A Hotel is Just a Building | Bashar Wali | TEDxWilmingtonSalon

I have calculated that I've traveled two hundred and twelve thousand five hundred and three miles in the last 12 months I have stayed in 167 different hotels 167 different hotels over that same time period I'm a hotel fanatic I never stay in the same hotel more than one night three days in New York that's three different hotels for me I travel so much that I've earned the incredible unobtainium status on Delta don't bother looking it up you won't find it and you can't get it you need infinite miles to get that high and along the

way I've burned through seven terabytes on snapchat with video that thankfully you won't find because it's gone but why should you care I'm gonna tell you a little bit about what I've learned from my travels I have learned that we as human beings have a single most powerful tool in our Arsenal and that is our ability to make human connections I believe we are people first in hotel your second and that's the key to our success I'm gonna take you on a quick journey with me through some of the amazing hotels I've seen as data

hopefully not 167 of them I'll only show you seven Burj Al Arab in Dubai in the UAE I mean look at this thing that round thing on top on the right that's a tennis court The Plaza Hotel in New York what can one say about the plaza we all know an incredible hotel this amazing thing on South Beach the Phi in a hotel where the owner commissioned the artist Damien Hirst to create a custom piece of art for him a woolly mammoth skeleton dipped in gold 20 million bucks but who's counting and this robot hotel

in Tokyo where if you are a local you go to the middle and get checked in with that robot lady if you're a tourist you get the dinosaurs thankfully I was a tourist ICEHOTEL in Sweden now I like my rooms cold but that's a bit much for me and the marina sands in Singapore the alien ship on top that's a swimming pool now don't get me wrong these are amazing buildings incredible hotels incredible architecture but bear with me because I'm gonna ruin this for you I'm going to tell you that these buildings are nothing more

than brick and mortar glass and steel and no matter how sophisticated elegant or beautiful these buildings may be there are some things they cannot do buildings can't smile they can't listen they can't anticipate a need they won't get out of their way to open a door or hail a cop for you because that's what we humans do I've been in the industry for about 25 years and I've learned a lot of things I've learned that I guest in a hotel will really appreciate it if you remember their name and they really love you for it

if you know what kind of pillow they like I've learned that humanity matters far more than buildings far more than art cars or things you may throw a guest's and through my career I've collected a lot of stories as you can imagine it's the hospitality industry after all we see all the madness that happens to stories resonate and always stand out for me and if you'll allow me I'm going to share a couple of them with you so fortunately I have lots of friends in the industry and lots of connections and I'm lucky that every

hotel I go into inevitably I walk in the room and there it is in the corner a beautiful cheese tray a nice bottle of wine and a card with my name on it sitting at a 45 degree angle against a bottle of wine now it's midnight that's typically when I get to my hotel room that cheese tray was put in the room probably around 2 p.m. that cheese has seen better days it's sweating by now I could see the sweat beads running down the side and that Brie I'll spare you the smell description you can

smell it right now and the bottle of wine may have been ten dollars or a thousand dollars it doesn't matter because it's midnight I'm not touching it and if my life depended on it I will not take it with me because I'm not checking my bag in and that note the unfortunate note has become such a list they all say the same thing dear mr. Whalley thanks for being with us we hope you enjoy your stay if you need anything please call on us sadly it goes in the recycling bin I don't even open it

except for this one hotel I walk in the room it's midnight there's the sweaty cheese there's the wine and there's the note however not in an envelope this time jackpot for an adv guy you skip a step for me I'm yours so purely out of guilt and a little bit of wishful thinking for karma I say what the hell I read the card I walk up to the card and as my soul is being crushed reading the same junk again bla bla bla welcome we hope you enjoy your stay on the bottom the card said

PS blackish on ABC is on channel 12 at 8 o'clock tonight holy my brain is racing why how how did they find out so I quickly run to my computer whip it out I go to Google in private and yes I know how to do that and at Google my name and there it is the third entry down is my facebook profile the public portion of it said that I liked the show your wine be damned your cheese be damned you got me I got trolled and I kind of liked it I must say you've

won me for life because you cared enough to find out something about me and to connect with me on a human level that hotel one nights or 10 nights I'm not moving away another quick story generally when you make a reservations at a hotel a good one they'll ask you if you have any special and this one is one of mine so a bit of self-promotion here so bear with me so this guest evidently in a whisky induced state decides to make our reservations and he decides he's going to ask for a special request he

asks for two mints to be placed on his pillow when he arrives in the room and asks for a hand-drawn framed photograph of Neil deGrasse Tyson and a love note from Neil to Bill Nye the Science Guy boom I would have paid a fortune to be a fly on the wall in that room and see that guy's face when he walked in the door I promise you he probably forgot that he even made that request but he will never forget that we feel filled in for him he will be a customer for life he will

be a brand ambassador for life and he will tell everyone he knows about this hotel this stuff is gold we love this you give me an opportunity to surprise and delight you easy here's what the note said Billy you and I are a binary star together we are a symbiotic Marvel however should we ever drift apart all of the space-time wouldn't be enough to fill the void in my heart I would implode due to the massive nature of my grief and would succumb to my fate and collapse upon myself movie my place this weekend love

