Peter Heerschop's hotel speech
I have found myself - I think - in a parallel universe for the past few hours. Enjoy, this is the last time the hotel speech will be done live. Next time it will be done by a robot or - at least - AI, and you probably won't be sitting here then. Just a moment before we start: it does matter how you sit here. Soon you will be sitting next to someone and you will think: why is he reacting so strangely? Or why is he so enthusiastic or not enthusiastic at all? It can all have to do with how you are sitting. How has your day been, how has your week been? How have you experienced the past few hours? So my question is if you would take a minute to tell the person next to you - in a minute - how your day has been so far and how you're sitting. Go ahead!
Yes, that's about it... I notice phone numbers are already being exchanged, jerseys swapped. Hearty good. Is enough. I'm going to take a moment... I've been preparing because I've been approached by the hotel industry to hold up a mirror to you guys, to do a kind of roast. That's a special event for me. They also said: it's good if you are a bit earlier, because then you can hear the other speakers and then you can also break them down a bit. That also worked very well with Martijn Koning, Jan Jaap van der Wal and Micha Wertheim. Let me say with this: it doesn't work like that. Something doesn't work just because AI advises it, but it depends on the situation, in which we found ourselves. I am not a roaster, I am more about love and friends.
I prefer to be part of a team. A team you can be proud of. What is pride? When can you be proud of the things you do? Briefly: I am originally a gym teacher. A short story. To get hired - back in the day at the Academy of Physical Education - you had to take a practical test. One in 10 or so got accepted in my time. I had practised a bit. So how does a test like that go? You come in, you have to do all kinds of things. But you also see who is worse. Because if someone falls out of the rings, you think: too bad, but dash through, because that makes my chances better. Every time, people drop out. So there again one fell and then the chance got bigger. We went swimming.
There was a Surinamese boy, who jumps into the pool and he sinks to the bottom like that. We all had to fish him out, had to resuscitate him. Anyway, dash through, become.... Done. Here's how it goes. First day of classes: I arrive at the ALO. I had been accepted. That same Surinamese boy is in my class. He has been accepted. We have the first swimming lesson. I say to the swimming teacher: please pay attention to him, because he can't swim. Said the teacher: I know. I was there on the test day. But if you are willing to die to get accepted into the ALO? What is pride? I'll come back to that in a minute. This wasn't part of the hotel speech yet. That is about to begin.
As of now, I have 15 to 20 minutes left. The hotel speech. First things first... My connection with the hotel industry begins that I have slept in hotels quite often through my work. But in many ways, hotels have always played a role in my life. Not so much in my childhood. I come from the slums of Bussum. For those familiar with that, it's a very funny comment. It really was. We had no money for hotels. We went on holiday by tent. A huge bungalow tent for my parents and my sister. A separate tent for the two boys. Five extra-large air mattresses to sleep in, two separate ones for on the water. Camping chairs, two luxury ones for my mother and two for my father, three for the children, two for when people came to visit.
A dining table, a four-burner gas cooker, cutlery, 12 plates, 12 cups. A fold-out hanging cupboard, 21 tins of meat from butcher de Jong in Bussum, 15 kilos of potatoes. Footballs, badminton rackets, flippers, goggles, summer clothes, rain suits, umbrellas, radio cassette recorder, 24 rolls of toilet paper, a huge shovel, a spice rack and a medicine chest. In short: my parents were the inventors of the concept of glamping. We did have a hotel in Bussum, called Hotel Jan Tabak. My father did not allow me to go there. During the war, that was a much-discussed headquarters of a party that nowadays could easily compete again in our political landscape. You also have De Witte Bergen there.
By name alone, especially popular with types like Gordon, Lil’ Kleine and Ali B. Furthermore, my ex-girlfriend was chambermaid at De Brug in Mierlo. A historic hotel where many top footballers also came. In those days, footballers still had a lot of outside wives. That was before mobile phones. Lots of girlfriends. My ex-wife didn't really work in De Brug as a chambermaid either, she was called the chambermaid by the PSV selection. Legendary story by the way of coach Guus Hiddink. He slept there with the selection. He knew quite well that a number of players, of course, went out at night. He didn't feel like keeping an eye on all that at night. So what did he do: he gave the night porter a ball.
