Transcript: Episode 155: Royal Ride Regrets

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[00:00:00] Susan Barry: This is Top Floor episode 155. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/155. 

[00:00:14] Narrator: Welcome to Top Floor with Susan Barry. This weekly podcast right up to the top floor features tangible tips and excellent stories from the experts and characters who elevate hospitality. And now your host and elevator operator, Susan Barry.

[00:00:32] Susan Barry: Welcome to the show. Adam Tuttle got a hospitality degree from the University of Las Vegas and embarked on a pretty typical hotel career, helping to open a La Quinta in Las Vegas before landing in the rooms division at Four Seasons Hotels in several cities. After trying his hand at consulting, Adam hit on an app idea that his techie friend finally agreed had legs and Yipy was born. Today we are going to talk about service standards and digitizing the analog, but before we jump in we need to answer the call button. 

Call button rings 

[00:01:17] Susan Barry: The emergency call button is our hotline for hospitality professionals who have burning questions. If you would like to submit a question, you can call or text me at 850 404 9630. Today's question was submitted by Amy, who asks, I love this question. Why are luxury hotels so much more expensive? What am I getting as a customer that justifies double, triple, or quadruple the price? This is a great question. And as someone who has recently returned from a trip, and stayed at a luxury hotel, I may or may not have thoughts. What are yours, Adam? 

[00:02:04] Adam Tuttle: Well, first of all, I love this question and I think it's so relevant because I think all of us ask that question when we are looking at our, our places that we want to stay and what we're doing. And when it comes down to luxury properties, um, I think there's a few things. First of all, I think it's, it's helpful to note that luxury is one of the most over marketed words, uh, within, within marketing right now. I mean, everything is luxury. If you want to do something fun, type in the word luxury to Amazon and you can get luxury foot scrubbers and luxury back scratchers. And it's just the weirdest thing, but I think looking at that question directly of what, what separates the price of a luxury property and a traditional, maybe even a full service property, what are the real differentiation factors that you should expect, or that should be the price drivers of that? I think there's a few categories. Um, obviously product is high on that list.

Um, the luxury product should be elevated. It should be, made from the finest qualities, the best materials. It should be exclusive in nature, right?

[00:03:15] Susan Barry: And when you say product, you're referring to like decor, artwork, flowers, quality of linens, that kind of thing.

[00:03:22] Adam Tuttle: Yes. Amenities, like all of just, you know, the, the couches that are in the lobby, right? These should be high quality items. They should be in, immaculate pristine condition, and it shouldn't feel overused, right? It should the idea with the product of luxury, it should feel just gosh, like this was intended specifically and individually for you. And then when it comes to the service, it should feel tailored or catered to you as an individual, right?

I think I believe that the highest, um, level the top floor of first of hospitality, so to speak, is personalization. It's the opportunity to really say, I see you, I understand you. I want to tailor or cater this experience. As much to your likes, needs, wants, and wishes as much as I possibly can. Right. And then enters the anticipatory service and all of those, those types of things. And then I think that there's a little bit more on, on to, to say with a location. And I think that there is a lot to say just on the overall willingness to do extra and to be a little bit more. 

[00:04:35] Susan Barry: That's what I was going to say before, is that nothing is too much trouble. That was my most recent experience that really felt special to me that we had a couple of requests that were super irritating - having sat on the other side I know that they were annoying requests, but we couldn't help it. And the fact that at no point did the person receiving our request make me feel like it was anything other than a pleasure to accommodate me is, was a absolute, you know, totally worth it. From my perspective, I'm not sure that a consumer is able to discern quality of product in the way that a hotel person intends it to be perceived. Like I don't, I think especially because so many finishes and stuff like that, that used to be, you could only see in hotels are now very easy to replicate residentially. I just don't feel like there's that specialness factor anymore. I will say that the flowers piece, the big, glorious, glamorous, over the top floral arrangements that's a differentiator, just from my personal perspective. 

