Emotional Comfort - By Jacques Levy Bonvin - for ehlite.com

In order to achieve such level of service, the know-how of the employees, the building and its environment, the internal climate, the design, the quality/price ratio are all key determinants. A sustainable quality relationship between the hotel and the guest can only be achieved through the satisfaction of the client. Independently from the type of property, business or leisure, 3, 4 or 5 stars, the hotelier needs to develop instruments that will enable him to keeps such sentiments. This sentiment corresponds to what we can call the emotional comfort: "I choose to stay in this hotel because there I feel good".

In other words, the emotion becomes active. It causes an action or a decision from the client; to stay, or even more to come again. A true active sentiment: the emotional comfort.

The multiple faces of comfortThis wellness is in reality the results of many efforts that the hotelier has made in various ways since the first contact with the guest; from the check-in to the check-out, and all along the stay of the guest.

Those efforts aim to guarantee, on top of safety and security assurance, that the multiple faces of comfort are truly controlled and offered; faces may be such as:

• Thermo comfort (temperature, humidity)
• Air comfort (smells and sufficient air)
• Lighting comfort (ambiance and atmosphere)
• Technical comfort (user friendliness of systems and equipments)
• Economic comfort (quality/price ratio)

On the first hand, a smart hotelier will know how to get the best staff around him, and on the second hand, he will choose the appropriate technology that will insure lasting emotions and an emotional comfort making the guest stay memorable.

Technology for emotionFirst, let's forget certain cliché!

Technology in the hospitality industry is not an end in itself. Neither is it a fatality.

Its main virtue is to help the hotelier provide the best service to its guests. Technology must ease the hotelier work and free him up from repetitive tasks. It must help him improve its productivity.

The goal is not to fill the rooms with funny equipments, sophisticated machines or trendy technologies. In his room, the guest needs to be able to easily control the temperature and humidity as he wants it. As surprising as it can be, he also pays for breathing quality air, in sufficient quantity and safely.

When the client doesn't know how to use this or this equipment in his room, he becomes mixed up, frustrated, and sometimes goes to the reception to complain (And there you are lucky. Clients usually don't complain; they just walk away!). It is at this precise moment in time that the emotional comfort continuum is broken (research has shown that one unsatisfied guest will tell nine others about his bad experience).

As soon as technology becomes a gadget, as soon as it does not contribute to satisfying the guest, technology looses its credibility. In other words, technology must be a truly meaningful tool to the hotelier that contributes to enhancing the emotional comfort.

What is at stake?Making the essential technical investments to improve the emotional comfort; this is with no doubt the hardest task of the hotel manager. This is a real issue! Generally speaking, the manager is lacking elements to assess and understand the importance of such investments. His professional background and experience, typically broader than deeper, does not always bring him a clear understanding of the technology available on the market. Of course his chief engineer can explain him. But often the conviction is lacking to proceed to the necessary technical maintenance programs and investments. As a result, the required modernization and renovation of technical equipments and their management systems (usually every 8 to 10 years), those that the client cannot see, are unfortunately delayed.

The two pillars of the technical management of a hotel, the BMS (Building Management System) and the HRMS (Hotel Room Management System), are both responsible for the thermic comfort, the olfactory comfort and the technical comfort are not systematically considered by general managers when it comes to investments. A recent study carried out by students of the Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne (Student Business Project) shows that more than 70% of 3 and 4 star hotels in Paris area lacking modern technical equipments; in particular technical management systems meeting their needs. This is even more surprising when considering that those systems could help them save up to 30% of their energy costs in addition to time and quality. Those two systems, the BMS and the HRMS, are truly linked with the emotional comfort, the comfort that client values!

ConclusionLittle by little, the modern hotelier understands the necessity to use technology appropriately. Hotels of all types are increasingly opting for evolving technologies, in particular information technology. Indeed, the systems dealing with rooms reservation, billing, internal and external communication are becoming ordinary. Sadly, it is not the same for building management systems (public spaces and internal services), or for on-line technical management (from the front desk to the rooms). Those vital equipments, geared toward enhancing the emotional comfort, are still not present.

They are usually poorly analyzed by the hotel administrator, or even worse, ignored. Bringing back such knowledge to the continuous education of hotelier is what is truly at stake.

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Article by Jacques Levy-Bonvin

Jacques LEVY-BONVIN
International Consultant
EHLITE
Jacques Lévy is an International Hotel Consultant and graduated from the School of Engineering in Geneva. For 20 years, he managed the International Division at Staefa Control Division and, in 1996, became manager of the Hotel Marketing Department of Siemens Landis & Staefa in Zug, Switzerland. More information is available at www.jlevy.ch.