He says: when players come back, you have to say: I am a huge fan, just put an autograph on the ball. The next morning, that one comes quietly with the ball in his breakfast. This was not yet the beginning of the hotel speech. It starts now, so from now on I have another 15 to 20 minutes. I still want to see if it makes sense, such a hotel speech. So let me see what you have done with the recommendations of my colleagues. From my friends Micha, Jan Jaap and Martijn. Let's see. Has anything been done with them? I'll go through the criticisms a little bit and then you guys just have to think for yourselves.
Has anything been done about the often incomprehensible switching on and off of lights? Is that already regulated in an easily understandable way? Is there always gaffer tape in the room to extinguish all standby lights? These are all recommendations that have been there. The bottom toilet paper, is that no longer folded into a triangle so the housekeeper knows you've pooped? Have bath showers already been reduced with one of those sticky shower curtains that ends up sticking to your leg or back during the shower? That's right. I also regularly sat at breakfast with a curtain stuck to my back. I assume it is regulated. The Wi-Fi passwords, are they a bit simpler? So not weird codes with letters, exclamation marks, a Q, an X, a really big exclamation mark and then you have to...
Have you stopped dancing to the tune of all those pampered guests with whom you can never get it right anyway, because why keep pampering those pampered whiners? Finally, is the housekeeping department - perhaps the most important in any hotel - paid better now? I notice that at this sentence it gets slightly uncomfortable in the room, but I assume it is included. Then I can finally begin my official hotel speech. The cameras may turn on. The hotel speech, that's one word. I take it apart for a moment. You have hotel and speech. What is a hotel according to the Dikke Van Dale? A hotel is a service establishment where someone can stay or find shelter for a fee, corrupted from the Latin hospitalis, hospitable. Hospitalis.
So actually a hotel used to be called hospital. Let's take that as an important aspect for a hotel. It means getting out better than going in. That is also the assignment I gave when writing this speech. The second part is speech. I type in speech. Reason - I read - is the human faculty of thought, reason. But when you judge a hotel with reason, the result is reasonable and we want more. We want excellent. Then you come to the sum of feeling and reason and the sum of these is emotion. Hence my title for this speech: ‘hotel emotion’. Hotel emotion, so to speak. How do you create the optimal hotel emotion? How do we make hotelemotion the word of the year? I'll start with a story.
I was recently sitting in the bar - in the lobby - restaurant of a hotel here in Amsterdam. For a moment, it is not about which hotel. I was feeling good. I had already had a latte and croissant. At first glance, a very nice woman in the service. There was nice light, good coffee. Not coffee that had been sitting on the bar for a while until it was served, good hot. You can hardly get closer to happiness. I had a date there with three friends and I wanted a bigger table. So I say to the - on the face of it - friendly girl working there: I'll sit over there for a while. Says she: you can't. I say: why not? She says: the system can't handle that. I say: what system? I had a coffee and a croissant.
I am going to sit at that table now and then I am going to order something again and you add the coffee and croissant later. Says she: that may be how it was in your time, but now the coffee and croissant are on table 17 and then you can't just walk over to table 23. I say: we are talking about a table, shouldn't it be about me? She says: it's also about you, but in the system your bill is attached to table 17. So I now want the bill from table 17 to be put on table 23.
Says she: how then? Take a look at table 23, nobody is sitting there, right? No, that's where I'm sitting now. We can't just add one bill to another, that would be very strange. Then you suddenly get a bill from another table. You come in, you say: good morning. I say: please, the bill. You say: which bill? From another table, because you seem to think that's quite normal. OK, I'll pay the coffee and croissant from table 17 first. The system can handle that, right? OK, so you don't need to order anything more? Yes, but at a different table. You can't, because the system is now shutting down. We note: customer has paid and goes home satisfied. Okay, here's the money. So I walk to the entrance.