[00:05:53] Adam Tuttle: Yes. And if I can't, there is, I, you know, I, was a consultant in luxury hospitality and still kind of every once in a while on the side. I have some great clients that I, I still help with service. And there is a little pet peeve of mine whenever I do luxury service training. And it is, it's this, it's when people say, “Oh, I just want you to feel at home.” Like, no, I don't want you to feel at home. I want you to feel transported. I want you to walk in and be like, "Oh my gosh, look at that flower arrangement. Oh my gosh. Look at what they've done.” I think that luxury hospitality has to be transformative in our sense and in all of our senses, right? You have to, if you want to be in luxury hospitality, you have to say I am here to play the game. I am here for a show. And you can't just be like, “Oh, this is luxury hospitality because….” And I think you've hit on a really great point here of the residential factor, right? Look, even Four Seasons is in like the residential game now, right? Like that's, that's what they do. And there is this, I want you to feel home and comfortable and luxury hospitality. If you're going to pay, now standard is a thousand dollars in luxury hospitality for a standard night, right? At least within the United States.

[00:07:09] Susan Barry: That just made me feel like I was going to throw up. 

[00:07:12] Adam Tuttle: It is. Yeah. Like the base, the base price is, you know, like it's expected to be a thousand dollars for a standard room. And if you're going to charge a thousand dollars, Gosh, dang it. I better have some flowers. We've got to have some of these show stopping amenities and these extra perks and the welcome drinks and all those things that come with that, um, with that to create the experience, that sense of place. Yeah. 

[00:07:37] Susan Barry: How did you pick hospitality? Is it something that you always knew you wanted to do or did you land on it because you were at University of Las Vegas and so famous there? 

[00:07:49] Adam Tuttle: This is a great question. Um, unfortunately, uh, I'm going to take you way back to the backseat of my mom's car when I was 10 years old and I was having a full midlife crisis at the ripe age of 10.

[00:08:01] Susan Barry: Oh bless. 

[00:08:02] Adam Tuttle: Of just Oh my gosh. What am I going to do with my life? What do I want to be? Where do I want to go to school? How will I get into that school? I mean, we're talking full, full, full meltdown. And I, I can tell you the exact stoplight I was at when I realized that hospitality is what I wanted to do. 

[00:08:21] Susan Barry: And is it because you looked out the window and were like, “Oh, there's a holiday in - sold.”

[00:08:23] Adam Tuttle: I was actually looking, I was actually right next to a, a nursing home. So my mom, I know my mom was a, um, uh, a counselor or a social worker in, in, in nursing homes, especially in Alzheimer's care. My dad, uh, as when I was a young kid was a marketing executive for hospitality. So he was in casinos and then we moved and he did golf courses and luxury hotels.

I was even on a billboard for a water park when I was like five. It was so great. We filmed it in the winter and I was shivering cold and then they, you know, photoshopped all the water in. It was great. And so I had, subconsciously been around and just lived, literally lived in hotels. And I, I think that that had a huge part to play. So when I was 10, I decided, yes, hotels, what I want to do. I wrote the Dean of UNLV was like, this is the school I want to go to. I was from Nevada. I knew that that's what I want to do. And the plan was, okay, let's go to UNLV for my undergrad. And then I'll go to Cornell for my, for my grad work. And that will be, and then I'll have the American like, Hospitality schooling that I should get. 

Fast forward life. Graduated high school, went to UNLV, and then while I was at UNLV - you know, I think every college student, should have that moment of, is this really what I wanted to do? And so it took getting into the actual industry and getting into hospitality. And at first I thought there was a career pivot for me and I thought that the restaurants was calling my name. Like F&B, like, I'm a, I'm a soft chunky loving man and I was like, uh, F&B is where I belong. I live to eat. And I did one day in a kitchen and I said, Nope, not for me. I am way too soft. I cannot handle this. Nope. And that that's all it took. 

[00:10:16] Susan Barry: Back to the front desk you went! 

[00:10:17] Adam Tuttle: I watched one frying pan go flying across the kitchen and I thought, “Oh, I couldn't handle this.” So that's what I, I got back into the more of the front of house hospitality side, um, hotel side. 

[00:10:31] Susan Barry: Gotcha. I've noticed that, uh, you know, this definitely happened in my on-property career and I've seen it time and time again, um, that people get typecast into certain types of hotels. Like if you, work in extended stay, you're an extended stay person. If you work in luxury or luxury person or whatever, you definitely defied that rule because you started at a La Quinta and then moved from a La Quinta to a Four Seasons, which is a pretty unheard of jump. How did that happen?

