What Québec Wants™

Bring the hotel home

It used to be that hotels wanted you to feel at home.

Now hotels want you to bring them home.

At least, that’s what Westin is hoping you’ll do judging from the brochure I found in my room.  

Had a good night’s sleep on the Westin Heavenly Bed? Order it online, including the pillows and sheets. Loved that shower? Order the dual showerhead online and, while you’re at it, throw in the shower curtain. 

Love the wine? Enjoy the resort

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal last week, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton is checking into the hotel business. The world's largest luxury-goods company says it will develop resorts using the name of its Bordeaux winery, Cheval Blanc. The company tested the concept with a first location that opened in the French ski resort Courchevel in 2006. Two more hotels are scheduled to join the new chain by 2012 in Oman and Egypt, the company said. The project is "a natural extension of activities in luxury hospitality with Cheval Blanc," LVMH said in a statement. 

Less often with more luxury

Quebeckers appear to be staying at hotels less often than Canadians in the rest of Canada (36% of Quebeckers and 47% of Canadians in the ROC stayed at a hotel at least once in the past year according to PMB 2009 data). However, when asked if they stayed at an economy or luxury hotel for business or vacation, Quebeckers are more likely to say they stayed at a luxury hotel.

French discount

Hotels usually claim that ‘kids eat free’ or offer seniors discounts.

Here’s a promotional strategy I have not seen before.

According to a report by the CBC, a Quebec City hotel says it wants to promote pride in the French language by offering discounts to francophones.

As part of its “Franco-friendly” campaign, the Chateau Laurier hotel, just steps from the Plains of Abraham, said it would offer a 15 per cent discount to Acadians and French-speaking people from outside Quebec.

“We are extremely proud to be not only the first ‘French-friendly’ establishment in the Americas but also to be the establishment that francophones can count on to valorize their cultural heritage,” the hotel’s president, Alain Girard, said in a statement.

There's nothing discriminatory about this according to the hotel’s marketing manager.

Comments posted on the CBC’s website tend to suggest otherwise. Here’s a sample:

Typical of anti-English Quebec. No wonder their tourism is down.

What a fabulous way to promote the French culture. Is that even legal what they are doing?

The hotel manager’s intention is not to promote a special discount BUT to make clear their position about the political language issue. However like the rest of their reasons for rejecting the english, it shows how wrong they are and how little they care about anglophone national and international tourists that visit Quebec.

Not so random acts of generosity

In this week’s CONSUMED column in the NYT magazine, Rob Walker writes about Hyatt Hotel’s new program of ‘random acts of generosity’ aimed at making its customers not just pleased but grateful. The result of months of consumer research, the initiative will mean that staff will randomly delight customers by unexpectedly picking up the tab your hotel-bar drinks or hotel-spa massage.

Walker quotes Robert Palmatier, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Washington and author of a paper on the role of gratitude in human relationships and in marketing.

Here’s a link to Walker’s column.

The Hyatt program is interesting but, as Walker points out, has one potentially major flaw; the hotel chain went public with it. “Hyatt is walking a fine line in generating buzz about a program that it doesn’t want customers to actually expect. What if a Hyatt guest reads this column and wonders why he didn’t get any free drink?

Quebeckers want respectful service.

I have no doubt that gratitude can be a powerful emotion in marketing but recent data from Ipsos Reid suggest that feeling respected could be the real key to customer loyalty in Quebec.

The survey conducted in April 2007 on behalf of TD Canada Trust asked Canadians to rank the following six features of service in order of importance: respectful, friendly, knowledgeable, accurate, quick and provides peace of mind.

‘Knowledgeable’ was the feature most likely to be ranked first among all Canadians. Quebeckers however stood out from the rest of the country ranking ‘respect’ significantly above other service features.

This reminds me of the Ritz Carlton’s service credo: ‘Ladies & gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen’.

That’s respect without random free drinks.