Why I love hotels.

I stayed in a really old hotel last night. They sent me a wake-up letter.
  - Steven Wright   

 

I love hotels. I have always loved hotels. I have wonderful memories of checking into a hotel with my parents, my dad handing me the ice bucket, and sending me on my mission: locate the ice machine and bring back a full bucket. I really don’t remember my parents ever using the ice, but it was a very important mission for me.

As an event marketer, I have the pleasure of really nice hotel rooms during site visits, and really bad lower-than-run-of-the-house rooms during the actual event or during regular travels. No matter the hotel, no matter the property level, there are a few things that I just love about hotels. Some may sound like pet peeves, but it’s these qualities and features that I find endearing about hotels!

Behold my photo essay. 

The Kleenex flower.

Why do I have a flower made of tissue on top of my tissue box? When I need a tissue, it’s usually because I sneezed or actually just need a tissue. With the tissue flower, I have to pull out the massive lump of tissue that is now unusable because someone else touched it and crumpled it together so I can’t easily get a single tissue from it. My favorite was the time when I removed the tissue flower only to discover a completely different color of tissue in the rest of the box. I was given a “previously owned” tissue flower! Ew!

The little shampoo and conditioner and lotion. 

Of course the lotion is only in the nicer of the hotels. More recently, hotels have begun renaming things from the mundane “Shampoo” and “Conditioner” to the more glamorous – and frankly confusing – “Hair Revitalizer” and “Hair Protectant”  or "Hair Mask." If you have to think for more than two seconds to determine if they are actually shampoo and conditioner, then it’s too complicated for the guests.

Free coffee. 

Why is the coffee free, but the water is $7?

The magnifying mirror. 

I love this thing. I do not actually own one at home, but when I go to a hotel, I look forward to checking out my giant pores and random eyebrow growths at ridiculously intensely magnified levels.

The wake-up call. 

Since I can never trust that the alarm clock is set, I really like this service. I especially love it when it’s a real person who tells you good morning and offers the weather for the day. I do not love it when it is 15 minutes late, which leads me now to always use my phone alarm clock as a 5-minute back-up to my wake-up call.

The phone in the toilet room. 

Has anyone ever used this phone? I don’t know, and that is exactly why I will never touch it. What kind of phone calls have they had on the toilet? Were really amazing business deals lost or won from this phone?

The TV in the bathroom. 

I don’t watch TV in the mornings when I’m getting dressed. Nor do I have a TV in my bathroom. This is exactly why I always use the TV in the bathroom in hotels that offer this feature.

The remote to the bedroom television.

The things this device has seen… oh lordy. Why don’t they put a protective cover on it? Much like the toilet phone, I cringe when I touch this remote. I believe I will add a plastic bag to my travel carrier to protect myself from this going forward. Brilliant.

Non-HDTV. 

And along the lines of this remote are the HD televisions in all the hotels without a single HD channel. So I get to watch my favorite Seinfeld episodes all squished and out of proportion. And why does it take so long for the channels to change? What’s up with that?

The stationary.

When was the last time you wrote an actual letter. When was the last time you wrote an actual letter on hotel stationary? I actually remember the last time I did this: I was 13 years old and in a city in Japan. I wrote a letter to myself about my trip using the hotel stationary. Now I check to make sure it’s in the drawer when I get to the hotel. It provides comfort.

The Gideon Bible. 

More important than the hotel stationary, this item must be in my nightstand drawer. If I am in a hotel that the Gideons have not visited, I go online and report it to the Gideons immediately. I’m not kidding.

What are you favorite things about hotels?

A case of the 4 P's

That sounds like a case of the Four P's: Piss Poor Prior Planning.
  - my college roommate's grandfather

This post made me laugh out loud. We've all seen it: some element at an event that made us think, "Who did they put in charge of THAT?"

Here are a few of my favorite "Worst Of" experiences at recent conferences:

• Shuttle bus stops that were so poorly marked that no one rode the buses. 
• Name badges with font so small that you absolutely couldn't see the names from more than 2 feet away.
• More than 5 hashtags for the same event, leading to absolutely no meaningful social engagement on Twitter.
• Online engagement built purely on flash - guaranteeing that anyone with an iPad or iPhone had no way to participate.
• No pocket guide due to pure reliance on the event app... and event app didn't work.
• Ran out of coffee cups 30 minutes into breakfast buffet (plenty of coffee, though!)