[00:10:59] Adam Tuttle: Uh, so I like to joke, I worked on a - this is true. I worked at a La Quinta on a, on a Wednesday and a Four Seasons on a Thursday. And when I was in college, I started at this La Quinta. And it was amazing. It was such a great experience. I opened it from the doors, not even being on and loaded the mattresses in. And my college had a really great, um, program, it was a mentor program. And I was assigned a mentor, which was the general manager, Mark Helrung of The Four Seasons of Las Vegas at the time. And I started meeting with him and it was more of just a collegiate thing, right? Like his civic duty, I guess, industry duty. And one funny thing about that La Quinta is we had no idea what we were doing. Truthfully, it was a bunch of college kids. I had recruited all my friends that worked and are that we're going to school at hotel school. And our general manager, you know, bless his heart, but he didn't know what he was doing. And they brought in a new general manager. And when she came in, one of the first things she said to us is, have you, have you seen where you are on TripAdvisor? And we were like, I have no idea what you're talking about. And we were the number two hotel on TripAdvisor in Las Vegas.

[00:12:18] Susan Barry: Totally on accident? 

[00:12:20] Adam Tuttle: Yeah. 2009, 2010, like height of TripAdvisor, whatever. And when this, and when the general manager was like, wait, where are you? Where are you working? And I said, I'm working at the La Quinta and we were beating Four Seasons. Like, wow, crushing Four Seasons on TripAdvisor. And he was like, how are you doing that? And we ended up having this conversation and he was the one that said, look, you belong here. Like you belong with us. And I, it was kind of a little bit of a wrestle. And, and I finally made the jump, but I'll say this in anticipation. So that's how I made my move. 

[00:12:52] Susan Barry: It's interesting because I think that there is a perception that the higher up the chain scale you go, the better you are. And I'm not sure that I agree with that. I think it's whether you are suited to that style of service, because I will tell you I was a great director of sales and marketing. I would rather eat a worm sandwich than be a director of sales and marketing out of Four Seasons. That is not my spiritual gifting in any way, shape, or form.  

[00:13:26] Adam Tuttle: Yes, you have to, I mean, and I think that that's, that's so true in hospitality. Because in hospitality we have to - and I don't mean this like in a cliche way - like you have to, it is required that you feel comfortable and authentic in your delivery in hospitality. Period. 

[00:13:43] Susan Barry: I agree. 

[00:13:44] Adam Tuttle: If you don't feel authentic, you will never deliver excellence on any of those scales. And so for some people, it's the, it like the, the corporate chains is too restricting. Like, oh my gosh, I could never do that. And then it's not for you. But I think that you know, sometimes, yes, there's luxury, yes, there's, you know, limited service and mid service and independent and boutique and all of these. The key is you have to bounce around to find it. 

[00:14:11] Susan Barry: So you yourself left Four Seasons and started a consulting company called Economic Luxury. Can you talk about that? What did you, what do you do or did you do? I'm not sure if that business is still active or not. 

[00:14:24] Adam Tuttle: Yes. It is slightly, yeah. Um, so Economic Luxury was this, this brainchild of working in the hospitality industry and having the moment of, “Oh my gosh, I am, I am striving to, for a position, general manager that I've never actually done. I don't even know what this role does day to day. And I'm wanting to be it.” And there was this kind of sobering moment for me where I said, “Gosh, like, uh, Is that really what I want? Is this really the life I want to live?” And my father was an entrepreneur and I think that the bug was always in me and I had said, “Gosh, I really want to try this. I want to take a shot on myself. This company that is amazing has taken a shot on me. Why don't I believe in myself? Why don't I try this?”

So I started Economic Luxury with the belief of how do I take the secrets of luxury hospitality and bring that into limited mid-service entry level luxury and helping those hotels understand the delivery of hospitality And the idea is how it was, how do we help you establish the standards of service and understand what the expectations are and train your team to really be able to deliver on that? In an authentic and genuine way. And that was the, the, the launching point out of my traditional hospitality career. 

