Outrageous Hospitality

I recently read the most amazing book. I don’t spend a lot of time reading books. They’re too slow for me. I’m not a student of Evelyn Wood, but I can generally scan through the pages of a book and get the gist of things enough to carry on a conversation. I’d prefer to listen to a recorded book or podcast at double speed. I have always said I walk fast, talk fast, and listen fast. I think most event planners would say the same. If you’ve ever been in a room listening to two event planners doing an event handoff, your mind would spin and your ears might bleed. It’s a lot like when both of my sisters and I are in the same room all talking at once, getting more and more excited the longer we’re together.

However, this book was so captivating, I am actually starting to read it again. I am still old school and need a physical copy of a book so I can underline things, make notes in the margin, and dog-ear pages I really want to go back and read again. I started to make such a mess of this book, I tried to limit myself to the truly great. The premise of the book is about restaurants, but the foundations can be applied to so many other things. Just like Horst Schulze’s rules of customer service and hospitality from his many years at the Ritz-Carlton so long ago, they not only apply to hotels, they are truly transferrable to any customer service experience. And really should be.

The book is Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara. Without context, the title alone is intriguing; Unreasonable Hospitality. What image does that conjure up in your mind? I think of over-the-top, out-of-this world customer service that leaves a guest with their jaw on the floor. Hospitality so spectacular that guests or attendees are sold out for life and keep on coming back year after year after year, recommending your restaurant or event to everyone they come into contact with.

Will and his associates spent years one-upping themselves to see how far they could push the hospitality boundaries. They wanted each guest to have an individualized experience beyond what they could have ever imagined. Will’s restaurant was in New York City, and the grand gesture they started with was as simple as finding out where the customers had parked and feeding the meters for them while they dined so they didn’t have to think about it during their meal. Brilliant. I’m not going to provide any spoilers here, but throughout the years, things slowly escalate to absolutely breathtaking.

What I want to point out is HOW they achieved this miraculous hospitality. It was a process. Not everything they did was successful. Not everything they did cost the same. But they continued to put themselves in the customer’s shoes, asking themselves if there was anything impeding the customer from having an absolutely flawless experience. Not only that, but they listened. Waitstaff and hosts knew why diners were there and how they could make their dining experience unique, tailor-made, and immersive.

Because customers ate a multi-course meal, they were there for several hours. This gave the team a fair amount of time to provide the customers with outstanding, individualized hospitality. Reading frantically how Will and his team constantly pushed the boundaries of what was possible was what drove me to read the book in just a couple of days. As the restaurant became more and more successful, they hired “Dreamweavers” (yes, like the song from the 1970’s which you’ll now not be able to get out of your head) to ensure there were people dedicated to making diner’s experiences out of this world.

One of the phrases that stood out to me, which I have heard before, is such a great reminder for those of us in the meeting and events industry. “People will forget what you did, they’ll forget what you said, but they’ll never forget how you made them feel.” If we’re constantly focused on the logistics and crossing off task lists, we’ll be incredibly disappointed by this statement. We want attendees to remember the beautiful centerpieces at the closing reception that your team discussed ad nauseum or recall the poignant words of your high-paid keynote speaker.

If you have any desire to see what is possible with some ingenuity and creativity, with a group of people who don’t have the word “limitations” in their vocabulary, I highly recommend you grab a copy of this book. I warn you, however, you may not be able to put it down, so as you crack open the cover, plan to clear your calendar for a day or two. My brain is still on fire as I try to work out how I might add some ridiculous hospitality into some of the events I have coming up.

Have you experienced over-the-top hospitality? I’d love to hear about it!
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