And here are a few little brilliant nuggets that I experienced at recent conferences that made me think, "Now THAT was a brilliant event team":

• Eggs at breakfast! THANK YOU for some protein!
• Hashtag table tent signs in every breakout so attendees knew how to notate their Tweets.
• A mobile app that let me complete a profile and locate people with similar interests and meet them in a lounge area.
• Interactive way-finding digital signage so I could touch the screen to figure out where I needed to go next.
• Name badges that were printed on both sides so when it turned around, I could still see people's names.

Got any favorites?

I am quite awesome, thankyouverymuch

I actually look forward to performance reviews. I did the youth beauty pageant circuit. And I enjoyed that quite a bit. I really enjoy being judged. I believe I hold up very well to even severe scrutiny. 

  - Angela, The Office

Great post on Harvard Business Review about eliminating the self assessment part of annual reviews.

The point of the post is that it turns the review into a negotiation, as most A-ranked employees are afraid of being Bs. Most Bs are scared they’ll get a C, and most Cs believe they are As.

I recall my husband helpfully advising me when I was trying to write my own self appraisal many years ago, “Why would you ever rate yourself a B or a C? Always put A! Even if your boss doesn’t agree with it, you have on record a positive spin on all the great things you’ve accomplished.”

As a recovering manager of a rather large team, I love the HBR suggestion to avoid asking employees to actually rate themselves, and instead ask them to send you their top 10 accomplishments for the year. This way, you as a manager can evaluate the value provided to the organization and/or the personal growth each team member achieved during the year.

Now to find some advice on writing a performance plan that is actually not a waste of time...

Virtual gatherings

Internet:  absolute communication, absolute isolation.  

  - Paul Carvel

When I saw Botox, Skype, and face-to-face meetings in the title of this post, it was a must-read. Then when I read it, it was a must-respond. 

It takes me right over to my little soapbox about virtual event environments with their little static fake people standing around. Some looking like they’re talking to each other, some standing alone, even some illustrated holding a cell phone to their ear. Really? This is how I’m supposed to engage and experience a virtual event? By pretending I’m there in person, when I'm really alone at my cube or in my home office? 

I think we’re all mentally stable enough to know that we’re not physically there. I also think that we go to virtual events for a specific purpose, not to create a cartoon avatar to show up in our profile. At least for me, I attend a virtual event to either watch presentations I couldn’t get to in person, or download content that will help me on my quest to solve a problem. If I engage with other people in the environment, it was to ask a question about a product or solution from a vendor. Sitting in a chat room with 3 professionals and one kid who snuck in and randomly types profanities is not my idea of a good use of time. 

So why do we continue to see virtual event platforms that try to mimic in-person events? They are a different kind of engagement and should be included in the customer journey planning for virtual audiences as a parallel path to the in-person experience. 

Online should be viewed as a content channel. If you’re going to have breakouts online, then plan for it and use something like Skype or Google+ to have a 5 to 8-person web breakout. The virtual event can no longer be project managed as separate entity. It must be folded into the entire customer journey and experience strategy so attendees, whether in-person or online, leave your event happy that they acquired the knowledge they hoped to gain and satisfied with the connections they made.

In other news, Why Virtual Events Fail.

I hate seeing things like this

"More than meets the eye."

 - Transformers


I absolutely hate reading posts like this one about event managers. Yes, we are problem solvers. Yes, we are friendly. Yes, we can give you ideas on your next vacation.

A colleague popped by my cube area today and said something similar - that the first people he learned to befriend when he started working for our company were the admins and the event people. Admins know everything, and event people can get you the good shift for booth duty and upgrade your room for you.

Yes, those are great personality features of event managers.

But NO, that is NOT what event managers do. Event managers are partners in strategic planning and inserting the appropriate event opportunities that match marketing campaign goals. Event managers understand the business and the business messages. Event managers are experience designers for those messages. Event managers are financial geniuses. Event managers are forward-thinking. Event managers are confident and reliant upon their partners and vendors. Event managers are strong communicators.  Event managers are expert project managers. Event managers are professional facilitators between multiple internal clients. Event managers drive the planning process. Event managers are customer service gurus. Event managers are brand ambassadors.

I'm sure the blog post that ruffled my feathers meant its tone to be complimentary and friendly and cute, as did my colleague with his comments, but I'm so tired of having my team put in a menial position doing other people's work, rather than driving the message and managing the experience.

Stepping off my soap box now. Thanks. :-)