[00:15:59] Susan Barry: Got it. And then Yipy was launched out of that. So correct. Talk about that. What is Yipy? 

[00:16:08] Adam Tuttle: That's Yipy was born out of Economic Luxury and Yipy is in the, in the shortest way, it is a standards management platform. And what do I mean by that? And, and what's that journey? So I'll try to summarize it as simply as possible. And I'll do that through this story. That in, in hospitality through my consulting, I quickly learned of a, of a simple problem. There's a lot of standards, a lot, and managers and operators have a hard time keeping those standards understood. Like, like what are they? Who's supposed to do them? And how are we doing with them? Those are like the biggest questions that, that I was facing as a consultant. 

[00:16:54] Susan Barry: Just really quickly for the non-hoteliers who are listening, when we say standards, when Adam's referring to standards, he's not talking about sort of like this loosey goosey what are good manners. These are written rules that are required by different brands, programs, et cetera. So this isn't like how to be nice to people. This is like, how many washcloths need to be in every single restroom and every single guest room.

[00:17:49] Adam Tuttle: I should, I should also say this before I say anything more about Yipy. Those 107 pages are distributed via PDF. Um, and that's the industry standard, right?

[00:18:00] Susan Barry: So it might as well be a three-ring binder, right? 

[00:18:02] Adam Tuttle: It literally is a three ring binder, right? And then you rip them up and you hand it out from every department. Okay? Here's the ones that are relevant to housekeeping and heaven forbid it splits between departments mid page cause you got to take a photocopy. And so what Yipy does is it takes that and it digitizes it. So we upload all of the standards that exist, um, within an organization and we put it into one digital format. And then there you can digitally divide amongst the organizations and the teams who is responsible for execution of what standards. Sometimes they overlap. Sometimes they're unique. But the idea is that Yipy should give that one source of truth of what standards are. And the cool part about it is you can import multiple sets of standards because a property may have more than one of those PDFs that they have to follow. 

So we're going to just give an example of a luxury hotel because they're the most fun. If I'm operating a luxury hotel under a brand, I have to have their brand requirements. But if I'm trying to reach a Forbes accreditation, I have to have the Forbes standards. Maybe I'm part of the American Express Fine Hotels and Resorts Program? They have their own set of standards. Or AAA, they have their own set of standards. Preferred hotels, Chase hotels, they all have their own standards that they give to hotels and say you have to follow these. And that's on top of government regulations, sanitary requirements, OSHA standards.

[00:19:29] Susan Barry: Oh, that's a good point. I didn't think about that, too. Like, even the municipality makes you post those weird signs in the swimming pool and all that stuff. okay.

[00:19:36] Adam Tuttle: Everything. So like, is your refrigerator at the right temperature? Are you holding the meat at the right temperature? Um, is your hot and cold line, you know, appropriate? Do your hand sanitation stations, are they, you know, in appropriate spaces? And so if you're trying to manage that as a hotelier. You are managing literally thousands of pieces of paper and getting that shared with your team is a task. And Yipy does that all. It literally, it streamlines everything into one central hub that it makes it manageable so you can truly say, what are the expectations of the front desk? And it will combine all of those standards. If there's, if there's duplicative standards, then it takes the hierarchy out of that and says, okay, if you hit this, you hit these others. And it allows you to really understand and digest, um, what those standards are. 

And then you can self-audit as well so that you can have a good pulse on your organization of how are we doing? Because eventually you're going to be audited, whether that's a formal audit by Forbes or the brand or the health department is going to walk in and say, “Let me see.” And we want to make sure that we're ready and that there's never fines or, um, any of that. But most importantly, I think the greatest thing that we do, uh, with this is we help people understand what success looks like and feels like it sounds like, because that's the greatest part.

[00:20:57] Susan Barry: Let's come back to audits in just a second. What is the person working in the hotel or the general manager or the department head, what is that person doing with Yipy day in day out to follow the standards? 

