Transcript: Episode 177: Little Wooden YoYo
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[00:00:00] Susan Barry: This is Top Floor episode 177. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/177.
[00:00:14] Narrator: Welcome to Top Floor with Susan Barry. This weekly podcast ride 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. Alicia Zur-Szpiro is an innovator in the worlds of toy invention, game design, and children's publishing. Together with her husband, Alicia transitioned her deep expertise in creating engaging experiences for children and teens into the hospitality sector, co founding a consultancy that helps hotels rethink their approach to serving younger guests. Her company, Wanderland London, recently published the inaugural Kids and Teens Hospitality Report, a comprehensive study spotlighting the untapped potential of this demographic in urban hotels. Today we are going to talk about Alicia's journey from games to hotels and the insights from her groundbreaking report. But before we jump in, we need to answer the call button.
Call button rings
[00:01:30] Susan Barry: The emergency call button is our hotline for hospitality professionals and random people off the street 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 Holly. Here is what Holly has to say. Since a lot of hotels will not guarantee connecting rooms, I am curious what age kids can be left alone in a hotel room. So this is maybe a little tangential to your consultancy, but I figured as a parent, you might have an opinion about this.
So what do you think from the safety and family side? And then I'll say it from what I think from the hotel side.
[00:02:22] Alicia Zur-Szpiro: Gosh, what an interesting question. I really think that this is as personal as any parenting decision is. I just don't think there's a rule of thumb. So I think it comes with the territory of making all these complicated and individual decisions as a parent. I don't know that it it varies that much whether you're at home or in a hotel, some people might be really happy with a younger age. Some might wait until they're teens. I know that I've always tended towards interconnecting rooms, but we've also managed when there aren't interconnecting rooms, as long as we're next door. It's a really personal choice.
[00:03:02] Susan Barry: I think that's a good point too. There's a question of, if you're next door versus like seven floors away from each other. Those are very different experiences. And I am not a parent, but I would have guessed that it would be very much dependent on your children. And what, you know, do they get scared in the middle of the night from the hotel side? I believe official answer would be that the parents would need to split up and have a parent in each of the rooms.
Do I think that's how I would do it? And do I think you're going to get kicked out of a hotel for not doing that unless, you know, something goes crazy? No. But I think that's sort of the official response that you would expect. Yes. So Alicia, you began your career in toy invention and game design, which just sounds like a dream to me. What drew you to this field?
[00:03:57] Alicia Zur-Szpiro: I mean, what a fun thing to do, right? This is what everyone kind of dreams of doing. And I was lucky in that when I met my husband, we were both really drawn to games as a fun activity. So I grew up playing a lot of board games, tabletop games with my family and he grew up playing a lot of video games. So we kind of both had a different perspective on what gaming is and we're both also very entrepreneurial. When we met, we started creating things together and having lots of ideas and hit on an idea for an original mechanic for a card game.
And we designed a whole world and a whole game around that and ended up crowdfunding it on Kickstarter. And that was a success beyond our wildest dreams and expectations, which led us to kind of founding our own independent game publisher where we taught ourselves how to manufacture, distribute, ship, market a game from scratch. So it was a real trial by fire. And we did that with a few subsequent games that also led into consulting. And more recently as game designers, we've worked with publishers. So we license our games, our innovations to companies that are far better equipped to be printing, manufacturing, designing all of that side of things.
[00:05:37] Susan Barry: That sounds like the part I would wanna get out of as quickly as possible.
[00:05:41] Alicia Zur-Szpiro: Oh, it's so complicated. And you know, if they print it wrong with the margin slightly wrong, it's kind of back to square one. So it's really, really hard work and I think we realize that it's kind of the creative side that we enjoyed the most, so that's where we've stuck.
[00:05:56] Susan Barry: Is your first game still out in the world or has it been retired?
[00:06:01] Alicia Zur-Szpiro: It is still out in the world, but not easily available.
[00:06:08] Susan Barry: I gotcha. How did your interest in or passion for hospitality come to merge with your expertise in designing these toys and games for kids to result in what you're doing now?
[00:06:26] Alicia Zur-Szpiro: To be honest, we never expected to go into hospitality. It was never part of the game plan, just to use a little pun. It kind of really happened by accident and I think part of that was becoming parents a few years ago. So obviously we tend to navigate the world through those eyes to a large extent. And I suppose I always have loved hotels and the idea of hospitality.
And I suppose taking those two interests of mine, both the game design and the love of hospitality and hotels, we started to look at what hotels were doing, or more aptly, were not doing for kids and teens and realize that there was a really interesting opportunity to be creative in this space. And I think it's always really interesting when you bring two completely different industries together because it gives rise to so much creativity and innovation that when you're kind of stuck in one of those industries, you might not necessarily notice. So we started to toy with the idea of what we could do as game designers and creatives, bringing that to a very different field.
