The Inside Story of How Hilton Built Hampton Inn’s “Hamptonality” Culture - Eleanor Erickson & Phil Cordell

Josiah You're in for a treat with this episode because today we're learning from two of the best hospitality leaders in the world about culture and what it takes to create a thriving hospitality business by empowering your people. This year on the podcast, we've learned a lot from Eleanor Erickson, who was a general manager with Hampton Inn by Hilton for 20 years and delivered incredible results around team retention, engagement, and many other business metrics. I personally learned so much from her on culture and when I asked her about who's been a mentor and inspiration for her in this area, she pointed me to Phil Cordell, Hilton's global head of lifestyle brands and new brand development. I reached out to Phil and he agreed to join us for this special joint episode where we start out hearing a bit about both of their career journeys, but the conversation got so good I just turned the mic over to them and asked them to interview each other. What we recorded ended up being a masterclass in what it takes to create a culture that powers your hospitality business success with plenty of laughs along the way. Enjoy! 

 Josiah Eleanor, to kick us off, tell our listeners a little bit about your own career journey. I would love to hear what you did with Hampton Inn because I really enjoyed hearing that story and I want everybody to know about it. So take us back. How did you get started?

Eleanor Yeah, let's go back. So we're just going to go back about 20-something years. We won't go all the way back, Josiah. But in 2000, I moved to a place I lovingly refer to as tiny town, North Carolina. It's a seaport village called Southport. And I was new to town and I needed a job. And they were building in Southport the very first branded hotel in the market. And it was a Hampton Inn. I literally showed up the day they were striping the parking lot. I walked confidently in the front door, filled out an application, and I thought, they're going to hire me on the spot. And they did not. So I fretted for a few days, but listen, I was running out of money and I called back and I said, could I just talk to someone? And I was put on the phone with the general manager. I had about a five-minute interview, the gist of which, can you work three to 11? And I said, yes, yes, I can. And so that began my journey in June of 2000. I started on the 3 to 11 shift at the very first Hampton Inn in my part of North Carolina. Worked for a fantastic owner, a visionary himself, and one of the things that he was best at. was getting out of the way and letting us run this hotel in a way that we knew fit the community and fit our team members. And honestly, myself, I was on a journey with this company for more than 20 years. I worked three to 11 on the front desk. I had my son, Jack, I think on the six week mark after I had my son, they knocked on my door and said, are you ready to come back? So I did. And when I came back, I was moved into a sales AGM position and In April of 2004, I became the general manager of that Hampton Inn, which was so much fun and a whirlwind. That hotel was performing really well. When I stepped into the role, I went off to GM school in Memphis and I was just hooked. I was hooked on the brand. I was hooked on the idea. I met so many wonderful people. And from that moment on, I had points of contact in the brand and I used them. Back in 2004, 2005. You knew who to call. They knew what your property looked like. They had walked the halls of it back then. My very first general manager conference, interestingly enough, was in 2005 in Las Vegas, and I was personally introduced to Phil. My hotel was winning a Lighthouse Award my first year as a general manager. We were in the top 60 or so of the brand. And so I really was blessed to kick off my management career in a brand surrounded by people who believed in culture, not just believed in it, but lived it, breathed it, exhaled it. I went on then for many more years as a general manager. We built a second hotel. We opened a Hampton Inn and Suites. We rebranded the old building and along the way, I was invited to become an ambassador for the Hampton program. As part of the ambassador program, I was charged with sort of a pay it forward leadership development idea and I was brought into the fold and given tons of growth, development. I was part of a listening board of people that the brand was talking to. What's working? What's not working? Can you be an advocate for us? And I was trained to be a facilitator by Hampton and the Marcus Buckingham Company. And for four years, I had the opportunity to travel around the United States and Canada running Hamptonality experience workshops. and really connecting with the brand in ways many general managers don't get to do. Both looking upwards towards Memphis, but also looking outwards towards all of these team members that I got to meet outside of my own circle. And fast forward, we got through a pandemic. I started to outgrow my role, recognizing that my passion is hospitality, not so much daily operations. And so I began to feel around for opportunities where I could not only be passionate about hospitality, but actually facilitate conversations about it. And here I am a year and a half later on an adventure I never could have imagined. literally bringing the light and warmth of hospitality into the great big wide world. And it's exciting. And I'm glad to be here and super excited to share my passion and my vision. And, you know, kind of along the way, guys, I got my master's in sustainable tourism and hospitality. And one of the very first eye-opening lessons I had in that was sustainability is not just environment, sustainability is not just economics, it's people. And so my passion project is the people in hospitality who serve every day.