[00:21:10] Adam Tuttle: That is such a quick question because Yipy is intended to be a part of your daily operation. It's intended to be a companion that you take with you as often as you can. So first and foremost, there are so many standards that exist. Um, we were doing an account with a property the other day and they were in, they had imported all of their standards and they said, “We want to do one comprehensive audit of every standard that applied to a front desk check in.” From the, the transactionals, into some of the soft service skills, plus some of just like the requirements, such as like your uniform fits and it's pressed and you know, your hair is good and you're smiling and all of those things. There were 96 requirements in this comprehensive audit. That's exhausting. No one is going to do that. And I guarantee you that front desk agent didn't know that there were 96 points that they had to hit for every single check in. 

[00:22:07] Susan Barry: If a guest knew that they would probably be furious. Like, are you kidding me right now?

[00:22:18] Adam Tuttle: And so we're very hyper aware of that. And so with Yipy, the way that it's designed is that there's two segments. One, once we have an organization standards, we, we organize those standards based off of role and function. So we will help break it down. So these are the standards that apply to your front desk, the bell check in, or the front desk arrival, or the housekeeping arrival, you know, how it should be staged for an, for a room arrival. And we hyper focus those audits so that they're intentionally auditable and observable, right? Uh, hotel managers and, and hoteliers, uh, and restaurateurs don't have time to do comprehensive audits. It's too much, but we do have time to stop and listen into a conversation here and there and hear how things are going. 

So the first part, I digress a little bit. The first part is we simply provide basically a workflow is what we call it, which is here are the standards that you need to meet for this interaction. Great. Then the supervisors and assistant managers or managers of those departments have the ability to audit those where they can self assess. They can watch their, their employees perform these functions and they can make meaningful observations. Yes. You collected the credit card. Great. Um, you followed appropriate credit card handling procedures. Awesome. You said enjoy your stay. Great. You know, yes, no, all these things. They can make notes. And every observation that they make feeds into aggregated reports, um, which means that they're collecting all of these scores over time. And they're putting into this data into reporting that the general managers, directors, division heads, regionals, and potentially even corporate can look at rollup scores.

[00:24:07] Susan Barry: We like to make sure that our listeners come away from every single episode of Top Floor with some good, specific, practical tips to try either in their businesses or in their lives. We know, Adam, that it can be a struggle to align budgets when it comes to technology in the hotel business. It's something that we talk about on the show constantly and in the industry constantly. Everybody talks about it. What are some suggestions that you would give to a fellow technology founder to help make the financial case for tech in a hotel? 

[00:24:47] Adam Tuttle: I would say to them, make it affordable. Like make, before you look dream of your millions, or you dream of, you know, ringing the bell on wall street. I think if you are going to be a tech founder in the hospitality industry, you have to understand. And I think that this is the greatest thing that I pulled from my experience and understanding of hotel PNLs. Hotels operate on margins, small margins, and they're built on the backs of long labor hours, of high, you know, high costs in terms of labors and products and all of these things. And if we want to shape this industry, and change it. We have to start looking at how do I make this affordable for hotels? How do I get this technology ingrained into this industry? And then once you have market adoption, once you have the market recognizing the value and it will tell you if it values your solution or not, then you can start going after a little bit higher pricing.

[00:25:55] Susan Barry: That's such a good point. It's this is such a thin margin business and people look at these giant beautiful hotels with glorious floral arrangements and marble everywhere and think, “Oh, they must be raking in the dough.” But the real payday comes from the real estate when it transacts. The cash flow is nice, but it is a thin margin and there's not like a whole lot of, uh, variability in that. So, um, that's a great point that you made. Yeah. Um, okay. So this is just a fun one. As a long time hotel person, what habits from hotels do you bring to the outside world that you wish everyone would adopt? 

[00:26:37] Adam Tuttle: Oh my gosh, please bring empathy and kindness to your, to your, to the workplace. I love hiring hoteliers. I think that there's a, there's like when you're a hotelier, there's like almost this cage in your brain. Like we were talking earlier about the industry. There's a cage in your brain where you say, I'm only a hotelier. What else can I offer the world? Like what else I couldn't, what other industry could I go into? Oh my gosh, everything. Hoteliers are the best multitaskers. Don't multitask. It's not a good thing, but they can handle, you know, intense moments that are pressured moments, right? They can do this, but most of all, and what I've brought with me that I wish everyone did is the importance of making people feel happy and, and being kind. And hospitality is that. It is the opportunity to say, I see you, I hear you. I'm listening to your needs and I want to deliver a solution that matters to you. And if we can embody that as, as a, as an industry and, and business. And if everyone could embody that, it would be such a better place to live and work.

