Even MORE Outrageous Hospitality

I wrote a blog called “Outrageous Hospitality“ where I couldn’t say enough about the book I read on a group of people who always pushed the boundaries of what it meant to provide the most out-of-this-world, never-experienced-before hospitality to their restaurant guests. There was no off switch on this team. They would scrutinize what they were doing, watch what was happening, observe the guest experience, then evaluate how they could improve, yet again, on the hospitality they provided. I’m someone who doesn’t require a lot of sleep, and my mind rarely shuts down, but I can’t imagine the minds of the people on this team. Wow!

As I said in the previous blog, I’m not much of a book reader. I find it takes too much time. I’m a fast mover and like to digest my information as quickly as someone can tell it to me. I imagine most event planners feel the same. If I were a car, I think I’d be running at warp speed, taking corners on two wheels, stopping only when I needed gas, food, or a bathroom break. However, when a book captivates me, I tend to ravage it, underlining statements of interest, making notes in the margins, and dog-earring pages. Well, it happened again!

Funny enough, this book was written years before the other one. It’s from 2017. You might think that these days it would be irrelevant, but you’d be wrong. It’s called The Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath. It amazed me how closely these two books went hand in hand. I probably should have read them in the reverse order. Again, just reading the title as a CMP (Certified Meeting Professional) got me excited. When planning meetings and events, isn’t that what we do? We build agendas that allow attendees to engage with content or with one another. We help attendees identify moments when they feel as if the event was tailor-made just for them.

Most of the time, moments happen to us. It’s our birthday or our anniversary, and there is a moment when someone celebrates us. Or we have an annual review at work where our supervisor sets aside a moment to give us feedback on what we’ve done well over the past year and areas for improvement in the coming one. Sadly, we may lose a loved one, which can be an incredibly sad and life-changing moment in our lives. And just as life-changing is getting married or having our first baby or grandbaby.

The book, however, talks about ways to create moments, not just let them happen to you. It takes intentionality just like providing over-the-top hospitality. Seeing some similarity here? Of all of the time’s you’ve eaten dinner at a restaurant, which ones stand out to you? The ones where you experienced a moment, for better or for worse, right? If someone asks you for a restaurant recommendation, you may talk about the food, but you will definitely talk about something you experienced. Case in point: You loved the surprise of the solo violinist who strolled through the restaurant on your honeymoon. Can’t remember if the food was good or not, you but would recommend this restaurant to anyone. Couldn’t stand the mariachi trio at the restaurant on your vacation as they hovered over your table relentlessly while you screamed at each other over the noise to carry on a conversation. Do you think you’d ever recommend this place?

Both of these restaurants intentionally created moments. Both, I’m sure, appealed to different audiences. The restaurants intentionally created the interruption you paid attention to during dinner so that even if you forgot the how the potatoes were prepared or if the steak was done to perfection or not, you’d remember how the musical experience made you feel. That’s the moment you will tell others about.

I truly can’t explain the more in more outrageous hospitality any better than the opening story of the book. It totally encapsulates the fundamentals of creating a moment. If you were looking to book a hotel in LA, California (at the time this book was written), you probably wouldn’t have selected the one which looked like a small two-story 1950s, canary yellow apartment complex with bare furnishings and a small pool, except that it’s online reviews outranked the Four Seasons at Beverly Hills and the Ritz-Carlton Los Angeles. Why? The popsicle hotline.¹

This was a Disney hotel. They knew then and still know how to create moments you will never forget. People overlooked the small rooms, little pool, and stark decor because they could pick up the cherry red phone next to the pool to hear “Popsicle Hotline.” You could order not only popsicles but anything off the hefty Snack Menu and it arrived in mere seconds. There was also a Board Game Menu and a DVD Menu (this was 2017). There were many other moment-makers, but you’ll need to read the book to see what those were.

This book goes into the many types of moments you can create. These are not phony, superficial, fabricated moments we’re talking about. Some of these are deep, life-altering, community-changing, country-improving moments. It’s weird to find myself recommending a second book in the same year, but here we are. I think as events continue to evolve and people expect a more customized experience, flexing our thinking muscles to focus on moments will certainly move us in the right direction.

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1.The Power of Moments. Chip & Dan Heath. Simon & Shuster. New York, NY. 2017.