Article contributed by Mike Berman, COO, Day & Nite/All Service, with Tia Tassava
At first glance, Engagious’ 13th Back to Normal Barometer wave findings makes little sense. How can it be possible that 55% of survey respondents are ready to hop back on cruise ships despite the US’s first major COVID-19 encounters came from cruise ships and being adrift at sea in a floating apartment building seem to be a coronavirus petri dish? But underlying data shows this is not nearly as irrational as one might think, further offering particularly useful insights for not just the broader hospitality industry but all businesses.
Despite the CDC’s continued warnings and several other cruises devastated by outbreaks of other diseases in recent years, the industry has an earned reputation for meticulous attention to safety detail. Every cruise begins with a mandatory safety presentation with highly visible safety tips, precautions, and gear evidenced throughout a ship. While cruise cousins in other hospitality sectors certainly have similar protocols, none go to as great lengths to publicize a commitment to workplace and guest safety as passenger cruise lines do.
Institutional credibility inspiring this confidence requires more than implementing advanced indoor environmental quality, workplace, guest, and food safety. Featuring your initiatives, investments, and commitment right up there with your establishment’s ambiance, service, food, and drink an absolute fundamental for these times. Successfully doing this, however, requires more than compliance or responsibly outfitting your business with the basics. Inspiring customers, winning the competition for their business is all about differentiation.
Many have been surprised by recent polls, indicating that most Americans believe they are better off than four years ago. Engagious’ research provides greater context for this too. By not going out as much, people are saving more money than in prior years by being sidelined from leisure activities. Of course, we do not marginalize severe economic strains forced on millions of newly unemployed or those enduring furloughs. With faded PPP dollars, future month polls may tell a different story, but for our purposes, the more significant matter at hand is changing behaviors. Engagious’ 13th wave did not show similar enthusiasm for other forms of leisure activities as taking a cruise.
Throughout this weekly series, we have stressed the importance of staying ahead of the curve, taking decisive action from smart anticipation, with all available data showing hospitality is now at its most potentially critical inflection point: adjustment from deprivation. Periodically reported, routinely accepted, it takes between 18 and 254 days for a person to form a new habit, 66 days on average. This wide range can be explained by conscious decisions to change something vs. adjustment. November 2nd is 227 days from Governor Cuomo issuing the PAUSE Executive Order closing all non-essential businesses statewide, just 27 days from adjusting to a habit quite unfavorable for hospitality. With precious time slipping away, avoidance or analysis paralysis must give way to necessary decisive, differentiated action!
The Day & Nite family of companies not only established and advanced COVID-19 planning and protocols in January, but the company’s internal laboratory also worked with multiple experts, evaluated the widest range of remedies and technologies. Culminating in the best breed, Day & Nite Performance Solutions suite of integrated services and technologies engineered to protect, sanitize, and sterilize every indoor environment. As a fundamental. To create your differentiated business, to inspire patron confidence from your deeply credible commitment to the safest experience, to reignite habits, learn more by contacting jbf@wearetheone.com.
