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Rethinking the Guest Experience on a Subtle LevelSep 19, 12 | 12:07 am When a major new direction comes along, it is usually met with opposition or even outrage, or maybe just with a cold shoulder, as it involves change. The upholders of the status quo may try to ignore the new direction, but as people show interest, they have to choose between accepting it and rejecting it. If a company chooses wrongly, perhaps out of arrogance and self-importance, it may fall by the wayside. The concept of the energetic guest experience is an example of such a new direction, and one whose effectiveness is supported and explained by scientific research. But the competition for the large hotel groups will not come from other large hotel groups because they will lack the inertia and will to change. No, it will come from upstart and daring independent hotels and small or fringe hotel groups. Remember that it was not a fellow giant who brought Goliath to his knees, but an ordinary man with an idea. Hotels and hotel groups, which make the changeover to creating an energetic guest experience, will enjoy much higher occupancy rates and revenue because this is exactly the kind of guest experience, which people want nowadays. The obsolete left brain, western model of SOP-Customer Satisfaction, which hotel groups, such as Starwood, Marriott, Accor, IHG, Best Western, and hotel groups in India and China, for example, continue to sell, is a pale reflection of how hotels can be and will be in the future. Very pale! No, a mere shadow! The big corporate offices seem to be unable or unwilling to see this, perhaps because they are so deeply entrenched in old paradigms. But future CEOs will have sharper vision. It is very easy to create an energetic guest experience once you know how, but you have to throw out much of the ballast of tradition while adding elements, which conservative corporate decision makers are unlikely to understand or accept. Worse still they must first admit that there is something wrong with the experience which their hotels are serving up, but where is there a corporate office which can see anything wrong with SOP-Customer Satisfaction? Their customers can see it, even if they cannot or will not. Hoteliers would be wise to start to study energy, especially thought energy and heart energy, and to work out how to apply it to increase the vibration of the guest experience in their properties. The difficulty they will face, however, is that everything they discover will seem like New Age fantasy because it flies in the face of everything they learned at school decades ago. The new science will just not fit into the pervasive, narrow, traditional, left brain paradigms, and so for sure, the large western chains will ignore the use of energy, probably until it is too late for them. Can you imagine someone standing up in a corporate meeting, and saying, "We can increase our revenue manifold and compete better by showing our employees how to influence their environment with their thoughts and emotions." From that day on, wherever that person walked in the cobwebbed corridors of power, people would snigger and giggle as they walked past. That person's hopes of ever again climbing the ladder to Corporate Heaven will have been dashed. Western science is still trying to get to grips with the indisputable fact that our thoughts and emotions affect our DNA and that our DNA affects the environment around us and far beyond us. Vladimir Poponin's famous DNA Effect experiment and those by the US Military are some of many experiments that illustrate this. Indeed, the effect of heart energy can even be measured by satellites when there is intense emotion around the planet, such as when the planes hit the World Trade Centre. This was reported by N.A.S.A. in 2001. Thought energy and heart energy are real and palpable, and one only needs to look at the research carried out by the HeartMath Institute to see this, but the hotel industry is failing to take advantage of it. It is almost as if the corporate people say to each other, "It's all balderdash! No, we must stick to our traditions! Our Founder would wish it that way!" ... "Hear, hear, old boy!" Knowledge about the effect of our emotions on people and the environment is ancient, but about 400 years ago western science made two false assumptions. Firstly, that the space around us is empty. Secondly, that we cannot influence the world around us, and if it looks like we do, it is a coincidence. This is part of the science that corporate folks have learned. So what hope is there that 50+ year old, decision-making, corporate folks, who are perhaps just playing it safe until they retire, will accept quantum science and the prolific work of Max Planck, for example, let alone want to revolutionize the Group's guest experience with the knowledge? What if the 5,000-year old traditions, the Writings of various religions, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, the knowledge passed on in the monasteries of Tibet and by ancient cultures in the Andes, and the mountain of evidence from quantum science, were indeed correct about the energy around us and in us? Indeed, they are all saying essentially the same things about energy. What if Albert Einstein was correct when he said that everything is made of vibrating energy? What about the research carried out by people, such as Rupert Sheldrake, Bruce Lipton, Lynne McTaggart, Masaru Emoto, etc.? It would truly be the epitome of arrogance and ignorance for a corporate office to reject it all, but this seems to be what is happening. "We must stick to our traditions! Our Founder would want it that way!" These people are holding back the hotel industry because hotels look up to them and copy them. All of this knowledge poses a major dilemma for corporate offices because if they reject the new science and the huge body of knowledge about human energy, they will fail to make the required changes in time, and they will find their market share eaten away by upstart