Josiah I love it, Eleanor, and you've inspired me so much since I came across your work. You're inspiring people around the globe with hospitality, what it looks like to lead effectively, what it looks like to build strong cultures, to inspire people to be more sustainable. And when you told me that we had to talk to Phil, I was super excited because when you make a recommendation, I listen. And Phil, I'm delighted that you are joining us as well. For those that haven't met you yet, can you tell us a little bit about your role? And then let's talk a little bit about your journey to that role. And then we'll dive into all talk about leadership and culture and all that good stuff. But what's your role today, Phil?

Phil You know, Josiah, I'm blessed to be able to have a whole bunch of different roles at once. I've been with Hilton for 40 years. Back in junior high school, I think Eleanor's heard this story. I took like a career aptitude test that said, what tactically should you end up doing? It wasn't a psychological profile, although maybe it was. It was like, what is your job? Are you going to be a fireman or whatever? What are you best suited to be? And mine came back and said I should be a mortician, a minister, or a hotel manager. Now, those are three things that you go, what in the world are those three things in common? But if you think about it, if you're a minister, you're like kind of about the congregation, the people kind of leading, shepherding, all that kind of stuff. If you're a mortician, it's all about the family, not really necessarily the deceased. And if you're a hotel person, it's about taking care of guests every single day, right? So kind of the idea of hospitality has always been in my blood. I almost took the path of being a mortician. That's kind of weird, right? So luckily that didn't work out, but my first job was actually a bellman in a hotel. And I used that as an opportunity then to kind of work as a bellman in a hotel, a franchise Hilton in Asheville, North Carolina. And then get to work with Holiday Corporation at that point, one of the kind of early root systems of Hilton as we know it today. Went through their management training program and was about ready to be placed in a big holiday inn when they said, you know, we're working on this brand called Hampton Inn. We think you might be a great candidate for that. We don't even have one open yet, but in the time we've been around you and you've been around us, we think this is something we would like to see. if you'd be willing to do. So I was hired to be the general manager of the second Hampton Inn that opened back in 1984. I started before we actually had a hotel open. And for 35 years, I had the opportunity to lead Hampton and to meet amazing people like Eleanor, you know, from the second hotel to the international expansion, taking Hampton to China, doing all kinds of cool stuff that I never would have thought I had the opportunity to do. And along the way, I was kind of also privileged to kind of help create a number of new brands for Hilton. So I led the teams that created Home 2 and True by Hilton and Tempo by Hilton and Mono by Hilton. And we just launched Spark by Hilton. So I had an opportunity to kind of bring those things to life, too. And, you know, it was all kind of because of what I learned at Hampton. Product is really, really important. Product can easily be copied. It can easily be replicated. In the times Eleanor and I worked together, you know, we were able to do some really cool stuff to help to keep the Hampton brand fresh and differentiated. That's really important, the product stuff, but it can be copied so easily. I learned really early in my career that the part that's very difficult to replicate is the people side, the culture. And a lot of companies kind of don't really pay attention to that. They kind of hope it allows, it's allowed to happen on its own. It doesn't really happen in that way. So in my 40 years now with Hilton, isn't that crazy? 40 years was about a month ago. I've had an opportunity to lead an amazing brand like Hampton for 35 of those years to open a bunch of new brands and to really kind of understand what hospitality is all about. And it's about culture. We'll talk about that here in a second. I would like to ask Eleanor a question that I know she'll be able to answer. That might be an interesting way to start. Okay, let's go for it. Are you ready, Eleanor?

Eleanor I'm ready.

Phil So Eleanor, we had an opportunity to work a lot together as brand ambassadors, right? And again, those were opportunities for us to kind of take the best of the best of hotels. and allow them to shine their light and help other people to grow. And you heard us talk about culture in a whole bunch of different ways. It's a bunch of different descriptors we could use for it. A simple way, maybe a simpleton way, but I kind of think of culture, it's not a noun, it's a verb. It's something that has to be activated, cultured, grown. You always were an amazing leader at making that happen with your teams and at your hotels. Talk about that for just a second. What does that mean? It's a verb, not a noun. What does that mean to you?

