I recently stayed in a hotel and most of the space on the nightstand was taken up with a landline phone. I can remember the days when hotels charged for local calls and gouged people for long-distance dialing, yet now I wonder why they incur the ongoing expense of having a phone in the room at all.
It got me thinking of all the other changes that have become standard in the industry — air conditioning and cable television, of course (but at one time they were an advertised luxury), refrigerators and coffee makers in the room, white comforters instead of dark florals, keycards instead of keys, and free breakfast bars, just to name a few.
We took the exercise a step further and imagined what would be next in the hotel amenities war — or what we would want there to be. Some of the answers from our group: a showerhead with a hose, a dog bed and/or dog that you could borrow, a Bluetooth speaker, an umbrella, and smart controls for everything in the room.
It’s a good exercise to push your imagination and consider “what could be” for hotels, your organization, your house, or any aspect of your life. Like with any brainstorming, it may take a few moments to get warmed up but once you get going, the ideas abound.
It only took one hotel chain to start offering new benefits and the others were compelled to follow. Maybe your idea could be the one to launch a revolution in your field.