[00:27:47] Susan Barry: I agree. I thought you were going to say something a little bit more simple. So I'm going to tell you mine. These are things that I still do almost 30 years after later, right? Like I have not worked at a hotel in a really long time. Um, I say good morning, good afternoon, good evening to every single person that I, not even that I meet that I catch out of the corner of my eye. I'm screaming like a pure crazy person. Um, and then picking up trash inside buildings, like— 

[00:28:21] Adam Tuttle: I can't, I can't help myself. 

[00:28:23] Susan Barry: I know. And I don't even think most hotel people do that anymore. But when I was coming up, that was like such an important rule. Another one that I've seen people talk about, I don't do this anymore because I, and I, guess people probably don't because you don't have landlines, but dialing nine before you try to call somebody out of your house. You know what I mean? Or answering the phone like, good morning, this is Susan, good morning, this is Susan. I still do that. 

[00:28:49] Adam Tuttle: Oh my gosh. I love that one. Here's another one though. Like, and this is a plague that even my wife will roll her eyes at and stuff. If you ask me out in public for like, if I'm at the grocery store and someone just like walks up and they see something in my cart, like, “Oh, hey, where is that?” I'm like, “Oh, let me show you!”

[00:29:07] Susan Barry: Oh god, you walk them over. 

[00:29:08] Adam Tuttle: I’ll have like, an open hand gesture. It's right down this aisle or like, let me show you where it is. Or even worse. Even this is, this is the true, like luxury training of mine. That is such a plague where if someone, this happened not too long ago, where they walked up and they're like, I'm sorry, where did you find that? I was like, “Oh, it's over here on aisle five. I know exactly where it is. Take mine.” 

[00:29:30] Susan Barry: Aww, that’s nice! 

[00:29:31] Adam Tuttle: And they were just like, no, you don't have to. I was like, trust me - it's going to save us both time because I have to go back that way. 

[00:29:38] Susan Barry: I will have to walk you either way, so. 

[00:29:41] Adam Tuttle: Like that is to me, it's just, you can, you can take the, uh, you can take us out of hospitality, but you'll never take the hospitality out of us.

[00:29:49] Susan Barry: It’s so completely true. Well, we have reached the fortune telling portion of our show. So you've got to predict the future and then we'll see if you were right. What is a prediction you have about the future of hotel loyalty programs? 

[00:30:07] Adam Tuttle: I love hotel loyalty programs. Actually, I think that they are inevitable. I think that you will see every brand, um, continue to diversify their loyalty program. Uh, I think that they're going to continue to expand greatly. And when we really look at the loyalty programs, I think you're going to start seeing larger mergers of, um, brand loyalty points that are going to merge with, with more, more and more, um, like-minded organization. So you're, you're not going to see like IHG and Marriott.

[00:30:44] Susan Barry: I got it. So like a hotel company and an airline or an airline and a shopping…yeah. 

[00:30:52] Adam Tuttle: I think it's just gonna become way more prolific. Look, but I will say this on when it comes to the hotel loyalty points, the grip that it had on travelers is certainly loosening. Because millennial travelers and Gen Z travelers are not as motivated by point collection as Gen X and baby boomers historically have been. And so we're seeing a larger, um, pull back into the independent and boutique travel because of the experiential offerings that they have. And so I think that these larger point programs that, um, independent properties can join. Um, that that help add that additional value are going to be really valuable within the industry as well.

[00:31:41] Susan Barry: Okay. If you could wave a magic wand and undo a change or an innovation that has taken place in the hotel business in your lifetime, like your career span, what would it be? So you're undoing something. 

[00:31:58] Adam Tuttle: Yeah. Okay. I have thought about this for so long and thought like, okay, in our industry, what would I undo? And this is in direct conflict with what I just said. I would 100 percent undo point loyalty. I would undo it in, in the fact that I think that it's, it's genuinely flawed in a way. Because what it has created are - I don't want to say that guests don't deserve things because they do, they deserve - but there, it has removed a sense of hospitality. It has removed a sense of like, I'm genuinely caring for you because now I'm bound to do things that are required by a brand. And when I don't have those because of occupancy, there's no understanding by the consumer, right? Like guests don't like, what do you mean you don't have my free upgrade? Right. 

