The Hidden Magic of Maintenance
By Isaac French
Maintenance probably isn't a topic you expect me to theme a whole newsletter around.
It's a boring word which represents more potential — for good and for bad — than any other boring word I can think of in hospitality or real estate.
Last week, I wrote about how hospitality is not an asset class but an action. Well, in the same way, maintenance isn't just a line item on a P&L statement to be brokered away to the lowest-bid subcontractor or cheapest employee.
It's the day-in / day-out duty and privilege to truly care for a piece of real estate, and the systems that make it deliver magic. This includes everything from HVAC systems, pools, plants, and paint on the walls, to asphalt pavement, websites, and window cleaning.
Every single thing needs to be maintained some way, somehow and at some interval.
I believe just as much craft should go into maintaining a place — a huge part of delivering the magical experience we're after — as goes into designing and building it.
A poorly maintained setting is just as telling as a poorly designed one.
What a tragedy to invest so heavily in greatly designed buildings and landscapes, and then neglect even ever so slightly to properly care for them. Many times, this is all that separates good properties (and brands) from great ones.
Simple but unrelenting maintenance and care.
I just finished reading Be Our Guest — a book about Disney's approach to delivering magical experiences. They've scientifically engineered the "perfect" Disney experience and rigorously train their "cast" (staff) to care for the properties and deliver that experience.
Here's a crazy fact: as of 2011, the maintenance cast alone at Disney's parks and resorts was 120,000 people! Spread across only five locations. Insane, right? But it's a huge part of the reason Disney real estate is worth many tens of billions of dollars.
Disney understands the strong emotional connections made with their guests by not neglecting a single part of the guest experience, not least of which includes perfectly cleaned, meticulously-maintained, freshly-painted, carefully-organized details — every time and everywhere!
If you were (or are) hosting guests only in an extra room of your house, you'd have the same level of care — it's your house after all.
But when you become an organization and start to scale...fast...with multiple teams across multiple assets — that's when the temptation comes to skimp (just a little) on the time, employees, and ultimately care, needed.
One way to prevent this: put yourself in your guests shoes and experience your setting from their perspective.
There's nothing like booking a night at your own property and cringing at all the little details that could be improved (am I the only one? 😬😂).
You and your team should do this regularly. We called them "sleep-throughs" — free nights at Live Oak Lake offered to our core staff every six months or so to keep them sharp in this most important way.
The tiniest details matter, even and especially the mundane. An overflowing trashcan, an ugly weed by the sign, or stains on the couch, can taint what would've been a perfectly magical experience.
Yes, all of this is "common sense," but perhaps worth a reminder. A well cared-for property and grounds will speak wonders. And last much longer.
Again, what's really at stake is care. And if you don't have care, you don't have anything in hospitality. Take care, show care, completely care for your employees, your guests, and your real estate and systems. Your guests can feel care (or its absence) more keenly than you think.
Sometimes the things you don't notice are more important than the things you do.
It's that simple. And that hard.
Ok, rant over :)