Every Hotel Brand Is a Myth.
In his book Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari — I'm sure a lot of you have heard of it — presents a deceptively simple idea. Sociological research suggests that the maximum natural size of a group held together by personal relationships and gossip is around 150 people. Below that threshold, organisations run on trust, familiarity and rumour. Above it, something else is needed.
What is that something else?
Shared myth.
Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common stories. Not facts. Not org charts. Stories.
Harari uses Peugeot as his example. What transformed a family metalworking business into one of the world's largest car manufacturers wasn't machinery or capital. It was a legal story — told by lawyers, ratified by the French state, believed by millions. Once everyone agreed to behave as if Peugeot the company existed, it did.
“Telling effective stories is not easy. The difficulty lies not in telling the story, but in convincing everyone else to believe it.”
Modern hospitality companies — and not only them, really, absolutely everything surrounding us — have storytelling as their biggest strength and their biggest weakness.
Say you have several thousands of hotels worldwide. You need a story to create a sense of belonging for your employees — to make them buy your story and believe in it religiously enough to sell it to customers. You need another story to sell to guests — to engage them, make them feel like they are part of something big, exclusive and important.
These stories run in parallel. And they consist of millions of micro-stories done right.
For a hotel brand, the customer-facing micro-stories are the social media strategy, the look and feel of the brand, the tone of voice, the UX of the website, the interactions at every guest touchpoint — and so many more. Every day, hundreds of micro-stories are made.
Companies who get these micro-stories right — at least 99% of the time — achieve true success. Companies who keep changing their CEOs, are too busy restructuring, keep changing direction, don't pay enough attention to the people who work with them, don't invest in their stories — don't last.
And it goes back to ancient human psychology. If you want to succeed, you need to either invent a new religion or tell a great story people will believe in.
Further read — Sapiens. It's not exactly about hospitality. But it's a great read anyway.
xoxo, Bored Hotelier 😉