Hospitality Paradigm

Slow Travel is a mind-set that rejects traditional ideas of tourism and encourages you to soak in your environments and keep yourself open to new experiences. Slow travel is for you if you want a balanced itinerary where you can pace yourself and eliminate the stress of rushing around. It’s intentional and immersive — allowing you to go deeper on the things that matter most to you while traveling. It’s conscious and connected — connected with yourself, those around you, and the world.

There is something undeniably romantic about taking things slow. It is this allure that forms the basis of slow travel – a growing trend that’s swapping whistle-stop city tours for leisurely strolls, and red-eye flights for low-key cruises. Travel should be so much more than lurching your way frenetically around a destination, trying to scratch things off a tick-list (a sure fire way of reaching ‘tourist burnout’).

On paper, slow travel is an offshoot of the slow food movement – a focus on local farming, regional cuisine, communal meals and traditional food preparation methods that began in Italy in the 1980s as a protest against the opening of a McDonald’s in Rome. This cultural initiative has evolved into an entire way of life known as the Slow Movement, which aims to address the issue of ‘time poverty’ through an increased focus on making connections; with people, places and things.

In its simplest form, slow travel means travelling by particular modes of transport such as train, horse, walking, biking and boating. It’s all about appreciating the landscape as you go, and being at one with it – which you don’t get by flying or driving when you’re seeing everything from behind a pane of glass.

Another perspective  is that slow travel is a mindset, not just a series of choices. While physically slowing down is necessary, slow travel is more mindset than velocity. Slow travel is to tourism what meditation apps are to our lives. In it, connecting to the soul of a place through its history, food, language and people becomes more important than chasing bucket list ticks and Instagram photos. Slow travel enables us to learn, relax and rejuvenate; to be part of a place for a short period rather than just crash through it. Done responsibly it allows us to go beyond the ‘leave only footprints’ mantra that has long been associated with ecotourism. When done right, it can leave positive impacts that will last long past your trip, benefiting the local communities, economies and wildlife.

Offering free WiFi to hotel visitors has been a strong value-add to the guest experience pretty much since the inception of wireless connectivity itself, right? However, as we are all addicted to our phones and WiFi access incentivizes us to use these devices even more, having this service readily available in restaurants can slow down food and beverage delivery to ultimately limit the seat turnover as well as the average daily restaurant seat revenue.

More time spent by diners on phone equals slower seat turnover and reduced revenues. Humans are horrible multi-taskers, hence when patrons are focusing to their screens, they are not looking at the meal and not thinking about what they want to order, delaying the whole process. Moreover, because a device competes for attention with the server, it will unconsciously deter guests from understanding the full value of a menu item based on the in-person conveyance of said dishes or drinks. This can result in such behaviours as no pre-meal cocktails and fewer appetizers or desserts ordered, not to mention that such patrons will consume more time per table overall.

Given such outcomes, there’s a strong case to be made for purposefully not setting up an internet portal for paying customers, with some places even going so far as to strategically position their restaurants so it is out of range of the regular lobby WiFi range or in an area with weak 4G/LTE signal.

As a concurrent trend taking place in downtown urban centres, many cafés (mainly independents) are banning laptops on their premises because the standard behaviour here is to order a coffee and then occupy a seat for well over an hour when that spot could instead rotate through several other paying customers who aren’t looking for a free offsite workspace.

To point out the contrary argument to all this, many restaurants intentionally offer ample WiFi because that’s part of the environment they are trying to create. Such outlets are typically borderline busy during peak and half-empty at every other time slot. In these cases, allowing patrons to take their time is perfectly acceptable because there’s no rush to accommodate another party. Still, too much focus on the mobile device will mean increased work from the staff, who have to more frequently return to a table because its attention is not firmly on ordering, along with the aforementioned reason of decreased average guest checks. This could also be time spent by servers having to explain how to access the WiFi or spell out the password – and those seconds add up!

So, how do you rationalize which route to go for your restaurant? It depends on what sort of atmosphere you are trying to create. If you’re aiming for that lackadaisical brunch-rolls-into-happy-hour vibe, give away all the bandwidth you want. If, however, you are hoping to foster a hot spot where reservations are a prized possession, my recommendation is to ditch the WiFi and discourage phone usage during mealtime altogether.

Another advantage, and this time from the diner’s perspective will be that they would be able to enjoy the meal and conversation with their colleagues/partners much more when they do not have the option of using their phones/gadgets.

Another point is that if the kitchen is passionate about their product, the chef and his team would feel more honoured if their guests were to concentrate on their meals.

Despite hotel owners’ fears, the hotel players involved in homeshare tend to dismiss sceptics’ concerns about cannibalization. The audience for vacation rentals, they argue, seeks a different product than the business traveller staying a night or two in a city or the young single looking for adventure on a budget. Hotel companies are eyeing potential vacation destinations that wouldn’t necessarily support a full-blown hotel development. Length of stay is probably the biggest factor that separates demand for hotel rooms versus vacation rentals — hotels average less than two nights; vacation rentals tend to stretch out for seven or more nights.

Hotel companies will be weighing their ability to scale and the potential revenues that homeshare affiliations will yield. Airbnb has already set the bar low, so potential fees from renting out a single home or apartment pale versus the management or franchising fees associated with hotels.

For many companies, it’s hard to justify the economics of investing in the marketing and infrastructure to support something that represents a very small share or revenue for the foreseeable future. One way to mitigate the smaller profit is to focus on the upper reaches of the market and destinations where higher daily rates will yield higher income.

Homeshare owners need some love, too. To be competitive and continue to grow the platform, marketshare and units, companies need to make their products more attractive from the top to the bottom for all constituents, both travellers and owners.