Eleanor That's a great question. I'm going to go back just a second because interestingly, Phil, someone early in my life told me I might want to be a minister as well. So here we are in the church of hospitality.

Phil I actually went online and became an ordained minister in the online church, right? So like the universal something, something, something. So I've done a couple of funerals and some weddings, but I mean, you know, that's a weird thing, but you never know.

Eleanor Yeah. So let's talk about it. Let's talk about culture being a verb. Let's talk about hospitality being a verb. Let's talk about how, listen, you have to live it and breathe it and it needs to show up almost organically. We talk about, we're going to talk about Hamptonality, sort of the culture of the brand that I grew up in. Hamptonality, really in its earliest stages, it was the back of the house term. It was like, what's a word that we can use to describe the vibe that we've got, right? Hampton was always known as sort of like the fun, casual, select service hotel, right? We didn't wear suits and ties. We had wardrobes that mix and match. And very intentionally, the people who were at the front desk were the same as the people who were, you know, freshening up the rooms, the same as the people who were serving breakfast. So Hamptonality at the earliest stages was just sort of, this is what we see happening, all the verbs that we see happening. It's the passionate smiles, it's the authentic questions, it's the heartfelt recommendations. It's all of those things, and it became sort of, in my mind, I believe there was a moment in Memphis or maybe Virginia at that point, but where someone said, you know what? We need to let our guests know that Hamptonality is a thing. We want them in on it. So it had sort of developed organically, but it became sort of everything. It was all-encompassing, and it included the guests. Any guest who walked into a Hampton Inn would feel it. It was on the walls. It was on the… Josiah, we had doormats, okay? And you had to put the doormat a certain way. It didn't say, welcome, across the front. It said, welcome on the side. And we're like, what are we doing? And they said, so you have to turn. It's more meaningful. So it's actions, it's all of the ways that your personality shows up across every bit of your brand. And so when we talk about culture being a verb, absolutely, whether that was the Hampton personality, whether it's Hilton corporate personality, whether it's Spark, Phil, if I knew Spark was coming, I wouldn't have got that other flag on my old building. I'm just saying. So I agree, it's a verb and you can't just put it on a piece of paper and ask people to read it and sign off on it. It really has to be part of your DNA.

Phil It really does. Eleanor, this is a real test question. You may not remember this because I'm not sure how much we ever talked about it. So remember Hampton Alley kind of initially was birthed out of, and this might have been a tad before you, this whole idea of what do we do product is easily copied, service is different. So we kind of started this idea of the guarantee, 100% satisfaction guarantee. And the guarantee was very simple. Guarantee high quality accommodations, friendly, efficient service, clean, comfortable surroundings. If you're not satisfied, you don't pay. And the intent was really not to give back money. I mean, it was, if that's the last thing we had to do, right? But the intent was to prevent problems from happening or recover and resolve them when they did happen. And so that kind of at its core grew to be what Hampton Alley is all about because the kind of behind the scenes description for Hampton Alley was one unstoppable brand with irresistible personality. And so if you think about that, that's just kind of what Eleanor's been talking about. You know, it's how can you bring that to life? There are physical ways to bring that to life. The nods and winks that are throughout the hotel, you know, The imagery you use, all that stuff, that's there. But it's also more importantly than that, the personality, the team member, Sean. And, you know, I think sometimes in our industry, people think service is the same as culture, kind of is, but you can't script service. I mean, you know, there's some back in the olden days, you'd say, you know, answer the phone within four rings. And when you answer it, this is exactly how you answer the phone. And this is exactly how you address a customer. And maybe that works. But, you know, we learned early on that that wasn't really right. You know, Eleanor had an opportunity to work with one of our friends at the time, Marcus Buckingham, who was all about kind of helping every team member be themself, helping our leaders be the self and be authentic to themselves. And so one of the things that we learned about Hampton Alley was it was more about a framework to give team members and leaders the chance to bring it to life than it was, this is exactly how to do it. Eleanor, do you remember some of that? Do you remember FACT and all that stuff? Talk to us a minute about that.