I walk in past the camera again. Face recognition. No sir, you really have to go all the way out. Really start all over again as a new guest, because otherwise the system will not see that you are a different person. OK, so I understand: I have to go home first to start all over again? No, then we are still stuck with the same problem, because you will still be the same. Okay, I have to ask my parents to fuck off again so that I can walk in again in - say - 25 years, because the system can't change that and I am a part of the system. Shouldn't it be about me? About someone who is not the same every day? I want you to talk to me. That you know who I am. Join me for a moment...
OK, that's not how it really happened. It was in Amsterdam, so it was all in English.
I wanted to start with this story. Human or system? Contact or computer? That fits nicely into the theme. What are the most important developments according to researchers, who first introduced the words most important to them in AI. So I list the key findings I found when I asked this. What should you do? What are the recommendations?
Provide greater sensory stimulation. Sensory stimulation? My girlfriend and I call it completely different and then it's immediately a lot geekier, but anyway. In the established hotel development and recommendation world, it is called sensory stimulation. I quote: It has long since ceased to be about a good bed and a nice shower. It's about a total experience, involving all the senses. The guest wants to feel the texture of the wallpaper and sheets. He wants to be surprised by special smells, wants to taste unique flavours and be surrounded by beauty. You can do that, but sometimes you are unfortunately with your own partner. Anyway, no... What one person finds a special scent, reminds another of a difficult childhood.
Right? But that's why - recommendation two is attached - it has to be totally personalised. Personalisation was already important, but from now on it will be taken to an even higher level by hyper-personalisation. Come that one: think of marketing emails - we've heard - where you tailor all messages, actions to the recipient and the experience measured in the room. Whether it's a pillow or blanket menu or which tea bags were used on previous stays, it all enhances the personally felt attention. Why a pillow or blanket menu? What is it? Starting with a sheet on an Auping bed, followed by a sheet-washed duvet with hand-beaten swan feathers for dessert. Just stop it!
For a certain kind of person, this might be quite an experience. It makes them cry with happiness. Now my father would say: slap your head, then you'll have something to cry about. Get real! Or a Japanese toilet with 54 options, tuned to the customer's sitting behaviour on the previous visit. I was in Seoul, in a hotel with a Japanese toilet. It was certainly nice, a warm seat. A seat that gently lifts your pocket too and starts blowing from below. A touch button for the body-temperature anal spray that sprays everything clean. Point was only that I couldn't get that nozzle off. So I couldn't get up because then it kept spraying and that touch button, it didn't respond anymore. So I shouted: help! But the Koreans don't understand that. My wife did hear me, but she shouted: I'm going to the restaurant, do you also want a pillow and blanket menu?
Personalisation. It says even more. Consider a welcome gift - appropriate to the person - or that you ask guests about their temperature preferences beforehand. The more you can tailor the sensory stimulation experience to the guest, the more you stand out. Are there any other names, which the customer likes to be addressed with? For example: hero, big thinker, boss, chef, friend, neighbour? Temperature preferences for when? Night, morning. Who do you have with you? Your own wife or business partner? This was really good. I was in a hotel in Groningen. I won't mention the name for a moment. I came in with a colleague - also a well-known cabaret performer. He had a wife with him and the receptionist asked him: sir, I take it this is also your own wife? Hyperpersonalisation?
It will all be fine and you will do some people a huge favour with it. But is it the holy grail for the hotel industry? Number three. We're talking about it today. We are using AI more and more. The goal is: you sit at home, you meet online, then put on a hotel's VR glasses, but you sleep in your own bed. That's why: keep it out a little bit, too.
Number four: make the offer as varied as possible. I will give an example from a sandwich shop here on Rozengracht. I asked: do me a cheese sandwich. OK, do you want white, brown, wheat, wholemeal, multigrain, Waldkorn, sourdough, malt? Just brown. Brown. Then do you want a bun or a cone, pistolette, petit pain, baguette, croissant, braid bun, ciabatta, Italian bun, Russian stoemper or a Greek limp? No, a brown bun of cheese. What kind of cheese would you have wanted? Farmer, Gouda, Edam, Kollumer, May cheese, grass, Leiden, Frisian nail, camembert, brie, Emmental, Gruyère, Rambol, la vache qui rit or a nice piece of fromage du putain? We get it: it doesn't all have to be so elaborate.
