This Is What Being Radically Guest-Focused Looks Like - Christian de Boer, Jaya House Hotels

Christian: I've signed up as an advisor to the United Nations, and part of what I do down there is showcase that there's a different way of running a hotel. showcase that you can be one of the best hotels apparently on the planet. We have been on TripAdvisor's top 25 hotels in the world for five years in a row. We have three and a half thousand reviews. We have not had one single bad review, and we have no complaints at all, neither TripAdvisor, Google, or any other social media channels. We have no sales team. We've never traveled anywhere. We're not part of the likes of Virtuoso, Signature, or any of the other ones because I don't think that's worth it anymore. That's very much an early 2000 way of operating a hotel. Things have changed, and things need to change, and things need to continuously evolve and move on. Right now, we have technology like what we're doing right now, but also Instagram, TripAdvisor, and Google; it's all there, and it's all for us to explore. Thus, while we're using the new technology, that means we can leave some of the older technology behind. And a sales trip, by and large, is old technology. The whole concept of it is old technology. Me trying to convince, me flying to, I don't know, somewhere else, Little Rock, Arkansas, to convince some travel agency, group of travel agencies to book our little hotel. That's, let me fly cheap in an economy, that's $1,800 for an airfare return. Cheap hotels, $200 a night in a hotel. Quite quickly, you'll spend, if it's the United States, at least 10 days. So that's already $5,000 and I haven't done anything yet. I still need domestic flights. I still need to host people and buy dinner and lunches. So quite quickly, you spend $10,000, $12,000. any idea how many jobs that is for us, how many jobs I would be wasting in one sales trip to the United States, which is why we don't do it. But as a result, all my staff is full-time. All my staff is actually experienced. All my staff feels comfortable in their job. They know they're not going to lose their job next week. So we've actively looked at trying to make our guests, our sales team, My guests are there already. They booked their flight already. And since they live in Little Rock, Arkansas, they already have a house there, so they don't need to pay for a hotel. So for me, it's a lot cheaper to simply impress them than to travel to any city in the United States or elsewhere in the world. So what does a guest really, really annoy? In the United States, in the US market, things like resort fees are stupid. Of course, breakfast is included. I mean, who doesn't eat anything or doesn't drink a coffee in the morning? We know the temperature could easily be 100 Fahrenheit here at times. So why don't we do the gas laundry? All of it. not one piece, two pieces, but whatever they want to give us, one basket or two baskets or their whole suitcase. Why don't we try to impress the guests and give them an hour massage every day? And so if that if somebody stays, if one couple on their honeymoon stays with us for four nights, that's eight spa treatments they'll get. if they want to. Why do hotels in the West nickel and dime about early check-in as if it's a big deal? Why, if I stay in a hotel and I ask if it's okay perhaps to check out at two, they always have, oh I need to ask the manager. Why is it so difficult? You have empty rooms, what are you going to do with it? Why not make me happy? So early check-in, late check-out, not a problem. We give our guests every day a tuk-tuk from 7 o'clock which is like a horse and carriage done with a motorbike. A tuk-tuk from 7 a.m. till 10 p.m. anywhere in town. So we can bring them, we can pick them up if they go for dinner or any other stuff. All of the guests get a little Nokia telephone to call us if after dinner they want us to pick them up. And we don't have what I think are stupid reasons and in I remember being in a hotel in Las Vegas and I was not allowed to use the swimming pool after 6 p.m. It's a big hotel. I find that strange. Why not? And oh, it's for security. What? What kind of security? I don't understand it. So we don't have that. If somebody wants to go swimming at 11 p.m., please do. Please use the big pool so there's no noise. But if people want to keep that, give people freedom, give people let people do what I want to do. And obviously, within reasons and decency, but in principle, let people do what they want to do. Coffee, why do hotels so often have that horrible, horrible plastic Nescafe thing that no one can open. Try to open it at seven o'clock in the morning. I can't. So now you're just waking up. You're trying to make yourself a coffee. You're trying to open that thing. Eventually, when you open it all the way, half of it will be on the floor. You're standing on your bare foot. So you're stepping in it. Why is it also difficult? Why is it not just simply a good coffee? Why is my milk and milk powder that used to be coffee seven years ago? No, let's just make things proper. If you're paying a fortune for a hotel and prices in the United States are not cheap, Why is the coffee in plastic? Why is it the milk powder? It's all of those useful and useless things that I think we've taken away, which generally blows people away. And that makes them think, wow, I'm actually a guest in the traditional sense of the word. In the West, people that walk into a hotel are merely seen as you're going to make me money. And how can I take as much money from you as possible? Here, I want people that choose us to actually be guests and feel like we're taking care of them in the same way as you, I hope for you, would take care of your family if they come and visit you. And when you get friends over or your family over and they're going to from out of town, so they're staying with you, are you asking them for a credit card? The first thing they say, the first thing you see, where's your credit card? Are you going to nickel and dime them with, oh, hold on, you had your Diet Coke this morning. Why? You don't. But it's all the childish behavior that I don't think we do. And as a result, people are generally happy. And as a result, word of mouth. And as a result, that's my marketing.