Eleanor Oh, friends, let me tell you, I remember it all. I even remember the song. Okay. We were one unstoppable brand and we had moment makers. In fact, my very first conference Josiah, Phil showed up on stage at the first general session, dressed as the Wizard of Oz. And there were cannons that shot gold-laminated Hampton hexes through the air. And you literally felt like you had stepped into a movie set. I remember all of that. That guides everything that I do. But here's what's up. I had all of that inside of me. But Hampton helped me put words to it and helped me understand that what I was doing was really important. I remember such an eye-opening moment. I was still a young GM and we were at a conference where Hampton was partnered with Marcus Buckingham and we were learning all about our strengths, right? And everybody was going to, it was a big reveal at conference. You're going to get your top five strengths. And so we get there, and they're like, put these stickers on your lanyard. We're all going to jump up and shout when they announce what your top strength is. And I was like, Maximizer. And I'm like, that's me. We're all, I mean, we're all GMs. We're going to be the same. And so they called Maximizer. And I'm like, yes. And a small handful of people stood up. And they called the next one, and a different handful. And then they called Wu, the word Wu. And I thought, no way. Nobody in this room is Wu. Phil Cordell standing on the stage was like, It's me, I'm Lou. So I recognized we didn't all have to be cookie cutter versions of ourselves. We didn't all have to practice signature training, how to answer the call all the way to a sale. We didn't have to be scripted. We could show up however we were gonna show up in this framework. And that was so eyeopening for me, right? I use the word unexpected delights almost every day when I'm talking about hospitality. That came from Hampton. That came from, don't just meet your guests' expectations, exceed them. Create moments of actual wonder and awe, because that's where loyalty grows, right? Hampton Gaines loyalty song. We had all sorts of logos, but that's right, Phil, like that is what I grew up in. That is how I was formed as a hotel manager.

Phil That was good stuff. Unexpected delights is really important. Eleanor, remind me of a couple things you did with your team or your guests that kind of made unexpected delights literal, make that real. What are some of the things you did?

Eleanor Well, I think the most important thing for us is we were in a fantastic market. We were really like a large inn, right? Our market was a destination. We had a nuclear power plant in town. It was kind of our only big piece of corporate business. So we knew our guests. We knew our guests' families. We knew what floor they liked to be on. So first of all, we were always just greeting them very personally. Second of all, we would use all of these little things. I tell a fantastic story about the woman who became my executive housekeeper 18 years ago. She started on the floor cleaning rooms, and she would go into a room and clean it, and if she noticed that they were using a lot of tissues, if there were a lot of tissues in the trash can, she would put an extra box of tissues, a couple of bottles of water, and a handwritten note Looks like you're not feeling well. I hope you're feeling better soon. Love, Caroline." If a housekeeper ever says to you that they can't impact a guest's day because they never actually see the guest, tell them that story. That's how we did it. In fact, just this morning, I was going through my photo roll. Lots of times I take screenshots. I'm getting rid of paper clutter, right? So I take screenshots of letters and things. And I came across a letter that I screenshotted on October 11, 2020. The original letter was dated August 7, 2005. And it was a letter from Phil, because the guest had reached out to Phil. They had a group stay with our hotel. They reached out to corporate and said, you know, from the welcome banner at the front door to the frequency of the times they restocked the refrigerator with cold beverages to the way they used our name in genuine, authentic greetings, whether it was the front desk or the back door or breakfast, it made a difference in my group's experience. So it was really using situational awareness. It was really leaning into our own personalities within a framework of Hamptonality. And it was empowering team members to do what they were called to do. And it never went wrong. It never went wrong.

Phil in a way that was natural to them, right? I mean, Eleanor, I'm gonna ask you this again. So remember, we kind of use this framework of F-A-C-T, friendly, F, friendly, authentic, caring, and thoughtful. So every team member may not be able to be all those things. I mean, some people you would hope in hospitality are naturally friendly, but what if you're in the back of the house and English isn't your first language or something, right? What other ways can you be friendly? Or if you can't be friendly, you can be authentic. How was your day? Caring, thoughtful. And if you give people just that general of a framework, but then give them some direction, empowerment to let those come to life in a way that's authentic to them, that's where culture starts to happen, right? It's not the five words on a piece of paper. It's the housekeeper that you just talked about giving tissues and writing a note, right? That's where the stuff happens. And it's the little things that make a difference, right? I think even in today's world, probably more than ever, because generally speaking, post-pandemic service levels in many businesses is not what it was before, right? Just for a whole bunch of valid reasons. So anything that we can do to give guests a small reason to remember something we did, an interaction that occurred, that's where… Moment makers. Do you remember us talking about that with Hampton and Lenore?