[00:07:41] Susan Barry: Part of that included creating this report. So your kids and teens hospitality report highlights the sort of gap between how urban city hotels cater to kids and teens. Can you talk about that? Talk about sort of why urban hotels specifically and how they have challenges in terms of engaging with children and teens versus resorts.
[00:08:10] Alicia Zur-Szpiro: Yes, I think that was really interesting to us because, I think families typically gravitate towards resorts. And I think the industry really thinks of families going hand in hand with resorts. And I think we realized that there was a really interesting opportunity to help hotels that don't typically think of themselves as overtly family friendly to still do things that spoke to kids and teens. And I think perhaps the need is even greater in urban destinations where hotels don't have all the resources and facilities and staff for, let's say a kid's club, which you would expect to find at a resort. And it led us to the creative challenge of what can city based hotels do, even with those confines, that still really bring meaning and relevance to a family stay.
[00:09:05] Susan Barry: You've talked, I think, before about this you know, don't just stop with a teddy bear or a coloring book idea. What should hotels be doing specifically, like, do you have an example of a hotel experience that's designed for kids or designed for teenagers that you think really gets it right?
[00:09:26] Alicia Zur-Szpiro: I was thinking about this question and struggled to quickly think of a hotel that I thought gets it really right for kids outside of a resort setting. As I said, we're fairly new to this industry. We've been working in this space for a little bit over a year. So I can't say that my knowledge of every hotel worldwide is exhaustive. But I will say that from the hotels that we've been looking at and reviewing, I can't think of a hotel that has kind of stopped us in our tracks and thought, you know, no notes, there's nothing that you can do here.
A lot of hotels are doing beautiful, exquisite guest experiences, but that is not specific to kids and teens. So, you know, when it comes to adults, I could reel off a list of amazing hotels that are doing things that are meticulous and intentional and creative. But whilst they're really taking care of adults, I feel like they're missing a trick when it comes to kids and teens. So I don't have a great example for you, I'm afraid.
[00:10:42] Susan Barry: Well, I think the devil's advocate position would be the adults are paying, so of course they're going to get the great experience. Why do you think urban hotels should endeavor to create meaningful, interesting, engaging experiences for the younger guests who maybe aren't paying the bill?
[00:11:03] Alicia Zur-Szpiro: So, whilst kids are not paying, they are spending, and I think that actually hotels would do really well to think about kids and teens as their customers, because parents are very influenced by what works for their kids, and the report goes into a lot of detail about some of the data behind this, that more than 70 percent of parents are influenced when it comes to travel decisions by their kids and teens. So actually, even though we think of the parents as being the ones that are holding the credit cards, when something works for your child, you go back time and time again.
And when hotels can engage with a child, it impresses the parents more than a glass of champagne ever could. You know, I think when you think about these, grown up travelers, they've been around, they've seen it all. And there's only so much that they can be impressed by the fruit platter or the welcome note, it only moves the needle so far. And yet, when you delight children, you are actually delighting the parents in a way that feels so much more personal and meaningful. And you're actually getting two for the price of one, because you're winning over the child, and you're also winning over the parent.
[00:12:22] Susan Barry: We like to make sure that our listeners come away from every single episode of Top Floor with specific practical things to try out either in their businesses or in their personal lives. For hotels that are, their ears are perking up as they hear you talk about this, but they're working with limited budgets. Do you have any ideas for low cost, high impact changes that they can make or things they can offer to better serve children?
[00:12:55] Alicia Zur-Szpiro: Yes. I mean, I think there's so many things that we can do and I could talk about this obviously a huge length. But I think when it comes to limited budgets, resource, time, capacity, there are still some really impactful things that hotels can do. And I think what, you know, the thing that I say to hotels a lot of the time is make sure you're doing one thing that's different from your competitors.
We're not asking you to transform your lobby into a water park. We're talking about really small touches, but they can have big impact if they stand out from the crowd and you can tell a story about it. Whether that's finding something unique about your hotel's history or location that you can draw out, whether it's trying to engage with your guests even digitally before they arrive via the parents, you know, it might be an outreach, it might be a survey, it might be something just to get the child excited about their stay even before they walk through the doors.
It could also be something to do with not front loading the experience for children and instead staggering it throughout this day. So the idea of staggering is something that we think about a lot. I think hotels have a tendency when it comes to, you know, a welcome or a check in to do all of the kind of big reveals up front, whether it's the drink or it's the teddy bear or it's something, you know, a check in amenity. And there's something really exciting about something being revealed over time. And I think for kids, it creates this story in this adventure. So whatever it is that a hotel is doing, if you can split it apart and create more moments where you're interacting with an engaging with a child, it can do so much more. So, you know, let's say you've got a welcome basket or an activity pack. Even by splitting that out and kind of finding moments throughout the stay to drop something in, it can just turn it into an adventure for a child.
