I read an interesting article called It’s the Little Things today about the type of small services that only come from loyalty, and it got me thinking.  I’ve stayed at hundreds of hotel over the past ten years, but there are some where the personal service really stood out – and where my loyalty paid off. 

It’s a chicken-and-egg thing, of course, and that’s what I think the article misses out on.  The hotels where you’ll stay frequently enough to build loyalty are the ones that treated you well enough as a guest initially to cause you to return.  It speaks about the commitment of the hotel management to really understand what their guests want, whether it’s for a single stay (when you get the standard package) or for a long-term repeat visitor who gets a little more special treatment.

I’ve certainly had the kind of treatment that the article talks about from a few hotels where I was a ‘regular’, and the extra service really makes them stick out in my mind.

In New Orleans, the sales manager of the hotel knew that I liked a particular room, and she made sure that it was always available for me whenever I stayed at the hotel.  At the hotel bar, the staff learned that I liked Guinness (not on the menu) and arranged to have it special-ordered and kept in the bar when I was staying at the hotel.  It was a really nice, personal touch.  When the lifts were slow, I was escorted to the staff lift and taken downstairs the ‘back way’ to avoid the queues.  Each time I arrived at the hotel, the front desk staff greeted me like an old friend.  The sales manager at the hotel would invite me for a coffee every few weeks to find out personally how I was enjoying my stay.

At another hotel in London, it was the same story.  There was one room in the hotel that was furnished differently from all the others – it was a prototype for the redesign that they rolled out to the entire hotel, but some of the higher-end features were cut from the final design, so only featured in this room – making it the nicest in the hotel.  Once again, the hotel manager learned that I liked this room, and made sure I had it on every visit.  He’d often invite me for a drink in the bar to hear my thoughts about the hotel and service – it was a really personal touch that made a huge influence on my decision to stay with the hotel.  When the food & beverage manager learned that I had eaten everything on the room service menu and was bored, he asked the chef to propose some specials from the main restaurant and have them sent to my room.  It was a nice touch.

In Singapore, there was no formal loyalty programme at the hotel where I used to stay regularly, but it was clear that the hotel was tracking my stay and preferences each time I visited.  There was a sort of one-upmanship in the welcome I received each time I visited.  The first time I arrived, there was a pot of tea waiting for me in my room.  The second time, it was a pot of tea and some cookies.  After that, tea, cookies, wine, fruit, even a tub filled with rose petals.  I was afraid of what they’d think of next if I went back again!  Still, it made an impression that they really valued my business and were interested in making me happy as a customer.

As much as a hotel can track preferences through loyalty schemes and guest preference cards, there’s no substitute for the real customer service that comes from a genuine human.  It’s becoming more and more rare these days, but there are still some places that make the effort.

After having heard other frequent travelers raving about it, I finally found time to see the new George Clooney film, Up in the Air.  Lots of good attention to detail and plenty of things that made Aude say “wow, that’s exactly like you!”  The suitcase-packing scenes (right down to the brand & model of suitcase) could have been shot at our house, and the TSA security regime (including the slip-on shoes and de facto profiling of the other passengers in line in order to get through quickly) rang true as well.

Really enjoyed it, although there was a little too much gratuitous product placement (heaven knows how much Hertz paid to plug their #1 Gold Club card, and one wonders how effective it was as they hurtle towards bankruptcy).  But overall a fun movie.

And sadly, playing the Frequent Flyer game of one-upmanship with Platinum cards only helps you score if you actually look like George Clooney.  For the rest of us mere mortals, even with a fist full of Platinum cards, I don’t suggest trying it at the hotel bar.

All in all, a lighter-hearted look at frequent travel than Lost in Translation.  The truth, I think, lies somewhere in between the two…

I knew it had to be too good to last.  I’ve been gloating over the past few weeks about how quite my travel schedule is.  No sooner had I thought about taking a week of vacation than I learned that I need to be in Mumbai for a few days, then straight to Sydney for a two-day workshop. 

Flight times mean that I lose two weekends away from home.  And Aude will have to add Valentine’s Day to the long list of events I’ve missed due to business travel (her birthday and my birthday being the other two events, recently).  And let’s face it, 21’099 miles in a week is a lot, even for a backside as calloused and travel-weary as mine.

Still, we’re headed out to the slopes for a week as soon as I get back from Sydney – hopefully without too much jetlag.  We’re just finalizing our plans for the trip, booking our apartment, and buying our skis!

As soon as we’re back from skiing, it’s straight onto a plane again — this time, headed for Beijing.  Yep, February is turning into a pretty brutal travel month.  Plenty of frequent flyer miles, though!

It’s the first day of 2010, and that can only mean one thing to an intrepid traveller: empty frequent flyer accounts.  The terrible day when all the odometers roll back to zero, and the whole cycle of earning back the shiny cards starts anew.

All the clocks, rolled back to zero!

A single reprieve: one of the airlines that I fly uses a rolling membership year (with membership miles accruing and being calculated 12 months after they’re earned), so I’ve got nine more months before this particular mileage year starts again (and plenty of miles in the bank for the current year already).

Like a security blanket, at least one account hasn't rolled over yet

2010 is going to be a heavy travel year, but January itself looks very quiet.  My first scheduled trip right now isn’t until February, when I head back to India for a week.

Happy travels, everyone!  Best wishes for a safe, happy and successful 2010!

Admittedly, I have not been very good about keeping my blog up-to-date in recent weeks. These days, it’s less a question of “Where’s Matthew?” than it is a question of “Where isn’t Matthew?” In short, I have been doing a lot of travelling.

Looking over my frequent flyer statement for the past month, I count:

- 5 visits to Barcelona
- 1 visit to Dublin
- 1 visit to Geneva
- 2 visits to London

It feels like more than that, if I am honest. These days I seem to be living on a plane. The Barcelona flights leave early in the morning and usually involve a 5am start. As Aude can attest, I am not exactly man-at-his-finest at 5 in the morning, no matter how many times I do it.

I am getting better at negotiating CDG airport, though. I have learned all the little shortcuts that means I can make it from taxi to gate in less than five minutes. I know which security lines are consistently shortest, and I can fetch myself breakfast in the lounge on autopilot these days.

I’m also getting to know Barcelona a little better. As the weather gets cooler, we have traded our hotel by the beach for a series of hotels downtown. We are discovering good restaurants and bars, and I have finally been introduced to real, genuine, proper tapas. It is a million miles away from anything I have tasted elsewhere.

The system is pretty straight-forward. The tapas are placed on large plates around the restaurant, and you help yourself to whatever you like. New, different tapas comes out all night. Each one is held to a piece of bread by a toothpick. At the end of the evening, you return to the bar and pay your bill. It’s all based on an honesty system – you hand over your toothpicks, they’re tallied up, and you confess to however many beers you’ve had to drink. Depending on how long you have been at the tapas bar, this may be more difficult than it appears – in which case, they’ll usually work off an estimate! I can’t imagine this system working in England, but it seems to work fine here.

It looks like I will be spending most of my time back-and-forth between Paris and Barcelona until mid-November, after which I hope to reduce my involvement in the project, spending more time working in Switzerland (just in time for ski season – no coincidence!) and less in Spain.

More updates to come. Just wanted to put something on here so that people knew I wasn’t dead.