Eleanor So my favorite story I would tell people, empathy, one of our moment makers. I don't consider myself to be an empathetic person. I'm typically like, what do you mean you don't feel well? I need you to show up, right? But I would say, but I'm humorous and I can use humor. So right, again, showing it up in a way that feels comfortable for you and not just a scripted, this is the way we do it. You just mentioned, kind of on the other side of the pandemic, it feels different, right? Service feels different everywhere, in every industry. People have different sets of expectations now. And quite frankly, the leaders in hospitality, those of them who made it through COVID are tired. Right. And so finding it harder to get that inspiration to bring that culture. So it's a lot easier when you're a tired general manager to put the words up on the board and say, Hey, don't forget moment makers, everybody. Okay, great. Have a good day. Right. And that's maybe an oversimplification, but I have days that I felt like that. coming out of the pandemic, where can I find that spark again? And I think that's kind of where I'm so passionate right now. As Will Godara says, we're moving into a hospitality economy. At the bare minimum of any transaction, whether it's a hotel stay or you're buying a car or you're shopping online, you expect someone to value you. You expect someone to be empathetic if you have a problem. You expect someone to fix it and maybe not just check the box, but do a little something extra to make you feel in that moment that somebody cared about what you were experiencing. It feels like hotels are kind of like losing some ground. I'm literally working with an automotive company who's dialed in right now that we need more hospitality. And I'm watching eyes and light bulbs go off and eyes open. with car dealers who were like, whoa, whoa, okay, I get it. And then I look at some of my hotel leader friends who are just still treading water, trying to figure it all out. Because now they're living this, you know, on TikTok. Somebody's not happy. It's not just coming up and wanting to speak to the manager. It's like, I'm putting you on blast and I'm recording you and everybody in the world is going to see how horrible this experience was. So, man, it's such a conundrum.

Phil Yeah, Eleanor, you made a good point a minute ago. Talk about connecting. You can take care of yourself. I think you were with us. Do you remember when we did the C3 summits? Were you there when we talked about connecting with yourself and your team and your community?

Eleanor I actually have on my note cards, I have a note about that.

Phil Talk about that, because it really does have, you know, one of the things, again, there's, I wish there was magic. Here's the three rules we could share. There's not really three rules. It's about making it a verb, not a noun, right? But one of the things we did, the C3 Summit thing, and talk to us a minute about that, how we talked about it and what we did there.

Eleanor So there was a big push, a big push in the late, maybe like 2009 through like 13, 14. Like, listen, you got to make yourself a priority, right? You need to take care of yourself. You need to take advantage of anything that comes your way. That's going to build you up, make you feel more confident, help you understand how to lead your team. We were connected with our brand in that way. And then you need to connect with your team members. I tell a great story when I work with other hotel groups. It's like, you can't just buy your team chicken. You have to go sit down and eat with your team, right? Because it's not about the chicken. It's about the experiences. It's like asking your executive housekeeper, oh, your first child just don't want to go to college. How are you feeling? Or somebody got a new pet or a new car. Or somebody has questions. It's about the community around the break room table, not the food on it, and reaching out to the community. Listen, I am a Rotarian, and for years I would talk to my Rotary group about, here's how my brand is out here helping the world. We're making little dresses for Africa out of old pillowcases, and we're making blankets for St. Jude's Children's Hospital, and we're doing a sock drive over at the local high school to serve our own community. So it didn't just live in your break room on the wall, and it didn't just live at the front desk with the people who were interfacing with the guests most, it was in every person that walked in the door, it was the way every guest felt when they stayed with you. When they left, when they came back, it was in the community. It was really a way to just say, this is not just about what happens in Hampton. It kind of is the way it should be, people. Like, get out there and represent what we know to be an authentic way of living. And Thrive, you know, Thrive came along. Focus on yourselves. You've got to take care of Because it's tough. It's tough work that we do every day. It is not always easy to stand there and listen to someone be unhappy with the service they received or the way their room was maintained or how loud it was in the parking lot. We have a whole bunch of new people traveling now. Some people didn't travel growing up. They don't understand hotel etiquette, right? What do you mean my kid can't run around in his bare feet in the breakfast area, you know? What do you mean I can't bring my five dogs? You said you're pet friendly, you know? So it's kind of every day having to get up and reset yourself. And if you can reset yourself, then your team will reset around you and to keep moving forward. It's tough work, but it's fantastic work. And it's necessary because if we don't get back to a place where people are excited about working in hotels, we're going to have tons and tons and tons of hotels that are running 80% occupancy, but everybody's unhappy and they'll never get their bed made because we just can't keep, we can't grow and retain our workforce right now because of the burnout. And that's tough. One of my notes here was one of the things that you were passionate about. You're a pioneer. It's one of your standout roles. You're sort of constantly that visionary, what's happening next? One of the things you were passionate about was creating feedback loops. You would have the ROC, the regional owner meetings, right, around the country where owners could come in and get FaceTime with you and your team. You would have regional meetings with our best guests. We would put Diamond guests on stage on a general conference and let them talk about what made them so excited to be loyal Hilton Honors members, what really jazzed them, and it was always the little things. But to hear that directly out of their mouths was amazing. The Hampton Alley Ambassador Program was the same thing, giving a listening board to the GMs who were out there every day. What do you see as a way to kind of bring some more of that back into this world when it feels like the enterprises are still really focused on recovery and development, right? Every quarterly report that I read has to do with how many keys are in the pipeline. what the ADR growth was. It seems like the enterprises are still in a struggle to have as many as more rooms than the next guy and it almost to me feels a little bit like the feedback loop has just gotten stretched really thin or it's gotten smaller and maybe we're not listening to as many of those groups as we used to. What are your thoughts about that?