hotels and small or fringe hotel groups. But on the other hand, they risk looking stupid by even considering the use of human energy as it is not mainstream yet. Indeed, it is still far from being politically and respectably correct and clinically corporate. Perhaps they are worried about lawsuits resulting from staff sending warm, loving energy to guests. Chain hotels should make a decision soon because it will take a long time to change people's perceptions about the big hotel chains, which all represent conservative and traditional thinking about how a guest experience should be. They do not realize that this obsolete thinking will be the cause of their decline or demise, if they do not accept change. In my heart I believe that they will not change because of the weight of their traditions, but this is the way of nature. Some organisms adapt and survive while others do not and die. Some corporate offices may test the concept of energy by trying to incorporate it into the SOP-Customer Satisfaction concept. When they discover that you cannot combine energy with corporate office-driven SOP-Customer Satisfaction, they will draw the conclusion that it does not work and that it is New Age nonsense. I can assure them now that the two mix as well as oil and water. But I question whether there is even a corporate office with the courage and vision to test the concept. They seem not to know that nowadays it does not matter who you are. Your company can disappear as quickly as Harry Potter vanishes inside his invisibility cloak. But it gets worse! Corporate offices will discover that an energetic guest experience cannot be cloned to every hotel like the SOP-Customer Satisfaction concept can. It cannot be replicated exactly in every hotel. Indeed, as soon as you try to clone the energetic guest experience, the energy will change to that of the SOP-Customer Satisfaction experience and so they will fail. Being unable to clone a corporate template is unthinkable to corporate people. You just cannot clone or turn an energetic guest experience into a left brain, western, corporate concept, and this is part of the beauty of it. Corporate offices have to accept that Hospitality has spiritual and energetic dimensions to it, as indeed it used to have before the behemoth hotel chains redefined it to suit shareholders. Using heart energy, thought energy, and other forms of energy to create the guest experience WILL without a doubt become the new norm. Indeed, the new dawn is already breaking, albeit slowly. Our thoughts, emotions, and spoken words are vibrating energy, which influence the world around us, and this can be proved and measured scientifically. It is not New Age fantasy. Of note is Cleve Baxter's work in this regard. If you do not realize that your thoughts can influence the environment around you, carry out Masaru Emoto's rice experiment. Boil some rice. Put it in two plastic or glass containers. Allow the rice to cool down before you close the lids. Stick on one container a high frequency phrase, such as "I love you." When you write the phrase, say it or think it with emotion. Do the same with the other container, but write a low frequency word or phrase, also said with emotion, such as "I hate you." For thirty days say the appropriate phrase to each container for one minute in the morning and one minute in the evening. Observe how your thoughts or spoken words affect the rice. After 30 days the "I love you" rice will have hardly changed whereas the "I hate you" rice will have changed into a gooey, grey-black mess. Hotel staff have the ability to send positive energy to the guests in order to make them feel happier. They can also send energy to guest rooms to make them feel more pleasant, and they can even do this from home as distance is irrelevant. Scientists have discovered that DNA can be directly affected by our thoughts and emotions, and that we can also affect the DNA of others from thousands of miles away. It has been also discovered that DNA absorbs and releases photons or light, which affect other people according to the intention of the sender. In addition, scientists have discovered that the essential energy that affects DNA the most is love. Would it not be wonderful if love was put back into Hospitality? So, teach the staff how to change the vibration of their own energy field and how to send warm, loving energy to the guests and to their rooms. It will make the staff feel amazingly happy, and it will send waves of energy to the guests, which will increase their feelings of happiness. Happy guests = higher revenue. I would love to explain how to apply energy to the guest experience, but the so-called hotel industry leaders and influences have yet to wake up to see its business potential and relevance, and their ears are sealed shut. Cobwebbed, obsolete paradigms and old-style thinkers still seem to predominate. But the hotels and hotel groups which dare to make the changeover to an energetic guest experience will become market leaders in terms of the guest experience. Those which refuse, perhaps out of arrogance and self-importance, will become "also ran's". The choice is theirs.
About the Author Peter McAlpine is the Senior Consultant at Renaissance Consulting Ltd. in Bangkok. The company specializes in pre-opening and upgrading 5-star hotels and resorts, creating Heart-based Hospitality, in freeing hotels from the chains of Normalville, and in exorcising the spirit of SOP-Customer Satisfaction. The company's strength lies in creating a guest experience that is strong in loving kindness, heart-warming care, and compassion; and also in applying the discoveries of New Science to marketing bio-fertilizers and to increasing crop yields using thought energy and heart energy. His many articles are intended to be a legacy to the hotel industry before focusing entirely on applying the energy techniques and discoveries about energy to develop agriculture and to enrich farming communities in Africa and Asia. Contact: 
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