Number five: not just new, but think reuse. Reuse furniture and materials. You can turn a bath into a bed, four old cabinets into a Piet Hein Eek conference table, as I have seen many times. From a series of pans and iron colanders, a pair of floor lamps. From one old receptionist, two delightfully young PR assistants.
Five: hotels with a story. Yes, important ones. So are tourist trips to the Dutch team's 1974 hotel, where indeed the historic swimming pool incident took place. Hotel Hiltrup. Nice. Especially for the guests, there is also another swimming pool with hookers. Too bad, though, that these are the original 1974 hookers.
Number six: more and more culture. Art is increasingly taking precedence in hotels. Through art, people want to escape from reality and find inspiration. Dear people, I have never booked a hotel for the almost universally similar screen print on the wall. For the picture of Marilyn Monroe, of Mandela with a matching saying, or a fake Herman Brood. Then it really must be something special. Whether the art includes music, I don't know. There is sometimes live music in various lobbies at dinner. I went in the Kurhaus, I slept. I went to breakfast in the morning. I say: well... She says: no, it's full now, the breakfast room. I say: but there are all still places there. You can sit there too. Nobody wants to sit there. That was also apparent later when I sat there.
There was a pianist in between those seats. That was such a typhoon noise. I hope the person is here, because then they can take that away. Number seven: local luxury. Local, with the locals, local cuisine, local culture, local crafts. What is meant by that? How do we want locals? Is that in Drenthe with a host with a Johan Derksen moustache and a big - easy to bring in - scented candle next to the bed in the room? Or in Barneveld with the chef in a chicken suit and in Volendam only employees with the same surname? I was travelling through southern Germany and Austria just this summer and I regularly thought at a hotel: as far as I'm concerned, it could be a bit less local.
Number eight: wellness is becoming an increasing priority. Therefore, it is a good idea for your hotel to offer more packages. This could include in-room massage, yoga at sunrise, wellness shots in the bar and nude watercolours in the great outdoors. It's a certain audience you get in your hotel. It's also recommended, but is it the holy grail?
Number nine: luxury, luxury and more luxury. That's nice too, luxury. I thought I didn't like luxury. I found out in Sri Lanka that I did like luxury. My wife and I were still in our backpacking days. We were in a particularly cosy, friendly, real traveller's hotel with good stories and those indispensable guest books with the most fantastic tips for the area in Sri Lanka. All very good, very close to the holy grail. Only there sat a rickety - slightly dirty - toilet and weak coffee. So what did we do? Have you probably done before. We slept in the cosy little achenebbish hotel and then to the much less cosy - much more expensive - hotel around the corner.
Lovely toilets, excellent coffee. To arrange right there that we were also allowed in the pool for a small payment. To have a nice salad at lunch, to have the clothes from the trekking washed, to have a ticket to South India arranged there. In short: we only went to our own hotel to read the guest book. But I'll tell you: everyone did. Small thing about the toilet, while we're on the subject. Preferably the toilet separate from the sink and shower. It's so a-romantic when there are two of you. I spoke to someone here beforehand - don't look right now, he's sitting here - who admitted that when he has to poo, he looks for another room in the corridors whose door is open and then hangs the do not disturb sign there.
Ten: Health and safety. It is not the holy grail, but it is the absolute basics. A clean environment is an absolute must. A good bed, good shower, but above all clean. If that is not the case, you are off anyway. Make it clear to guests before and during their stay what you will do to keep them safe. For example: clean surface with antibacterial agents, provide disinfectant gel for guests, UV lights to disinfect. If necessary, hang a camera above the kettle to see that no panties are washed in it. Didn't know it happened much. You guys do, apparently.