Phil You know, it's a really good question. I think, you know, in today's world, there's a lot of different metrics we have to kind of keep on the scoreboard to measure success. And certainly financials are an important one of those. But also listening is really important. And I mean, listening, really listening, right? I mean, like you're familiar back in your days, we had SALT, the Internal Guest Satisfaction Tracking Program. It's been with us for 20 years. We're just going through a process now to say, How can we make that even a bigger, better listing tool? So we're going to a five point scale versus a 10 point scale. It's a shorter questionnaire, just like if you get an Uber or whatever, and it says, how you doing? What's up? How do we get more surveys in the moment versus after the stay? So there's those kinds of connection points through formal processes that are really important. But Eleanor, you'll remember just as we had those guests at conference, that's probably one of the best ways I ever learned as a leader, was we would invite guests to come in and spend, sometimes it was either guests who had never stayed with us, we wanted to understand why, or sometimes it was their most important, diamond honors, frequent guests. We'd have them come in, we'd spend a night at dinner, just kind of talking, we'd meet them in a Hampton, and then the next day we would just have a Conversation session around what do you like about hotels? What do you not like about our hotels? What can we do better? And that's where we got some of the greatest insight, because if you can sit face to face and we don't do a lot of face to face anymore, right? But if you can sit face to face, just like our leaders do in our hotels every day. And so what can we do to make it better? That's where you get really amazing things. I mean, this is a silly, trivial example, but there was a point in Hampton where we were not doing well with their interim amenity scores. We couldn't really understand why. Why is it the set? What is it? What is it? What is it? You know, and through one of these face-to-face conversations with customers, we learned it's because the bottles, and at that point we were maybe not sustainably focused, but the little plastic bottles were so rigid that you couldn't squeeze them enough, squish them enough to get the product out, right? So it was something that I don't know how we would have ever discovered that other than some guests saying, your bottles aren't squishable, they won't come out, right? So I think at your core, we got to go back to the basics and remember the importance of just having conversations, right? talking together. That's what hospitality is all about.

Eleanor And you say this is a silly little thing, but our whole industry thrives on fixing the silly little things, right? It's not that often that a new hotel brand is going to come along and just knock your socks off with a whole new concept. They're going to knock your socks off with the silly little things like the amenities, right? Or the front doormat. or the waffle iron, right? The great thing of the 2010s, you know, bringing waffles, let you make your own breakfast. We're going to let you make your own breakfast, folks. How about that? Right? But it is, and you don't know what that is because you can't know if you're sitting in a boardroom somewhere trying to just hash it out. And with a group full of people, you've got to open the doors and listen. And it is harder these days. It's hard to meet face to face. You said about the SALT surveys, you know, just yesterday I was riding home from work with a bunch of my colleagues. And we're from hospitality, we're from automotive. A whole bunch of different, but every single one of us, I don't know how we got on this topic, but if you get an invitation to a survey and it's like, it just says, hey, how would you feel one to five? And you hit five and it automatically takes you to a lane. You see the Safari browser open and you go to another page. We're like, we're out. We're done with our feedback. Like you wanted to know one to five, here it is. So like a silly little thing, but when you want to get feedback, you know, maybe not that everybody gets the same question on the first go. We have a bunch of different questions that go out and it's not the first go, it's the only go. This is what we're asking you. Thank you. Goodbye. You know, it's like identifying. Hilton just came out with their future trends report. Right? Like we're really having to listen because we can't figure out the future unless we know what guests are looking for, what makes them comfortable. So you're right. But listening is so important. And, and I think not just with our guests, but having hotel leaders, the opportunity to chat with in small groups or face to face with brand leaders, to know that someone is valuing their feedback because you're out there every day. Can we get a way back to that that's meaningful, that doesn't feel like a chore? Gallup is going to call you next week. Do you have 20 minutes to sit down and talk to Gallup about your journey as a general manager? Well, no, actually, I don't. But how can we create meaningful? How can we have those listening posts? Because I think you're right. It's about the silly little things, Phil. It really is. We don't have to reinvent anything. Silly but important. Those bottles were horrible, by the way. They were like rectangles and they were very hard plastic. Definitely not sustainable.

