This week Hilton Worldwide's chief executive Christopher Nassetta announced at a hospitality conference hosted by New York University that the company was doing away with room service in its New York Hilton Midtown hotel.  Turns out, this is the second Hilton to end room service, following the Hilton Hawaiian Village.

Apparently Nassetta thinks this is such a good idea for Hilton that he called on other hotel companies to close down their room service operations too.  After all, he claims, few guests use room service and it turns out not to be profitable anyway.  So who needs it?

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Thanks Hilton!  You just gave more forward-thinking and service-oriented competitors a big, sloppy wet kiss

Clearly, each hospitality company needs to study its operations, maximize profits and innovate to keep up with changing needs of its customers.  As a result, room service has taken a hit, as other hotels move to scale it back or end it entirely.  For example, Grand Hyatt in Time's Square ended its 24-hour room service, which now shuts down at 11 pm, and Public, a Chicago-based Ian Schrager hotel, delivers food to guests in brown paper bags left outside hotel room doors.

But in this day of frequent international travel, 24/7 lifestyles and jet-lagged travelers further worn down by hassles getting to, from and especially through the airport, letting CFO's watching the bottom-line make important customer-service decisions is short-sighted for Hilton in particular, and other hotels chains in general.

Hospitality companies that know which side their bread is buttered on ought to praise Hilton's move and hope that more hotels follow suit.  By taking the Hilton brand down a peg in service, they instantly elevated your brand up a notch competitively.  A more satisfying, pleasurable, customer-focused room service can become a key competitive advantage for you, if you keep your focus on the customer, not simply the bottom-line.

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How can you enhance the room service experience for your guests, and make a profit too?

Travelers, especially affluent travelers choosing a special hotel experience, expect - demand - extra service, and they are willing to pay a premium for it, that a finding from Unity Marketing's recent study of luxury travelers' plans, attitudes and desired experiences.   Offering a better room service experience for your guests is a way to distinguish your brand and encourage repeat visits.

So use the Hilton announcement, not as an example to follow blindly to some 'new normal' for the hotel industry, but as a call to discover new ways to make the room service business more satisfying to guests and more profitable for you.   It's time:

• To re-engineer room service operations, starting from scratch and working out, as opposed to putting 'band aids' on existing problem areas. 
• To explore the 'ideal room service' experiences your guests desire, through professionally-conducted research designed to take high-paying guests to a new level of service experience. 
• To look outside the hotel 'box' and study other service-focused businesses to discover service models that might adapt to your operations. For example, what can you learn from studying the gourmet food truck businesses that attract long lines of customers and quickly deliver delicious food or from a renown retailer like Nordstrom which offers an exemplary model of customer service or from Zappos and Amazon, both of which have mastered the rapid delivery model to satisfy customers.
• To strategically integrate your loyalty/rewards program with room service. For example, by studying travelers' history, you can determine guests that frequently order in-room dining and use those insights to reward guests for additional room service orders with added points, complimentary wine/beverage or other benefit. (BTW...I found this great white paper on hotel loyalty programs from Deloitte that is a must-read for anyone in the hospitality or loyalty program business)
• To create and market special hotel and room service packages for business travelers, couples, families.  For example, back in the day when my husband and I traveled with our children, they thought it the greatest treat to order in room service and buy a movie, while we went down to have an intimate and peaceful dinner in the hotel restaurant.      

Now isn't the time to throw in the towel and ditch room service.  On the contrary, it is a call for you to look at ways to innovate your room service operations to be more effective for your hotel, its bottom line and especially more satisfying to your customers.

Let Unity Marketing help you focus on your travel customers' needs

Unity Marketing offers research and resources that will help you find ways to grow your business among the customers that count the most - the affluent travelers with discretionary money to spend. We provide research-based insights, information and understanding about your customers, which will translate into more marketing success for you and your brand.  Together, we can prepare for new opportunities that could profit your company.

Get an overview:  My latest book, Putting the Luxe Back in Luxury:  How new consumer values are redefining the way we market luxury, uncovers the ways luxury consumers are changing and how specific luxury brands, including some travel brands, are responding.  This gives the reader a great start in understanding the changing dynamics of the luxury consumer market.

Understand  the luxury travel market better:  Unity Marketing offers a trend report, Affluent Consumers and Their Travel Plans 2013, that looks at the motivations and behaviors of the affluent consumers when they make travel plans, including a detailed analysis of the attributes they look for in a travel service provider.   

Go in-depth:  If you need to understand the special travel and hospitality needs and desires of the affluent market relevant to your brand, Unity Marketing can conduct a customized research study of your customers and target customers.  Utilizing a wide range of research methodologies, including focus groups, in-depth interviews, ethnography and quantitative surveys, Unity Marketing can reveal new insights, information and understanding of the affluent customers which will mean greater marketing success for your brand.

Let us help your team:  If you need the background and analysis that will ground your creative approach in a specific market or for a specific client, Unity Marketing can craft a solution tailored to your business needs.  Call me at 717.336.1600 or email pam@unitymarketingonline.com.

About Pam Danziger and Unity Marketing

Pamela N. Danziger is an internationally recognized expert specializing in consumer insights for marketers targeting the affluent consumer.  She is president of Unity Marketing, a marketing consulting firm she founded in 1992. Pam received the Global Luxury Award for top luxury industry achievers presented at the Global Luxury Forum in 2007 by Harper's Bazaar.  Luxury Daily named Pam to its list of  "Women to Watch in 2013."