When I'm on vacation I love luxury, but when I'm leading workshops I like to stay in a nice, plain, chain hotel rather than in a one-of-a-kind bed-and-breakfast. I like my downtime to be really downtime. I don't want to be called upon to be cordial to the generally chatty people who own bed-and-breakfasts. I'm a veritable Jericho when it comes to boundaries and need that big locking fire door between me and the world. So anyway everyone knows this and this time my hosts put me up in the new Providence Downtown Hampton Inn.
Until eight days ago, I must say that I was a loyal Courtyard Marriott gal. True, the Hampton Inns I had stayed in were feasible. But I felt they were a bit more down-market and there was a fluorescent lighting thing going on that wasn't working for me. I had stayed in a great Hampton Inn in Gaffney, South Carolina, but had thought it was probably because I was in South Carolina that everyone bent over backwards to be helpful.
Positive: brand statements are perceived as true.
I hadn't really thought about this hotel's total real advantage until I started counting up the included services that the courtyard gets me to pay for.
The free internet access: that's a savings of 12 dollars a day for 8 days;
The free breakfast: 8 dollars a day for 8 days;
The totally free business center, free internet and free printing-- the last time I printed out something at the Biltmore, rental and fees cost me 13 dollars. It's not that I'm fixated on money-- or maybe I am, but I'm also just not an idiot and would rather spend that money at J.Jill.
Did I mention the free shuttle bus constantly at my service, first for a small trip to the mall, then for a long trip to the airport? Trips for which I would have paid a cab? The coffee available 24/7 and the big cookies always out? The mechanical shoe-shiner conveniently located on my way out the door? OK. I'm just saying. Hampton Inn saved me a ton on add-ons and every employee I have ever met is well-trained and beyond courteous, dashing over to hold elevator doors, making sure I have an umbrella. The George V didn't treat me as well.
Negative: Brand statement does not include pledge to eco-responsibility or take human need for non-media public spaces into account.
The management only needs to rethink two things: the very, very high waste factor in the food service, and the media domination of all the public spaces in the hotel. Too much CNN. Not enough Green Advantage.
One-cup coffee makers that use styrofoam cups and plastic filter trays made to be used only once and then tossed in landfill are just about the worst environmental decision for making coffee today. YOu can put the recycle symbol on them, but when you don't have recycling in the room that's not exactly going to save them from the trash can. Probably saves breakage of glass carafes. But bad. Really bad. Totally wasteful. Gives a bad impression of the values of the people running the show.
The breakfast service: I haven't seen this much styrofoam and paper and plastic wrap and little plastic tub action since the last time I spent the night in a hospital barcalounger, bedside. All these plastic wrapped things may be clean-looking, but they are not appealing. This total lack of environmental emphasis at the "hot breakfast" tells me that the CEO must be about my age or older, because younger people just don't waste things like the previous generation and it makes them sick to see it. Business travelers in their thirties recycle at home. They want to see less waste when they're on the road. Given the less-waste option, they'll take it. Slapping a recycle mark on the side of a plastic tub does not cut the mustard anymore. I sense that someone in branding at Hampton is aware of the sustainability issue, thus the recycle marks, but bottom line, the breakfast is a plastic trash-making festival.
Most of the plastics used could be replaced with pressed recycled cardboard plates and cups or with the new pressed bamboo sustainable throw-aways that are so prevalent in the Seattle corporate environments where I consult. They leave so much less of a footprint. Particularly the bamboo, which is so minimally processed. And there's a comfortable, natural heft there which goes a long way in dispelling the existential aloneness of the business traveler, brought on by eating too many meals out of too many cartons with too many tiny white forks.
Problem #2: There's just too much big screen TV presence in the breakfast areas. Like its MotherBrand, the Hilton, there's nowhere in the huge room that I can sit without a VERY BIG TV screen in front of me. I down my raisin bran at 9:00 am in front of the 4-foot high talking head of Wolf Blitzer. Doesn't get the day off to a good start. The man is looking more and more like a soft plush toy.
As all those screens talked, I noticed no one in the breakfast room was paying any attention to Wolf Blitzer. The single guests were reading papers. At fuller tables, the guests were talking to each other. What a concept.
I'll bet that the person that signs off on the design of the interior spaces is male, because no woman would design an eating place to look and sound like a sports bar. Give me some peace and quiet before I charge out to speak to 70 people about their responsibilities as designers. Don't saddle me with Wolf. Is it a gender-based preference? Then make a space for the percentage of travelers of the gender that doesn't want to eat breakfast in a sports bar.
I urge the folks strategizing the Hampton brand, in the midst of all they are doing right, to press the green advantage and to support the business traveler's human need for peace and quiet in a communal setting. Replace one of the media screens with a crackling fireplace. Put in a couple of wing chairs.
If you do, the place will be perfect, and I might have to move in permanently.