Phil Let's circle back for a second. You know, we kind of started our conversation talking about kind of, there's a million different ways to talk about culture. I said, it's a verb, not a noun. We've been on an amazing journey together as we've kind of lived and nurtured this ecosystem with Hampton. Ecosystem is a big fancy word, but right, if you think about it's connecting with yourself, your team, your community, it's, there's a framework, not a, it's a mindset, not a manual, all these things, right? You're an amazing leader. You did amazing things at your hotel. For those of friends that we may have listening, you know, to this podcast and you were to say, well, based on everything we've talked about, if there's two or three or four, whatever the numbers of things I could share with you as a listener that I learned about what culture means or why it's important or how do you make it come to life or whatever, how would you answer that question? If you just said, here is my top five or my top three or whatever it is, this is what it's all about.

Eleanor Yeah, so that could be Pandora's box, but let's go. So let's say it's going to be my top three, because I like to have, I like to keep things very simple. I'm going to have three things that are my top three. Number one, when you think about culture, is that culture can't exist in a vacuum. It has to be allowed to breathe and grow. It has to be connected to outside sources. There has to be a feedback loop. positive and negative, right? Because if we think that we have the perfect culture, it will only be perfect for a finite amount of time. We've got to be able to evolve. And I think we can evolve our cultures if we're not connected to outside sources. So number one, I think we need to understand that culture needs to be allowed to be flexible and to grow and it needs to be connected in outside of our own sort of ecosystem, right? For a hotelier, that may mean that you need to be connected with your guests and your brand leaders and your other colleagues, your GMs. For the brands, it may mean we need to be more connected with not the generation of people who's making reservations today, but in the next 15 years, right? We need to talk to high school students. When you think about the future, what does it look like? So number one, don't allow culture to try to survive in a vacuum because it can't. Number two, we have to, when we think about culture, we have to encourage blue sky thinking. We have to encourage people to say what if, and just put ideas out there. You know, you lose your sense of being able to do that when you're young. The very first time you tell somebody, you just rode in on your horse and chariot, and they say like, that's your bicycle. The very first time you get negative feedback about one of your blue sky ideas, you start to tailor what you put out there. You start to put bias on what you say. So we need to encourage blue sky thinking, right? I think that goes hand in hand with getting out of the vacuum. And number three, and this is just so simple, but we need to get back to one-on-one connections where we say, thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for your ideas. Thank you for that constructive criticism. Thank you for showing up when you weren't expecting to be here. Thank you for that unsolicited letter where you laid out all the reasons that you thought the industry was going to hell, Eleanor. But thank you, right? Thank you to the people that we worked side by side with. Thank you to the people that hire us. Thank you to our friends and family. Thank you to our guests. Thank you to our future guests. Culture in hospitality really needs to get back to that very simple act of service. I am your host. You are my guest. I thank you for being here. And I would hope that the guests would thank me for creating the space where they can really be comfortable and enjoy their time. Those are my top three. Easy, right? We can get that done.

Phil Those are good. I'm going to give you my top two. You know, I've been in the hospitality industry for 40 years. That's a long time, right?

Eleanor Twice as long as me.