Josiah: Christian, if I could, I would love to hear how you describe your business and your properties, how it all got started, because you built a career in working your way up in more traditional hospitality concepts. What you're describing is hospitality that feels intuitive. It feels like it's common sense, but it is so rare, actually. And so I'm curious about how did your business get started and were all the things that you're describing a part of your hotels from day one, or has it been an evolutionary process?

Christian: All from day one, mainly because we had no choice. The pillar of the hotel is that we only have full-time staff. In Cambodia, if I were, I don't know. Next week, I will decide it's low season. I don't need so many staff, and I'm going to terminate 20 people. Great. Those 20 people We're not talking about numbers. We're talking about persons. Those 20 people all have a family. Those people, those 20 people, have bills to pay for their families. Some might have a daughter, son, daughter, child, or parent to take care of. It's my responsibility that they have enough money to be able to do that. So, all my stuff was full-time. I wanted to have the best health care of any company in the country. But that means that my cost base is higher. So I had to save on something. And what is, after staffing, the most expensive thing a hotel can do is the sales trip. The sales trips that hotels are apparently forced to do. What if we simply cut it out? What if we simply take all of it away? We make that zero. And then the next question came up. How do we make our guests, our sales team, How do we impress them enough that when they go home and they've reached home, they've slept for a day, their friends will call them and think, oh my God, how was it? How can we get them to say, oh my God, stay at this fantastic tiny hotel in the middle of nowhere that was out of this world? How can we achieve that? And that's really what we try to do.

Josiah: What did you have to push through to make that happen? Because what you're describing, if I think about it at a high level, it's not revolutionary in the sense that hospitality providers have always said you delight your guests and you're going to have a profitable business. But what I'm hearing from you is you've pushed through a lot of the notions of how a hotel business needs to run, whether it's sales trips or other things that you mentioned. What did you find challenging that you had to push through? Is it more of an upfront investment? But why aren't more hotels doing this? It makes so much sense, but yours are clearly standing out and you're operating differently. So what did you have to move through to get there?

Christian: Absolutely zero. Mainly because it was the pillar of the hotel. And this is who we are. And look, it paid off. We're now the busiest hotel in town and we're doing good. But it was just obvious. I mean, I remember being asked by one of the big groups of travel agencies in the United States to become part of them. And I would get a piece of metal to put on the front door. to tell everyone how good we are. But that piece of metal would cost me $32,000. $32,000. I don't need a piece of metal on my front door to tell people how good we are. Let us spend that money, that exact money. Let's spend it on our guests. And it's the same. Word of mouth is so strong. And people, I think each individual that would potentially come to Cambodia would have to hear from two or three people in the industry that, oh, you should stay at this hotel. It's great. It's fantastic. I've seen their piece of metal on the door. But they would only need to hear from one person they trust, and that's a friend or an acquaintance or somebody whom they know has been here. So instead of trying to impress two people, and that's largely paying for it, they only need to hear from one. And so, word of mouth, I honestly think 70, 80, and 90% of my guests perhaps have had somebody else in their circle of friends here. And the amount of times that I could ask, oh, do you know our friends? They stayed with you seven months ago, John and Anne from Milwaukee. Do you remember them? I think, well, Not really. But that's how it works. That's how tourism now works. And it's word of mouth. And the credibility of a friend is a lot higher than the credibility of a piece of metal to the front door. So no, we're not part of that group of agents.

Josiah: It seems you've gotten really good at saying no to things that could be distractions. If I'm hearing you, part of your decision framework is, does this make life better for my teams and as well as for my guests? And if the answer is no, you're not doing that. Is that right? What's your decision framework for if you have an opportunity that comes up?

Christian: But the decision is always really quick. it's there are two people here, myself and my number two we make all the decisions it's done in an instant so it's generally a question from me to him or from him to me and then an answer and that's the decision so Look, there is no, uh, there is no group or association of people that are thinking along the same lines right now. I do believe there's probably more hotels like us, but they're perhaps a little bit less outspoken or, or I don't know, opinionated, I guess. It's this way of thinking. It's also killed any opportunity for myself. There are a lot of hotel groups there I will never be able to work again. which is okay. And because of this way of thinking to say out loud that a hotel does not need a sales team. In principle, all those people can be terminated, and a lot of that money can be saved. That doesn't make you popular in the hotel industry. But it is a fact. And I think it's a fact. And I'm convinced that any hotel, even the bigger hotel groups, could work this way. And because we all go to our daily lives, you go to your local, and if you want to go for a drink somewhere, you go to your local bar, wherever that might be. You buy your food at your local supermarket or this person or that person. And we're all creatures of habit. So word of mouth or personal experiences is absolutely critical, and it's often completely undervalued. And oh yeah, that's what I think it is.