So what is the holy grail? What is the holy grail of hotel emotion? What has been shouted for years in our society? What was the focus of the last election? What was the most important feeling for people? The most important feeling was: we are not seen! We are in a system and we are defined by the system. Once we have done something, it is incorporated into the system and then it is determined by the system where we are even more. We are not seen. We are crushed by the systems. No, we want to be seen!
How do you increase that chance of the best hotel emotion? I would start by precisely not thinking of everything in advance. Well, do, but always keep room for change. How does it arrive with someone? How does they look? Does they really want the same as last time, on the same day they arrive? What is needed? Empathy! Is a device really more empathetic than a human? The customer's user manual, you have to read it, and it's not just through systems. The user manual, that's also how someone stands. You look at someone and you understand what is going on. Instructions for use is a nasty word - I get it - especially for men.
Men buy a technical device. They can still hear their wife somewhere in the house shouting: please read the user manual first. Don't think most men need to. Neither do I. I just start. I have done two studies. Then indeed it doesn't work out and then I advise my wife not to shout: I said: please read the instruction manual first, because that is really the beginning of domestic violence.
I did change, in that word. Two months ago, I was allowed to join a screening study for colon cancer. Women are screened for breast cancer, cervical cancer. Men of a certain age for colon cancer. The request from the UMC Amsterdam was: send in some stool samples. In retrospect, I say: I would have been better off reading the instructions first. What they needed was really a pinprick. Is better than a shoebox of... Well good. No colon cancer but a recommendation for a visit to the psychiatrist.
The hotel emotion. When do you get close? What should you exude as staff? What is having heart for your guests? What do we notice by, me as a guest? I'm here as a guest and what do I notice about the heart beating in the hotel? When we perform in Groningen, we always choose the same hotel. I hint, I lay, I don't give the name either, but for us it's a nice old hotel.
There is a restaurant next door. Closes at eleven or twelve. There are often staff shortages at hotels - I understand. But we perform until at least eleven and then we still have to shower and change clothes, have a chat, a drink. We are not in a hotel before twelve, half past one. Full of adrenaline, so we lust after that. We comedians or those who perform. We always ask beforehand if we can eat or drink something or if they put something aside. At - say - nine out of ten hotels - is my experience - that doesn't work. Here in Groningen it does. The night porter is also willing to go into the kitchen and pour some and cut some slices. He comes running for us. It is now a quarter past one at night.
He has a bottle of wine, half a bottle of whiskey, carafe of water, drinks board and a huge blood trail. How come? He had cut off part of his index finger while cutting the dry sausage. He didn't show anything yet, put everything neatly on the table, smiled and reported that that was going to the hospital for a while, but might be back in an hour.
He came back after about an hour. Fingertip put back on. Fingertip. He put down another bottle of wine and I noticed that on his index finger was still a piece of metal from the butt of the dry sausage. Then I noticed that I had been chewing on a piece of finger for some time. But he looked proudly at me that it had all worked out for the guest. Meanwhile, two other staff had also come out of their beds to have another drink with him and comfort him. Even the chef stopped by.
I am taking a side road, but I am concerned with the same thing. I'll get to that in the final conclusion. I asked my followers on social media - there are about 450,000 of them - about the most important emotion. I asked: what moves you in general? Because if you know what moves you, then you know what matters to you. If you know what matters to you, then you know how to make other people happy.
What moves you? I give some answers. My daughter who I get to see again after a week and says my coat smells so good of home. The dog who will cry with me when I am sad. The elderly couple on the bench in the park that one look at each other is enough. Seeing myself in the children. My son's mentor who was so incredibly proud of his class at the graduation ceremony and the class was also proud of her. Someone just putting their hand in yours, like a child in an orphanage in China once did. People showing their appreciation with a self-written story. The simplicity of true love in full abandon, as opposed to months of non-committal fidgeting with my ex.
Of course, I also got answers like: when I was on holiday, couldn't shit for a while, but after five days suddenly could. But most of what was mentioned was: just a message, just like that. The word just like that came up a lot. Just out of the blue laughing with my colleagues. Just like that after a game with my football team in the dressing room, when suddenly it's about something real. Just like that when I see everyone at work having a good time with each other.
