A Hotel By Any Other Name
How To Keep The Promise in Your Brand Promise. By Julian Aldridge, Founder, Enact Agency
“It’s not what you look at that matters. It’s what you see.” — Henry David Thoreau
Cairo in 1982 was the biggest, craziest, noisiest, dirtiest, and most frenetic city I’d ever been in. Nothing about it was sane, known, or easy. And it was all made that much harder by my traveling companion and my travel budget. To have called our daily stipend meagre would be to glorify those who lived on the breadline. We were closer to the raw flour and a handful of yeast line.
However, on arriving, somehow in Cairo after a rocky border crossing from Israel where we hid in the toilet on the bus since we didn’t have Egyptian visas, we lucked out. The Hotel Golden was just $1 a night for a shared room, a mattress of our own, and a shared toilet. Luxury.
That left $4 a day for the luxuries of life, like food, water, and a beer. One beer, that is.
Our anticipation of the delights of the Hotel Golden as we navigated the choking backstreets of Cairo using our already disintegration paper map were legion. Clean beds. Fans on the ceiling. A hot shower. Heaven was about to be a place on earth, and in Cairo of all places.
Sure, the hotel didn’t look that imposing from the outside, but looks can be deceptive, as we well knew. Having paid for five nights, we heaved our backpacks up three flights of rickety stairs to our room, which was, as advertised shared — with another 20 or so people. Our mattress was also shared — with a host of bed bugs, fleas and other assorted indescribables. As for the toilet … I will not describe that. It made those I would later experience on Indian trains seem sanitary.
No matter. We had the pyramids to explore, sights and sites to see, bazars to shop in, and food to sample. What could possibly go wrong.
Do What You Say, Say What You Do
Over forty years later, the Hotel Golden still stays etched in my memory for many reasons, some of them unprintable. However, what most stands out for me is the irony. Since that day I’ve stayed in hundreds, maybe thousands, of hotels, Airbnb’s, VRBOs, hostels and camp sites. None, however, had such a gap between brand name and product reality.
The Hotel Golden conjured up images of a bygone era of unparalleled luxury, silken sheets, bejeweled chandeliers, hotel staff in peaked caps and mirrored shoes, and dining by candlelight to a tinkling piano. None of which came within a million miles of the reality.
Here are four travel brands that failed to deliver on their promise — each in very different ways.
The Fyre Festival. This is probably my all-time favorite, made even better because there is an imminent threat of part two. Personally, I can’t wait for the ensuing Netflix documentary featuring enraged campers, recalcitrant naïve influencers, and loads and loads of silicone-enhanced flesh advertising the jet-setter party of the century that never was.
For those not in the know the April 2017 festival was a total debacle. Instead of a luxury VIP experience, attendees, who paid thousands of dollars to mingle with celebrities and hear top DJs and bands, ended up sleeping in hastily erected tents and eating cheese sandwiches from take out boxes.
So serious was the fraud that organizer Billy McFarland not only had to pay back the $26 million he bilked from investors, he also spent four years in jail.
Hilton. I’m old and grumpy enough to remember back in the day when Hilton Hotels were at the top of their game. They epitomized somewhat achievable luxury accommodation. Today, not so much.
Today, the Hilton Group consists of 24 brands, with their 8,000 locations covering the gamut from Home2 to the Curio Collection, with Hilton Hotels smack in the middle. Brands do evolve, and can lose their luster and novelty — just ask restaurants or nightclubs — but declining so precipitously in just a few decades reeks of carelessness.
Alaska and Virgin America. This, in my mind, is one of the biggest misses ever. Alaska is a fine, friendly, and middle of the road budget airline built on serving the West Coast. I’ve flown them many times and there’s nothing wrong — but also nothing extraordinary — about them.
When they purchased Virgin America for $2.6 billion, the brand guy in me saw a vastly expanded Virgin America service. Instead, we got a slightly expanded Alaska service. It was a bit like Ford buying Ferrari — and installing the latest Mondial engine in the latest F150.
