The Strange Thing Hotels Do To Keep Customers

For the past two years, I’ve traveled for about 100-150 days per year.

This means I’ve stayed in a lot of hotels.

There’s this one thing that I’ve noticed about nearly all hotels:

It’s the indoor pool.

Here’s what’s weird about it:

Almost no one uses it.

It’s smelly, loud, and there’s always a risk of someone else getting into that tiny hot tub with you, too.

So why does this still exist?

It’s a serious cost for hotels to install and maintain.

Yet, basically, all hotels continue to offer this as a feature.

The feature isn’t the pool. It’s the feeling you get when you know you could use the pool. It feels like a luxury to have access to a pool with fresh towels.

How is an indoor pool related to anything?

Whether you’re building software, teaching students, taking care of patients, or growing an audience, you are developing and revising your “features.”

As you look at user behavior, you have to decide what features to keep, which ones to remove, and which ones to build from scratch.

I’m not saying the indoor pool is a great idea.

What I’m saying is that you have to find out what’s really valuable about what you’re doing and make sure you’re focused on that.

It’s up to you to decide whether the ends justify the means.

Just think what would happen if the hotel removed the pool. Pools are so ubiquitous that customers could look at this and feel that they’re being ripped off of a standard feature!

By having the pool, you’re now on par with the guest’s expectations for what features a hotel should have. You’re not adding anything. You’re just keeping up.

This is just the unique context that will help inform decisions.

And honestly, that’s the easy part.

The hard part is identifying that it’s not the pool that’s valuable, it’s the feeling of having access to a luxury that’s valuable.

2 Minute Action

What’s something you do that is valuable?

It can be as small as the holiday card you send to clients or the tissue box you put in the grieving room for the families of patients.

Now ask: how do you know what’s valuable about that?

Don’t make this hard. You only have 2 minutes.

Just ask the user. Write an email asking for feedback. Monitor website clicks to see behavior.

Your action can be small and still have a big impact.

[SERIES] 7/7 Unpopular Belief: Be As Disloyal As Possible

Yes, we can all agree that loyalty is useful in personal relationships.But the rest of life is much more complicated.This is post 7 of the 7 Unpopular Beliefs Series.

Be As Disloyal As Possible!

Personal Loyalty

Yep. This is the part of being a human that has helped us survive for so long as a species.By trusting our neighbors, humans have been able to build societies that functioned and developed.Strangely, it doesn't always work the same for business or for building resources.

Opportunism helps us get to the next level.

By seeking and seizing opportunities, we can move forward faster.Being brand loyal doesn't help you if the brand suddenly changes leadership and goes in a new direction.Being loyal to a partner doesn't help you if your partner decides to sell off their shares.Being loyal to your previous statements or beliefs doesn't help you change your mind with new information.

Choose the plan with the most options.

This helps diversify your options so that you can choose based on the changing context of the world.As the backdrop changes, so will your decisions.

2 Minute Action

Staying in the theme of options, here are some action options for today:

• Tell your closest friends or your partner how grateful you are to have them in your life.
• Tell your employer that you're looking for more opportunities within the company and you'd like to know more about what it takes to get there.
• Reply to this post! What's something you believed as a child that you no longer believe, now?

A Common Reason Resolutions Are Ineffective

It's a fresh start.A clean slate.The funny thing is that you can make a clean slate whenever you want.The sun comes up every day.That's the most high-frequency slate-wiper I know of.

So why do we wait until January to make a resolution?

You're in control.You can decide whenever you want.The new year is just a good excuse.It's up to you to invent more good excuses--because this one only comes around every 365 days.It's the waiting for some arbitrary, made-up mile-marker that can slow so many people down.It's the other 364 days on your revolution around the sun that actually matter.Today is just one of them.

More than 2 Minute Action:

You've probably got more than 2 minutes to reflect, today.Take some extra time to sit by yourself and compare last year's goals and resolutions to this year's behaviors.What matches?Comment here and let me know what you will be doing differently this year to achieve new results.