

Then I asked about room rates for a future visit.

Think about that.

Within twenty-four hours, one hospitality experience had already convinced me not to return, while another had caused me to return voluntarily, spend more money, consider staying there in the future, and even explore doing business with the property.

After another afternoon of hiking, we returned to our hotel. Someone had entered our room and replaced the used towels, but the full trash had not been emptied, the bed hadn't been touched, and basic supplies hadn't been replenished. We couldn't understand why anyone would enter the room and do only a fraction of the job.

The difference wasn't simply a smile. The hotel had operational problems as well, and no amount of friendliness can compensate indefinitely for a room that isn't properly maintained.

But the experience left me thinking about something David Shackleton, former Managing Director of The Westin Stamford and The Westin Plaza Singapore and a senior Starwood executive, recently said to me about changes he has observed in hospitality:

“Far too much focus on the bottom line, processes and completing endless reports.”

I don't interpret David's comment as an argument against the bottom line, and neither am I making one. Quite the opposite: perhaps the problem isn't that hotels care too much about the bottom line. Perhaps they sometimes forget what creates it.

Years ago, I wrote a short essay for my music students called The Shed and the Toolbox. The premise was simple: if you want to build a shed, you need tools. If you don't have enough, you acquire more and build your toolbox. But owning the world's finest toolbox does not guarantee that you'll build the world's finest shed.

For musicians, the toolbox contains scales, arpeggios, patterns, exercises, harmonic knowledge and technique. We need those things; I've spent a lifetime acquiring them and decades teaching them. But they're tools. They're not music.

I've taught students whose theoretical and technical toolboxes were arguably larger than those of some great jazz musicians. Yet put those students beside a master such as Grant Green, and there was no comparison in the finished product. The master knew what to build with the tools he possessed.

I wonder whether hotels have their own version of the toolbox: revenue-management systems, brand standards, SOPs, loyalty programs, CRM platforms, guest surveys, training programs, performance metrics, technology, artificial intelligence and reports. Hotels need those tools; some are indispensable. But none of them is hospitality. Guests don't experience departments, systems or reports. They experience the property.

A guest doesn't return because the hotel's reporting system was excellent. The guest returns because of what the hotel experience made him or her feel.

Musicians sometimes forget the same thing. We hear music differently from most of the people listening to us. We may hear harmony, substitutions, phrasing, rhythmic sophistication, technique, repertoire and interaction.

Most listeners experience something else: emotion. Did the music make them feel happy, romantic, peaceful, excited or nostalgic? Did it make an ordinary evening feel special? Did it make them want to stay for another drink, another course, another set?

A musician can spend a lifetime learning what to play and eventually discover that what matters most is what the listener feels.

Years ago, while preparing my master's lecture-recital on culture, spirituality and jazz, I corresponded with guitarist John McLaughlin, who directed me to the writings of Sufi musician and teacher Hazrat Inayat Khan. One of Khan's observations has remained with me ever since: regardless of how accomplished a musician may become, technical skill alone cannot produce the grace and beauty that reaches the human heart without genuine feeling behind it.

That was very close to the argument I ultimately made in my lecture: great music has never been primarily about notes and analysis. It's about something else. For me, that “something else” is communication—an honest emotional connection between the person creating the music and the person receiving it.

When people watch me perform, they usually see me smiling. I'm not doing that because someone trained me to smile at the customer. I'm smiling because I'm happy. I love what I'm doing, and I believe audiences feel the difference.

The same principle applies in hospitality. An employee can be instructed to say, “Welcome.” A training manual can specify eye contact. A checklist can require a greeting. Management can tell everyone to smile. But genuine warmth is difficult to manufacture.

When people genuinely care about other people, enjoy what they do, and work in an environment that supports those qualities, much of what we call good service begins to happen naturally.

Of course, creating that environment throughout an entire hotel is considerably more difficult than telling everyone at the front desk to smile. It costs considerably more than a smile, too. Expertise, training, leadership and professional standards matter.

The point isn't that the toolbox is unnecessary. It's remembering what the toolbox is for.

For years at the Bar & Billiard Room at Raffles Hotel in Singapore, I performed six nights a week. During breaks, I deliberately walked through the room, introduced myself to guests, listened to what they said, and watched how they responded. I wasn't waiting for an annual survey to tell me whether the experience was working. I could see it.

Guests returned. They brought colleagues and friends. Business travelers made the room one of their regular stops whenever they came back to Singapore. Some wrote letters to hotel management describing not simply the music, but what the entire experience meant to them.

I see the same phenomenon today at Sorrento's Italian Joint in Cincinnati. Familiar faces return week after week. Guests bring friends, celebrate birthdays and anniversaries, and request familiar tables. The music becomes part of the memory associated with the place.

A hospitality colleague, Imran Abdul Ghani, once gave me a phrase for something I had been doing for decades: a longitudinal reading of guest sentiment. A review captures a moment; a long-term relationship reveals a pattern.

And the pattern I have observed over and over is remarkably simple: People return to places where they feel good.

That may sound like a soft conclusion for an industry driven by hard numbers. I don't think it is.

At Hocking Hills, a positive experience caused my wife and me to stay longer, order another meal, buy drinks, inquire about returning, and explore a potential business relationship. A negative experience at another property convinced us not to return despite an extraordinarily low room rate. Those are economic outcomes.

A smile may cost virtually nothing. But the absence of one can contribute to something far more expensive: losing a customer. And with that customer may go future stays, referrals, celebrations, meals, drinks, and other business that never appears on a report because it went somewhere else.

The relationship is straightforward:

Feeling creates memory. Memory influences loyalty. Loyalty creates repeat business. Repeat business affects the bottom line.

Technology can support that process. Data can measure parts of it, and AI can analyze patterns and help organizations work more intelligently. But none of those tools eliminates the need for the human interaction at the center of hospitality. In fact, perhaps better tools should allow us to spend more time concentrating on what the tools cannot replace: the human being.

Musicians need their toolbox, and hotels need theirs. Build a good one. Invest in it. Learn to use it exceptionally well. But don't become so fascinated with the toolbox that you forget what you're trying to build.

Guests don't come back for the toolbox. They come back for the finished product: an experience that made them feel good.