Virgin America was a classic Challenger (unsurprisingly given who founded it), with a cool, unique take on inexpensive US domestic flights. It was different, it engendered intense loyalty, it was an opportunity to turbocharge that, to introduce the zest, imagination, and excitement of flying to millions more people
Instead, we got more beige.
Disney World Orlando. The happiest place on earth today seems run down, and way less happy than I remember back in the day.
Call it smiling fatigue, or just that the world has moved on, but Disney in Florida feels old, tired and in need of a facelift. For a place that promises unlimited joy, Disney, with its crowds, endless queues and overpriced junk food probably needs to update its version of happiness, or go the way of Alaska into eternal mediocrity.
The Hotel Golden was, clearly, a long, long way from being as advertised. It was, indeed, one of the filthiest, decrepit cesspits I’ve ever witnessed. Put simply, it wouldn’t have passed muster in an English slum in the 1830s.
Had they advertised ‘basic, incredibly cheap accommodation with free vermin provided. Stay at your own risk’, then I’d have been ok with my choice. Maybe.
The Cairo Curse
Interestingly though, the kicker in Cairo wasn’t actually the lodging. It was the food. If India is renowned for Delhi Belly, then Cairo needs its own phrase. Perhaps The Cairo Catastrophe. Or The Egyptian Eruption. Or The Cairo Curse.
Whichever, the street food (albeit usually covered in flies) looks tasty, but diner beware.
Our return to Israel on a 36-hour bus ride replete with non-stop wailing Arabic music played full blast on a tiny, tinny set of speakers, live chickens and families who did everything except cook on the bus, was one of the worst experiences of my life. Dysentery spares no man, least of all an English stomach.
The morals of the story? Many, for sure, including ‘don’t cross into a third world country illegally and with virtually no money’, ‘don’t believe everything you are told’, and ‘never eat street food unless you have a death wish’.
The lessons for brands everywhere? Here are five:
Under Promise and Over Deliver. Great brands surprise and delight. They don’t shock and repulse. There’s nothing better when traveling than receiving a little, unexpected, surprise. The turn down chocolates. The warm cookies that DoubleTree hand out at reception. The occasional ‘thank you for your business’. Challengers try to find ways to build Easter Eggs into their experiences — things that people will then share with their friends.
Keep it Real. Hyperbole is fabulous in Hip Hop and Rock ‘n Roll. Less so when it comes to describing something as important, anticipated, and occasionally life-changing as travel. Super wide angle shots of 100 sq foot rooms do nothing other than disappoint. Challengers respect the intelligence of their customers and treat them like adults. They point out their own benefits, but they don’t sugar coat things.
Be Humble. Had Alaska had the humility to understand that they were a commodity product buying a differentiated brand, things might have turned out very differently. Humility means understanding the strengths and the weaknesses of your brand — and how your product offering plays into that. Challengers are healthily paranoid, always ensuring that their perception of their brand matches that of their customers.
Stay Ahead of the Curve. Hilton failed to innovate with the times, and to keep up with, let alone get ahead of, new entrants into the hotel business like Joie de Vivre and luxury brands like the Four Seasons. What was up to par, gradually wasn’t. Challengers realize that innovation has to be constant — or they will die.
Move Down, Not Up. A luxury brand can usually easily offer a dumbed down version, but it’s really hard to do the opposite. Every couture brand has it’s more affordable sibling, from Armani with Armani Exchange to Hugo Boss with Hugo. However, the ability to trickle the cachet downwards depends on keeping your shine at the top. Challengers do everything in their power to maintain and enhance their master brand — understanding that the health of the sub brands depends on it.
Happy travels everyone, and if you’ve been to Cairo more recently than me, which wouldn’t be hard, do let me know how it’s changed, hopefully for the better.
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Julian founded his agency, Enact, to help brands of all sizes discover, define, articulate, and amplify their Challenger Story. Illuminate is published weekly, and his new book Illuminate: A Challenger’s Handbook, Volume 2 is now available on Amazon. He can be reached at Julian@EnactAgency.com
