Massimo Bernardi, Chief Commercial Officer at Full Price (Italy), is set to appear at this year’s SEMPL Conference, bringing his extensive experience from the world of hospitality management and consulting.
Having built his career across private properties and hotel chains, Bernardi has in recent years focused on helping companies shape their business around a unique identity, drafting standards and procedures that bring consistency and coherence to the hospitality product.
Today, he oversees Development and the Commercial area at the European biggest short-term rental revenue management company, where he also provides personalised consultancies designed to raise revenue results.
At SEMPL, Bernardi will explore the concept of business identity and the role of details in ROI. Ahead of the conference, we had the pleasure of speaking with him about his approach to hospitality, the role of coherence in building strong brands, and why identity remains at the heart of every sustainable result.
Your keynote at SEMPL is titled “Business Identity – ROI Comes from Details.” What does “detail” mean to you in a business context, and why do the small things so often make the biggest difference?
We could name the details as standards, and in every business they are what we build product coherence upon, and eventually identity. To work on identity, the values you build upon are the main pillars, but without details the product would not be reflecting them.
For instance, the bed sheets weight, the distance we start our interaction with a guest when in presence, the timing for a mail confirmation to a new reservation, the color palette for our website, the number of bath towels we will place in the bathroom but also the opening hours of the food and beverage outlets, are some of the details we have to consider when operating a luxury hotel, in order to make someone feel pampered.
But if you think of a coffee shop then temperature, centiliters of beverage, packaging, cost range, lounge setting, wi-fi signal strength, upselling procedures, logo position on the windows, will be some of the elements you will find aligned and respected all over the different worldwide locations of Starbucks shops, so you have consistency and a perfect nest for your working in a coffee shop.
There could be 100 pages of standards, as it happens in a luxury hospitality environment, or fewer details shaping a simpler product, but only when everything is carefully planned and built around client’s expectations and needs – and especially connected to their values! – that you have certainty of providing a product aligned with the identity.
You’ve worked across different sectors, from hospitality to retail. What lessons have carried over between industries, and what tends to surprise you when you change the business environment? How can the principle “details make the difference” be transferred from hospitality to marketing or communication strategies?
I have learned that there are competences that are valid across sectors, such as leadership and management; there are some rules of the game to learn when entering in a new arena, but the principles, the structure, will remain the same, as a business is the creation of human beings.
Therefore, the greatest lesson I have learned is to be human, whichever the role I cover, as it pays back both in terms of connecting with others and making a good job. Besides, I am often surprised about the different ways that very same things will be in place in a different form, applied differently when business environment changes; probably more than being surprised I would better say that I appreciate a lot the discovery phase: I am a very curious person, eager to learn, so novelty suits me!
Details are so important as we all look for coherence, our mind is structured to look for it, to foster it – we have an area in our brain, defined by Gazzaniga as the “interpreter”, which is designed to justify what goes differently than expected – and whenever a product does not comply with that, we lose some interest. Imagine if MacDonald would change the aroma of its fries…
Marketing is the story telling about the product and has to transfer the promise across a media; the best way is to make someone identify him/herself in the media chosen to tell the story, but presenting and connecting all the dots – the standards, the values – which will lead the client to that experience we promise her/him to have with us.
In your experience, which communication channels do you find most effective in the hospitality sector when it comes to building guest loyalty and creating an emotional connection with them?
Nowadays pictures and videos are the best media to connect, so Instagram is probably and currently the best tool to foster identity, to work on lifestyle. Then we can say that the target drives the choices for where to appear on… Facebook remains a must for whoever is on generation X or even part of the millennials, tiktok is the obvious choice for the Alpha generation…
But there is also an opportunity in making meaningful emotional connections through ancillary channels, such as the OTAs messaging tools, where you can set templates aimed at supporting the experience delivery, or the responses you can give to guest reviews – one of the best occasions to showcase what you do. We tend to forget those channels, because we often think of marketing as aimed at acquiring the guest, but bonding is also a way to reach someone’s heart.
In today’s market where everyone has similar offers, how do you see the perception of value changing for customers? Can brand identity and marketing coherence become the new currency of value in hospitality?
I definitely think so, and I have to say that it has always been this way: some providers are specialized in something unique, that’s their identity and it made their fortune since the beginning of trade in human history…
In our times, globalization offers some products all over the world, but values are becoming more and more important, as they bring meaning to our lives, a sense of fulfillment. This is the reason why values reward both the guest experience and the hospitality professional who resonates with the identity the structure has, therefore the values supporting it.
Also, whoever follows a value or feels connected to an identity, will be less sensitive to price.
Let’s make an example: travelling with a dog and sharing that experience with a receptionist who is passionate about dogs, will be an amazing experience both for the guest and the employee. And for the dog. And for the structure, as at the end of the day there is a higher satisfaction, a higher average daily rate, a lower staff turnover, and a general higher degree of happiness. Does it make sense?
The very same thing can happen with meditation friendly hotels, or family dedicated properties, but only if the identity is built on details.
ROI is usually seen through numbers and spreadsheets, but you link it closely to identity and culture. How do you persuade decision-makers that investing in “intangibles” really pays off?
Identity is not intangible, is actually much more concrete that generalist product, and you can easily show the ROI on an excel sheet. There so many business cases showing this, therefore the logic thinking would support investing in a more specific identity. All the companies I have helped or analyzed showed at least a +20% revenue increase. At least.
If you could leave young professionals in marketing and business with just one piece of advice about building brands that last, what would it be?
Both for young but also for elder pals who are still open for enjoying a better quality of life: build the identity of your brand on what you really believe in, feeling the values at the bottom of your heart and expressing them, so you will never work again in your life!