Phil And I'm only 47, so I started when I was really early. I sometimes look for inspiration from others' quotes and that kind of stuff. You've had a chance to experience some of that with some of your Hampton conferences and stuff. And of all people, Napoleon, right, who was kind of viewed in a different way as a leader. But at one point he said, leaders are dealers in hope. And if you think about the world that we're in today, and if we think about the things that we've talked about, the changing nature of everything that's around us, plus the real need to kind of connect with people and help your teams feel committed or whatever, I think that all of us need to understand, and it's not always easy to accept, but leaders are dealers in hope. Our team members and others look to us not to be inauthentically happy and giddy, but to always have faith that things are probably going to get better and just got to hang together until we get there. Right. And I think this pandemic is kind of leading through that. And after that has kind of reinforced to me the importance of that. And then with kind of our next gen leaders that I have a chance to spend time with, we talk a lot about the mindset. And Eleanor, you said it in a different way of being change ready and future focused. What worked in the past will likely not work tomorrow. So just as we've talked about, don't just give them chicken, have chicken with them, a shorter survey of whatever those things are. If you think about the future and how AI may impact guest service, all those things, right? As a leader, the minute you stop learning and learning from others, you know, one of the things that we used to do, I learned, I think we talked about this a little bit as a brand team, we would do something called trend tracks where once a year we would go out and we wanted to spend time with businesses who were not in hospitality. we would go to restaurants and retailers and what other to see what could we learn from them about culture, about service that we could apply to our business or modify for our business. So that yearning to want to always learn a better way, a different way and from others outside of the industry is really, really important because that brings you some great insights to people too. So change ready future quote.

Josiah Yes. I love that. Is there anything top of mind for you that are questions I did not ask that you were hoping to cover? Maybe Phil, for you first, anything you were hoping we would cover that we didn't?

Phil It's great to have a chance to spend time with folks like Eleanor who help bring it to life, right? Because that's what it all takes. It's an ecosystem, how it all works. And so I've enjoyed the opportunity.

Josiah Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Eleanor, what about you?

Eleanor Yeah, so just real quickly, a dear friend of both Phil and I, Gina Valenti. Phil, when she talks about you, she often talks about how you're a bit of a disruptor. You know, you're not afraid to challenge the status quo. You're not afraid to learn from other industries and to say, hey, we could use that here. So just give me a little bit about where you are in your career right now. Do you still feel like there's opportunity for you to be a little bit disruptive? I know you're getting to be a pioneer when you are involved in these new brands, but do you get to tap into that little disruptive side still from time to time?

Phil No, it's fun. Again, Ellen, I've been blessed. So Pioneer, Influencer, Disruptor, Woo, there's a whole bunch of different titles we could use, right? So in addition to having the opportunity to kind of lead the Hampton brand to help create a number of these new brands, I've done some really cool stuff right at the beginning of the pandemic, right? Nobody knew exactly what was going to happen and how was COVID spread and what do we do? how our customers react. So we had an opportunity to lead the team that pulled together something called Clean Stay. And that was all about how are we going to sanitize, take care of our customers, et cetera. So nobody knew really where we're going to go, but Pioneer Influencer got out along with the team and said, come on, we're going to figure it out. We'll get there together. Right. So I've just been blessed to have the opportunity. You know, there's evolution, there's disruption, there's revolution. I think it takes all of those things to be a leader. And I think our industry, hospitality, continues to be ripe for disruption. I think only over the past few years have we realized that there's so much more that we could do, right? We talk about the difference of Airbnb and hotels being, they're an accommodations business and Airbnb, we're in hospitality. But I think there's so much still we can learn about how to do things differently. And I think we can learn more from learning about from non-hotel companies than hotel companies. Because sometimes we benchmark ourselves, in my opinion, too much versus those that are like us versus those that are different. And those who are different is where we get some of our best ideas. So is that disruptive? I don't know. But I think to shift your mind a little bit, to think about non-hotel experiences is really important.

Eleanor I love it. That's awesome. I look forward to seeing where I see you next. Funeral home. I'm going to go back to that. I'm going to go to the funeral industry. Every day I wake up, I feel like every day I wake up is a day that Helton's going to announce a new brand and Phil's going to be behind it.

Phil We're done. Yesterday we opened Spark Vitals and that's actually pretty cool. We'll talk about that one at another time, but it's all good.

Josiah Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you. It's great to see you. Well, awesome. This was incredible. I had so much fun. I learned a lot. I was taking notes. Thank you both so much. This was a huge learning opportunity for me.

Phil Thanks, everyone. It's great to see you, Josiah. Thank you for the opportunity, OK?

Eleanor Thank you, Josiah.

Phil All right. Have a good one.