[00:14:59] Susan Barry: That's really good advice. It reminds me of the things that you see, I think, usually on cruise ships where the room attendant is making a different animal every day out of the Terry from the bathroom, like here's an elephant, here's a giraffe, here's a swan.
And it's like that one little thing every day doesn't cost a whole lot, just time, but the family starts to really anticipate what's going to happen next. What will it look like tomorrow? So that staggering idea is a real good takeaway for us.
[00:15:33] Alicia Zur-Szpiro: One more thing that I also wanted to add, which is, we talk about families and we talk about kids and what the industry does not really do is talk about teens. And I think when we think about families, we kind of lump it all together. It's a family booking. It's a family stay. And within that you might have different age ranges, which are really, really different profile of guests. You know, by and large, an adult is an adult. But a kid is not a kid, you know, the difference between a six year old and a 14 year old is vast.
So the other piece of advice that I would have for hotels, which forms very much our thinking as consultants and creatives is find one thing to do for a teenager because more often than not when a family checks in and you've got a younger child they might get handed the teddy bear or the coloring book and the teen is often left there with nothing and they feel invisible and actually teens are highly influential they're socially connected and they're about to become travelers and guests in their own right with their own spending power and their own budget. So if hotels can place a little bit of focus on teens, it would go a huge way.
[00:16:51] Susan Barry: What are some examples of what hotels could do for teens? I think that's the hardest nut to crack in this whole conversation.
[00:16:57] Alicia Zur-Szpiro: It it's so hard and it's conversation that we have day in, day out. You know, I think hotels know that they need to do something for teens, and yet they don't really know how. And I think it's so much easier to delight a younger child with a cupcake or a balloon, and when it comes to teens, it is much harder. We're thinking a lot about what amenities or resources are available to the adult that could be kind of transferred or transmitted into the world of teens.
So we think a lot about, what one of our ideas is actually called the kid's minibar. So it's thinking about this minibar experience that most adults have when they walk into a hotel room, there's a whole world or a whole offering for them. And it's very enticing and intriguing for a child or for a teenager. So can we mimic the idea of a minibar, but populate it with things that are kind of interesting games, gadgets, curiosities for a teenager to allow them to kind of also have their autonomy and make decisions about what they may or may not want to interact with. So the idea of a kids and teens minibar, I think is really interesting, and something we're rolling out in the next weeks and months.
And then the other thing is having some sort of comparable coloring book, but for a teenager. So obviously not a coloring in activity, but could it be a journal or a sketchbook or something that kind of speaks to the environment or the city. When people come to, let's say, London, which is where we are, obviously you're going to walk down the River Thames, you're going to go to some of the most well known landmarks in the world. So imagine for, for a teenager going around with a beautiful sketchbook and some pastels or pencils or charcoals. So it's kind of taking the same mindset that you would give to a child in a coloring book, but trying to age it up appropriately for a teen.
[00:19:02] Susan Barry: Do you think that these types of amenities or additions to the experience need to be physical and analog or is there a place for some sort of digital experience for kids and teens?
[00:19:17] Alicia Zur-Szpiro: We're really focused on analog, even though we're a very tech minded team. When it comes to the things that we're doing for kids and teenagers, we find ourselves time and time again being drawn to the physical. I think one of the things that we hear from parents and hoteliers is on holiday we want to get our kids off screens. And it's a real opportunity for a family to connect and have some old fashioned fun. Let's crack open a board game. Let's go for a walk together. Let's chat over a meal time.
So I think that we're really keen to help parents extricate their teens and their kids from screens. And I think there's also a lot of jumpiness about pushing kids onto screens as far as collecting data, the risks of social media, you know. I think there's actually quite a big movement to try to get teenagers off smart devices. And as that picks up speed, I think that we need to help families think of other creative ways to occupy their kids rather than sticking a screen in their face.
[00:20:33] Susan Barry: Understood. Well, we have reached the fortune telling portion of the show. So now you have to predict the future and then we will see if your predictions come true. What is a prediction that you have about the future of how hotels will engage with kids and teenagers?
[00:20:51] Alicia Zur-Szpiro: I think hotels will prioritize kids and teenagers as a really high priority segment with so much room for creativity and fun. It's a really unexplored area for hotels and consultants to be creative. And I think kids and teens will soon overtake pets as the most important guest at a hotel.
[00:21:21] Susan Barry: Interesting.
[00:21:22] Alicia Zur-Szpiro: One of the things we laugh about is how much hotels do for dogs.
[00:21:25] Susan Barry: That is so crazy that you're saying that. I hadn't thought about it until you just said it, but there are like entire universes for traveling pets.
[00:21:34] Alicia Zur-Szpiro: Yeah.
