I need some help here. Have you seen a lifestyle hotel lurking about in your neck of the woods? Maybe taking the bus to work? Down at the library? Or out for dinner with his wife … or maybe her husband, as I’ve yet to determine whether a lifestyle hotel is male or female. Or maybe it’s an animal of some kind?
I was once involved in a panel discussion at a regional hotel conference about lifestyle hotels. The nice Wu Hai from Orange Hotels in China was also on the panel, and he, like me, was perplexed as to what to talk about, having never come across this lesser-spotted lifestyle beast.
So we talked about some other stuff that seemed a bit more relevant and interesting, such as our favourite restaurant on the West Lake in Hangzhou and the best places to go diving in Papua New Guinea. The audience seemed to find this a pleasing alternative to the given topic.
However, the German gentleman from Marriott did a sterling job of describing a lifestyle hotel, but it was terribly vague and unconvincing (I seem to remember words such as “stylish”, “contemporary” and “umm” peppering his monologue), so Mr Wu and I went back to discussing other culinary and marine topics.
This rather meandering chit-chat (“debate” or “discussion” would be assigning it a level of implied intellectual intensity that was absent that day) was held two years ago, and I’m no closer to uncovering my quarry. Therefore, I have to assume this animal belongs to the same family as the Abominable Snowman and Bigfoot: it gets people very excited but in reality it probably doesn’t exist.
But now I would like to make up for that rather idiosyncratic conference performance with a bit of analytical dexterity. You see, I think the reason we have not found our intended target is we cannot see a lifestyle. It’s not something you can touch or eat. It’s intangible, like a brand. You can sense it, feel it, describe it, but never actually set eyes upon it, although some misguided folks who call themselves identity consultants still claim they are the creators of The Great and Powerful Brand.
Assuming a god-like air, these consultants brainwash the uninitiated masses they have come to save by creating The Logo. Hallelujah! The Logo is here! Long live The Brand! All hail Identity Consultants! This is rather silly, because if brands can only be felt or perceived, how can a man who draws a nice logo claim to be the creator of the brand? That doesn’t make him some kind of omnipotent deity.
The hard-working folks who help to clean your hotel rooms probably have more impact on your perception of the brand, so they have a greater right to sainthood than those other creative imposters.
Anyway, back to lifestyle. Like a brand, not only is it not something we cannot stare longingly at, there’s more than one of them. In fact at the moment there are about 7.2 billion of them. Each of us has a lifestyle that is unique. OK, if we simplify things a bit, we can group lifestyles into certain categories: desert nomads, football hooligans or seaweed-eating Inuit, for example.
And there are some brands from beyond the borders of the Kingdom of Lodging that embrace and accentuate distinct lifestyle attributes rather than product advantages. Patagonia: the great outdoors. Quiksilver: Hawaiian surf culture. Harley-Davidson: freedom of the open road. Volcom: anti-establishment youth rule”. I get this — each brand reflects a particular human grouping and its subcultural lifestyles.
Shifting this into hospitality, it’s not hard to grasp the lifestyles that Ritz-Carlton, W and Citizen M reflect, so we might want to describe them as lifestyle brands. But no, that’s not what I’m seeking out, because what the industry has defined as lifestyle apparently is related to one particular lifestyle genre. To find out what this might be, I have been online in an attempt to ferret out the juiciest of definitions.
The following mish-mash from HospitalityTrends.com starts out badly enough: “Lifestyle hotels are the next generation of boutique hotels.” Gulp. I was just about to get onto the subject of “boutique” as another example of jargon that has come to mean very little because it is used to describe so much.
So if we interpret the sentence, what we’ve got is one obscure concept being touted as the replacement of another nebulous piece of fluffery.
It takes a still deeper dive by continuing: “Driven by the chains, they borrow the best elements of boutiques — small, intimate and modern — and throw in advantages only a chain can offer such as loyalty perks, consistency and economies of scale.”
First, please can you get in touch if you understand what that means? Second, what in this sentence gives us a clue as to the singular lifestyle that lifestyle hotels are meant to reflect? I mean, if we’re being asked to agree that lifestyle hotel means a somewhat narrow hotel type and way of life, do you think it would be too much to ask what that might be? “Boutique” plus “loyalty perks, consistency and economies of scale” don’t really do it for me. How is that a lifestyle?
In a world where hotel guests across many customer segments want greater levels of authenticity, customisation and connectivity, why is the industry wasting time creating catch-all labels (not unique, individualised services) that are about as clear to the guest as a doctor’s signature?
I sense the answer may lie in part through the laziness of many hotel groups. Imagining and reinventing what hospitality is all about is too much like hard work.
Therefore, it’s easier to leap on a jargon-laden bandwagon to make it seem like you are paradigm-shifting pioneers even when the jargon is — as in the case of lifestyle hotel — particularly difficult to decipher.
The world is complicated enough. What guests don’t need is something masquerading as simple (hey, lifestyle hotel, it’s only two words!) that is actually vague and unintelligible. That’s the worst form of complication, first because it pretends it’s not and second because it distracts hoteliers and guests from creating and experiencing uniquely compelling realities.
James Stuart provides branding guidance to companies throughout Asia, specialising in the hospitality and service industries. He is the managing partner of The Brand Company and can be reached by email at james@thebrandco.com. For more information, please visit TheBrandCo.com