One of the best parts of my job is staying in hotels and understanding the different approaches with which hotel staff communicate with their guests. Such a key part of the guest experience, one that hoteliers spend large amounts of time and money on, is training staff to adopt an attitude that ensures that guests feel welcomed, looked after and recognized. No matter how much training and money the hotel puts into the staff, it doesn’t replace the natural ability of certain human beings to communicate their warmth to other people. Add to that the memory of an elephant, and a hotel has the perfect employee. I recently walked into a property in which I hadn’t, to my regret, set foot in for over twelve months. I was pleasantly surprised when the barman clearly remembered me and even more astonishingly my name and immediately made me feel as if I was in a warm protective environment.

So to the barman of the Bel Ami hotel in Paris (sorry, try as I might, I just don’t have the same memory for names) - many thanks for making me feel welcomed and looked after. Whilst technology will never replace a human interaction, we continuously strive to make our products interact in a natural way with guests, becoming a seamless part of their in-room activity.