[00:21:35] Susan Barry: And none for your 13 year old. Wow.
[00:21:37] Alicia Zur-Szpiro: It's staggering. You know, the amount of websites we've gone to that have a whole section for pets and have no mention of the word child or teenager. I think that's going to be a really kind of funny reversal. And the other thing is that I think we are going to start to see hotels think of kids and teens when it comes to brand loyalty. So looking at how we can develop loyalty programs that are centered on kids and teens.
[00:22:12] Susan Barry: I think you're absolutely right. And I would take that loyalty piece a step further and predict that the big brands in the hotel industry are soon going to run out of new flavors of the same hotel that they can build and will have to begin to expand into things like student housing.
And so if you've done a good job of creating loyalty among the children who travel to your hotels in their childhood, the likelihood that they will choose a Hilton dorm or a Marriott dorm over something else is certainly higher. Now do I know that that's true? Of course not, but I am making it up, but I do think I'm right.
[00:22:57] Alicia Zur-Szpiro: Really interesting. Yeah. Love that.
[00:22:59] Susan Barry: If you could wave a magic wand and create a new service and hotels, and this can be for the young, for the old, any age guest, what would you create?
[00:23:11] Alicia Zur-Szpiro: Well, obviously wearing my kids and teens hat and my game designer hat, I would love to see gameplay styles being designed around a hotel stay. I'm not sure that I would go as far as to say an escape room, which might be taking a bit too far, but I think there's something so unique about a hotel stay where a child or a teenager is waking up in a hotel, there's so many magical moments that you can't get at home. The idea that you've got a team of staff that are kind of doing things overnight, you know, what will the next day bring? There's so much mystery and intrigue that I think it really lends itself to a sort of immersive gameplay style that could be the new way to kind of experience.
[00:24:06] Susan Barry: Oh, I think that's such a cool idea. It reminds me of the last episode we had Ryan Fitzgerald on, who is sort of an experienced creator for cruise ships. And he was telling a story about a live action jewelry heist game that they executed on a cruise. And I mean, I have not really ever had the desire to go on a cruise that would make me go. That sounds so fun.
[00:24:34] Alicia Zur-Szpiro: Amazing.
[00:24:35] Susan Barry: Yes.
[00:24:36] Alicia Zur-Szpiro: What a dream.
[00:24:37] Susan Barry: Excellent. Well, what is next for you? And what's next for your company?
[00:24:41] Alicia Zur-Szpiro: We've got a really exciting year coming up We're starting to work with some some really lovely hotels both in London and beyond and one of the things that we're really focused on right now is gifting. So helping hotels create the best gift bundles, welcome gifts that the industry can offer. And we're doing that in partnership with a really wide range of beautiful game companies, toy companies, independent creators. Trying to move the industry away from the kind of same old you know, printed material and try to bring in something that feels really unique, really high quality, something that a child won't have seen before. So we're really looking at how we can do gifts for kids and teens in a uniquely meaningful and memorable way.
[00:25:37] Susan Barry: Okay, folks, before we tell Alicia goodbye, we are going to head down to the loading dock where all of the best stories get told.
Elevator voice announces, “Going down.”
[00:25:50] Susan Barry: Alicia, what is a story you would only tell us on the loading dock?
[00:25:55] Alicia Zur-Szpiro: So I'm going to tell you a short story about one of the inspirations for getting started with Wanderland. A couple of years ago, we were driving across Europe from London to Switzerland with our daughters, and we stayed overnight in a motorway hotel. Very nondescript, very unexciting. And at the hotel, our daughter was handed a little wooden yo yo upon arrival. And even though it was something really small, it blew her mind. She couldn't get over it. Anyway, our journey continues. We end up at the most beautiful place that I've ever been to. A small town called Ascona, overlooking Lake Maggiore in Switzerland.
We're staying in an absolutely beautiful hotel with my parents. We're having an exquisite time. We're saying to our daughter, look at the lake, look at the hotel, look at the swimming pool, look at the scenery. And all she could think about was this, you know, dollar yo yo that she got at the hotel. She wouldn't stop talking about this hotel. And because of that, we went back the following year. Oh, wow. It was just, it really encapsulated how that little interaction with a child can actually make decisions about where you go on holiday, which far exceeds, you know, the views and the landmarks of the world, but that little piece of interaction just won her over and won us over.
[00:27:28] Susan Barry: That is an amazing story. I love it. Alicia Zur-Szpiro, thank you so much for being here. I know that this really opened our hotelier listeners minds into what all they can do, and I really appreciate you riding with us to the top floor.
[00:27:45] Alicia Zur-Szpiro: Thank you so much. We loved talking to you and getting to know you better and it was a pleasure to be on the show.
[00:41:09] Susan Barry: Thank you for listening. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/177. 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.
[00:41:45] 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.