[00:33:01] Susan Barry: Or like my plate of cookies that used to be a great treat is now part of what I'm paying for it. I, I definitely hear what you're saying. I think there is so much white space around these topics around brand and around loyalty program. There is, it is ripe for innovation right now, like there is something that somebody's brewing that we are going to both be like, yes, it finally happened. 

[00:33:29] Adam Tuttle: I mean, and if I can, branded hospitality is less than a hundred years old, right. We think that, oh, this is the way it is. We're talking the 1950s. Like that's tell my Gen Z kids 1950s and they'll ask if it was in color, but it's like, look, it's not that long ago. And so I think the franchise model just being new to the, you know, the business structure has led to a lot of these questions, right? Like, there's a reason Four Seasons doesn't do, um, uh, uh, a point program. It's because they can't get all their owners to agree on a redemptive policy. Um, but it's like, it's so new that I think that what we've gone through over the last 20, 30 years is just really understanding kind of the messy, crappy first draft, so to speak of how this works. And it's going to change. I hope it does because I, I really want hoteliers to be able to focus back on, um, you know, on serving their guests and being able to just deliver excellent quality of service. 

[00:34:38] Susan Barry: Okay, folks, before we tell Adam goodbye, we are going to head down to the loading dock where all of the best stories get told.

Elevator voice announces, “Going down.” 

Adam, what's a story you would only tell me on the loading dock? 

[00:34:55] Adam Tuttle: Oh my gosh, listen, from years in luxury hospitality, I have I think amassed a whole book in the loading dock, right? Of just like all of these amazing stories, but I'll, I'll tell you a simple one that is so near and dear to my heart. And I'll try not to name them specifically because I don't, I don't want to do that to them. But I was waiting on the front drive of a hotel and I was waiting for a member of a royal family and won't say the royal family, but a royal family. And I'm waiting for them and waiting for them. And as soon as the entourage arrives, the car, the motorcade comes in and here comes this, you know, the guests, the main doors and the doors open. And the little 1 of the youngest members of the of the family just gets sick all over the front entrance of this super luxury hotel. And luckily my office was literally two steps away It was so such a blessing. We were right there that I had to take this this, you know family and duck them into my office, which had everyone's like luggage and like all the tape and like our wow scores and like all the things, you know, on the bulletin board. And I had to say like, okay, I'm going to go get some towels. I'm going to go get some stuff. And this was when I was working at a property I opened, um, at Disney World. And so I ran into like the little boutique store and the only thing they had in her size was like a Belle princess dress. 

[00:36:39] Susan Barry: Oh, that's amazing. I love it.

[00:36:44] Adam Tuttle: Look, I have this. Can I give this to you? 

[00:36:46] Susan Barry: Can I give this to the princess?

[00:36:47] Adam Tuttle: Can I give this to the princess? And so there we are, and you know, of course I step out and they change and she comes out in this, you know, bell princess dress and clothes laundered. Oh, she was loving it. And we said, oh, you know, if you're going to wear the dress, you need the tiara. And we got her all the little things. Um, but it was just such a moment of just reality of just realizing, look, people get carsick. And this is just, we're all human. Like we are all human beings in this industry and we are humans helping humans. 

[00:37:22] Susan Barry: Absolutely. Adam Tuttle, thank you so much for being here. I know that our listeners are eager to find out about service standards and I really appreciate you writing up to the top floor.

[00:37:36] Adam Tuttle: No, thank you. Thanks for having me. This has been such a joy of mine. Thank you. 

[00:37:42] Susan Barry: Thank you for listening. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/155. Jonathan Albano is our editor, producer, and all around genius. He even wrote and performed our theme song with vocals by Cameron Albano. You can subscribe to Top Floor on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen. And your rating or review will go a long way in helping us give you more of what you like.  

[00:38:17] Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Top Floor Podcast at www.topfloorpodcast.com. Have a hospitality marketing question? Reach us at 850-404-9630 to be featured in a future episode.