How Hyatt Hotels Group can Learn from Lego’s Cuusoo
PRODUCTS DESIGNED BY CUSTOMERS FOR CUSTOMERS
In just 7 years, crowdsourcing has changed your reality. It has disrupted everything from the way Fortune 500 companies do business, start-ups raise capital, people read news, and bird watchers track migration.
Although no longer nascent, there are still countless unrealized ways businesses can innovate via crowdsourcing to improve their product / service offerings and bolster their brands. This is in part because companies have been slow to adopt crowdsourcing’s best practices from adjacent industries.
Hyatt Hotels Group could learn from toy manufacturer Lego… that’s right Lego, which has experienced fantastic results crowdsourcing the designs for new products with its Cuusoo platform, a technology that enables customers to design their own Lego product and then share those designs. Once a design receives 10,000 votes (considered ‘crowdvoting’) and passes internal review it goes into production to be sold through retailers all over the world. The designer of the product receives a 1% royalty of net revenue, along with the satisfaction of knowing his product is being sold. Cuusoo has sparked revenue growth with improved product offerings, helped Lego uncover new markets while gauging demand, and energized the Lego fan base.
Lego consultant Tim Courtney had this to say about Cuusoo in an interview last year: “Could a runaway success come from outside the organization? We want to find out. We’re very interested in ideas from fans that maybe…they’re weird, they’re different, they wouldn’t have survived the product development process. There might be things that we’ve thought of before, that we’ve killed, or we’ve never tested them outside. But if our fans can tells us there’s demand for them through something like this, then why wouldn’t we consider it? And if we could take something like that and turn it into a runaway success for the business, then that will show the value of listening to our consumers.”
What does this have to do with hotels and, specifically, Hyatt ? Like all major hotel chains, Hyatt struggles to distinguish itself in the social media marketplace. Customer reviews and the accumulations of “stars” for this or that feature are passé. But all that could turn around if Hyatt were to develop a similar platform to Cuusoo — a platform aimed at crowdsourcing the designs for hotel rooms and pools by and for those customers who are going to stay in them. The platform would be employed for hotels being developed or renovated. Like Cuusoo, the designs would be crowdvoted and those with the most votes would turn into reality. The winners on the platform would receive a once in a lifetime vacation experience, traveling and staying in different Hyatt Luxury hotels. The benefits would be dynamic for different parts of Hyatt’s business and brand:
1. Fundamentally, the platform would enable Hyatt to listen to customers in a new and engaging way. The Hyatt could reap the benefits of insights into design preferences and customer wants. The platform would be a great research tool.
2. The platform would yield outstanding designs for rooms and pools that already have proven demand and quality via the crowdvoting layer. This would cut architect costs for those developments.
3. An improved product and service offering almost always results in revenue growth, and could for the Hyatt in this case.
4. The platform encourages customers to engage with and think about the Hyatt. It would be a great tool for the Hyatt to drive engagement through its social media ecosystem (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc….) as customers share their designs and ideas. The contest winners and their resulting travel experiences would be documented through short videos which would serve as brand and social content.
5. As a result of its bolstered branding, a new exciting product offering, and lively social media channels, The Hyatt would re-energize and excite its fan base. It would also likely experience a boost in visibility via media press attention.
The Hyatt Hotel Group is just one of many companies that have yet to fully realize the benefits of crowdsourcing. It will be exciting to see how big brands continue to adopt crowdsourcing and more effectively serve their customers.