I like that! When I see that at work everyone is having a good time together because they are proud of each other. The work is not all taken out of your hands, you do it together. You are proud of yourself, you are proud with each other. That's why they all feel responsible for the whole building, for the atmosphere, for the guests, for each other. Now I'm talking about people and not systems and procedures. Then it's about that what you do is seen by other people. That it is felt, that they all belong. If they feel it - as a team working there - I feel it as a guest too.
You all know the drill. You enter somewhere and you think: hey, something boring has happened. Or you walk in and you think: hey, it's good here. I feel good here. That's mysterious, that's not grabbed, that's not entered. Why is that? Because the team gets it right. The difference is made by the whole team and what they feel. Do you know what gets passed on? All sorts of things, but sometimes it's the pretty facts. Those are redeemable.
I am an ambassador for the Cruijff Foundation. That's for sports, for children with disabilities. With a challenge, it's called these days. Johan Cruijff, who founded it and who said: I might have been the best footballer in the world - so modest was he - but he said: that was a talent, I got that. Faith and hope and rain, those are all things outside you. But love, you can do something for that yourself. I hope that when I'm dead one day, people won't have to talk about my talent as a footballer at all, because I got that. I've had the right people around me. But love, you can do something with that yourself.
Once a year, a thousand children with challenges come to play sports at the Olympic Stadium, to play sports with the ambassadors. Do you know who was playing sports the most? Johan Cruijff himself. Even when already, the lung cancer had gone to his brain, under the prednisone. From ten in the morning to four in the afternoon, wheelchair basketball, tinkling bells with blind children, children with Down syndrome throughout the stadium. At the end of the day, who called us together and said: did you feel what I felt? Then we didn't dare say anything, because we knew he had felt it better. He said: I was playing with a boy, a boy in a wheelchair. We were throwing balls over, ball falls to the ground.
His mother, who is also there, says: I'll get him. He says: no, the little boy has to do that himself. Says his mother: but he can't. He says: no, but then we are going to teach him. So I taught him: if you can pick up a ball in sport, then - if you're eating and your spoon falls on the floor - you can also pick up your spoon yourself. Can you live independently. He says: but that's not why I'm telling. He says: I was talking to this boy, just in touch. Just briefly: who is your best friend? What is your dream? What do you think is important? Who do you prefer to hang out with? Are there people here you really like? Is there anything I can do for you? He says: I was joking. He says: but I don't even know what I said. I was joking.
The little boy laughed and his mother says: he hasn't done that for a fortnight. He says: I don't know what I said. I do know, I was in touch for a moment. I was briefly curious about his dream. I hadn't prepared it all. It just happened, what happened there in that situation. I thought: that's what this little boy needs right now. He says: I don't know what I said. But I do know: that mother, she's going to tell someone at home. That one at home, that one will tell ten others and they will tell ten others and they will tell ten others. If they all, a thousand... You don't even know exactly what happened, but it's a moment that you were there for a moment. That you were together for a moment.
Just apart from everything we have heard today. Which is all the basics, which is useful, but it is not the holy grail. The holy grail is this: that you make sure your team is having a good time. That you feel responsible for each other. Then the distinction can just be made by one time - just at the right time - a hand on a shoulder. Or just saying: can we do that for you? Or that bicycle you need, which... Just that. It's about such little things. That's what gets recounted. That is where the difference is made. That's what gets passed on. It's sometimes the pretty facts, but the facts are redeemable. Of course, so it's ultimately about the atmosphere. How do you create the atmosphere? When I enter as a guest, that is what I feel, is what I tell after.
All these other beautiful things, they are also in hotels. Those are in all the other hotels, because we know that now. We can all enter it the same and we all get the same decision out of it. So I want to ask you: in the coming year, give everyone a sense of belonging in the hotel. That they are all an important link. Be proud of what you do! Think every time about what you can mean to the rest of the team. If you can, I feel it too. Get into the party! I already think it's a very nice atmosphere. Thank you very much.