Two recent experiences about business motivated me to write this post.
The tale of Jonathan and Simone
This couple run a campground in the Cantabrian coast. They rent full equipped set up tents in a property they own or manage.
This sounds like Glamping right? Glamping is a trendy social media powered, low investment, high profit operation you can only run on hot markets.
Johathan is maybe accidentally taking the concept to the limit. The campground is rough and on an early stage but it can command high prices. Jonathan has cornered the market and asks >150EUR for super basic camping equipment sourced from Decathlon and LIDL hastily set up in a campsite lacking the infrastructure you would expect of that price range.
This is a mismatch. The reason it works is basic economics. In the high of the high season, with full occupancy on hotels, hostal, campings, vacational rentals, airbnbs and no place where to pitch your own tent because of the hotelier friendly regulations there is no offer left, but there is residual demand and people still need a place to spend the night. Jonathan is squeezing the market. To the moon.
Maybe the shitty campground flies under the radar of the local authorities but I prefer to think that Jonathan has persuaded inspectors to give him time to build up and they are willing to lax regulations because cash is coming in.
Jonathan is down to earth, full of passion, with good business instinct, no shame and a no capital.
He is a great entrepreneur.
The tale of Canfranc
Canfranc was an over the top train station on one of the few crossing points between Portugal and Spain and France built in the happy interwars period. It was meant as a portal to Europe, grandiosely realized with the expensive civil infrastructure of the time.
Canfranc is a symbol of the confrontational relation between France and Spain. The project was born ahead of its time. In WW2 time this outpost in the Pyrinees was a little Casablanca. At the end of the WW2 the tunnel was sealed. And in 1970 its limited life came to an end after a controversial accident. Before the European Union came to demand cooperation between the states the location was a sore spot for both the French and Spanish governments.
In recent years European funds recovered the magnificent art deco building and there is a push for recovering the train line.
I describe all this context because there is a hotel chain that runs a luxury hotel in the building. Because of the location and the historical relevancy of the building, the hotelier proudly considers this object a flagship, vanity asset.
I was a guest in the hotel. At check-in the person at the counter mistakenly typed 347.30EUR instead of the real price 347,36EUR giving me an accidental discount of 6 eurocents or 0.017%. I did not notice the mistake, she probably also did not notice or cared to correct the mistake.
But the person at check-out noticed. When I was already leaving she demanded the missing 0.06EUR, effectively reverting the discount applied at check in.
I thought she was joking but she was adamant on claiming it, delegating responsability ‘I will get in trouble with my manager’.
This is a mismatch. In a luxury hotel they sell experiences, therefore it makes sense to add grease when needed to improve guest satisfaction.
My experience denotes a misplacement of priorities. It is obvious the 0.017% discount was accidental and irrelevant. Printing the invoice would have cost more. A free goodbye sweet at the counter would have cost more. The time it took to handle the cash transaction costed more. It soured the experience at the critical moment of checkout when there is nothing else that can be done.
I checked reviews people drop in the hotel and there is a relevant amount of people that cared enough in the past to write about the lack of detail or training on the crew mentioning specifically customer care. The hotelier seems to have failed to address the issue or ignore it.
The person at checkout is not to blame. They are probably swamped with rules from management and not given enough space for personal initiative. The hotelier runs a luxury hotel in a vanity location and it is failing to exploiting the asset efficiently.
A better experience at checkout would have been, dealing with the 6ct internally or if the person has audacity drop a joke. That should have sweetened the experience with a final laugh.
Jonathan would have done it.