Neil let's talk a little bit more about this human connection business I'm gonna get a bit of Darwinian on you here so bear with me we humans are pack animals we had to be together we had to stay together to survive as a species you couldn't run off in the forest by yourself and pretend that you could survive you'd be eaten alive it's so part of our DNA that's why emotional pain hurts so much more than physical pain that's why social denial hurts so much that's why those Instagram likes matter so much our upbringing has

seen us up for a lifelong quest of meaningful relationships we humans need air water food to survive but our need to fit in is equally as important we have an insatiable longing for belonging I'm about to give a shout out to one of my archenemies it pains me to do it but bear with me it makes sense generally when you go to make a hotel reservation you're dealing with a highly mechanized corporate machine and I hate to break it to you but when you often think you're actually talking to someone online it's not as someone

it's a bot not Airbnb the brilliant move they made is that when you decide to book on Airbnb you are immediately connected with a human better yet they call him a host there's something intimate about walking into someone's living room there's something intimate about staying at someone's guest room I believe this is a good part of who of Airbnb success is their ability to make that connection with you with a human in a foreign city in a foreign land this human connection business it applies to any business it doesn't matter what business you're in high-end

low-end high tech low tech it doesn't matter if you know how to connect with people you will always win over an able competitor because people always have do and always will want to do business with other people not machines not computers you slack all you want use email use messenger use anything you want nothing will replace that human connection that one-on-one call me old-fashioned but I believe that my appeal as a businessman is my ability to make those connections with people if I'm doing a deal with you all those communication devices and methods make it

easier to do so but they never replaced that human connect I'm gonna make the time I'm gonna find the time to go see you to buy your dinner to buy you a cup of coffee to have a drink with you nothing will replace that there's still hope and dignity in a handshake I'm gonna give you an example banking one of the most mundane transactional based experiences we all hate it who wants to go to a bank Umpqua Bank in Portland Oregon when Ray Davis came in to be their CEO that's six locations he decided wholesale

that everyone in the bank top to bottom has to go through hospitality training he literally pulled people out of the hospitality industry to do this training for the bank he took all the bank branches and converted them to the equivalent of hotel lobbies social gathering places free Wi-Fi free coffee yoga whatever he invited the community in whether you had to do business at the bank or not you were welcome he made a bet that if he was able to connect with his customers on a human level removing the transaction part of it which is the

necessary part that he still had to do but really connecting with him on a human level it would make a difference well he was right three hundred and fifty locations from six added some fifty million bucks on his balance sheet of deposit he got it right we're talking about banking here it doesn't get any more transactional than that this is the stuff of Harvard Business case studies my industry is very focused on service as is every industry frankly it doesn't matter what business you're in you have to provide good service service sadly has become very

transactional it's the checklist we tell our people in hotels when someone checks in used our name three times exactly because that's what we're supposed to do ritz-carlton once the gold standard for service in the hospitality industry has a credo card the every employee had to carry and memorize and practice that credo with every guest it doesn't get any more checklist than that you definitely need service in your business but service is what gets you in the in the game service doesn't win you the game it's your ability to make human connections is well ultimately will

we knew the game when we all focus on making connections with the people around us it makes us healthier happier humans of course there's monetary benefits out of making those connections but as a human being as a citizen of the world I believe understanding our need for making those connections will make us want to make more of a difference in the lives of others religion politics hashtags aside it brings us back to the core of humanity the decency we all deserve as human beings living under the same Sun breathing approximately the same air so my

challenge for you in this room today is to go out there and find your blackish moment and it literally doesn't matter what business you're in find that moment that allows you to connect with a customer with a partner with anyone those are the things that are going to set you apart from your competitors here's what I believe I believe there's dignity opportunity in a handshake in keeping an open door and open mind and open heart in sitting across from someone looking them in the eye and making that human connection that's the only way we're going

to be able to deal with all the havoc in the world right now empathy intimacy quiet respect one-on-one eye to eye cell-to-cell a kind of poetry of our species this poetry is going to help us make sense out of the chaos it's going to help us find beauty and poetry out of the madness in the world today buildings can do that we here in this room can so go out there make some serious human connections wreak some havoc on the havoc and remember we're all people first and fill in the blank second thank you [Applause]