A Contrarian Investment for Luxury: The Humble Doorman
Photo Credit: Unrecognizable doorman with white gloves holds a brass handle to a glass door at an expensive hotel. Getty / PamelaJoeMcFarlane
Skift Take
First impressions still count. Luxury hoteliers need to double down on doormen and the crucial first few minutes of arrival. It changes the game of a stay.
On Experience
Colin Nagy is a marketing strategist and writes on customer-centric experiences and innovation across the luxury sector, hotels, aviation, and beyond. You can read all of his writing here.
Covid protocols have been predicated on creating space and reducing contact between guests and staff. Luxury hospitality has used a fine-toothed comb to re-evaluate every element of the experience, optimizing for safety with staff behind glass, contactless screens, and other facets. The human-to-human element has most certainly been reduced.
But as Covid continues and guests and the travel industry need to work around the virus, as opposed to wait for it to go away, it is worth rethinking where there are useful human points of contact to double down on.
I have a bold proposal: instead of cutting or minimizing, luxury hospitality should double down on the doormen and bellmen. They are the u
