酒店品牌

Hospitality Brands: Where Common Sense Ain't Always So Common酒店品牌：常识并不总是那么寻常My maxim goes something like this: successful hospitality brands are established by consistently distinctive and authentic customer experiences, which in turn are founded on organisations that embrace a unique and unifying way of life to guide what they do and the way they do it.我的准则是这样的：成功的酒店品牌通过一致的独特而真诚的宾客体验建立的，而这种经历是建立在一个引导人们做什么及怎么做的组织上，拥抱一种独特而统一的生活方式。

Cool, you may be thinking, let's do that and we'll soon be in brand paradise. Well, sorry to quell the excitement, but there's a bit more to this branding thing than that. 酷，你可能会这么认为，我们照做并很快就可以建立品牌巅峰。

好吧，很抱歉打击你的热情，但是，建立品牌还需要做更多。

You see, there's another group of important ingredients that supports the building and nourishing of a powerful and profitable brand: the little things.你看，还有另一组支持建立和加强品牌的重要成分：小事情。

No, not insects and peas. I'm talking about the little details that, if not carefully thought through by a human with a modicum of common sense, can turn into the most annoying and exasperating experiences that will overwhelm your stay such as the appalling smog that currently shrouds Beijing.不，并不是虫子和豌豆的关系。

我说的是这种小细节，如果人用常识不仔细思考，就可能陷入最让人懊恼的经历，就像笼罩在北京的可怕烟雾一般颠覆你的逗留。

Let's start with a simple example - the shower. Hands up all those who have had to play the 'I've got to jump out of the way before the ice cold water from the shower head attacks me while I'm not fully awake' game. What kind of idiot puts the shower handle the other side of the shower head, allowing you no space to retreat until the water warms to something approaching body temperature?我们举个简单的例子- 淋浴。

所有玩过“在我没有完全清醒之前，为了避开冷水浇头我不得不闪一边”这个游戏的请举手。

那种傻瓜会在水温接近体温之前把淋浴头冲着自己让自己无处躲藏？There's a good deal more of this absurdity. The clock fixed to the bedside table with the clock-face pointing parallel to the bed, forcing you to crane your neck in the middle of the night to experience the delights of checking the time, risking aslipped-disk or concussion as you land head-first on the unforgiving tiled floor.还有比这更荒谬的。

钟面方向与床方向一致固定在床边的桌子上，迫使你冒着滑倒或者头着地撞到瓷砖地面脑震荡的危险，半夜伸着脖子看表。

Then there's those blasted door 'smart cards': what in heaven is smart about having to go down to reception three times to get the card rebooted? The light switches:don't get me started on these. In fact, the more a hotel describes something as "smart", the more stupid it often is.还有该死的“智能卡”：不得不下楼到接待处三次重新制卡，哪里智能了？灯开关：不要让我开启这些。

事实上，酒店描述的越智能，往往越愚蠢。

The 'smart lights' system I encountered in one of the region's more dim (excuse the pun) lodging establishments required me to behave something like a lighting technician at a rock concert. The whole thing needed to be sequenced to achieve the astounding feat of getting all the lights to go off at the same time.我在该地区入住场所遭遇的智能照明系统更暗淡（原谅我用了双关），要求我表现得像个摇滚演唱会的灯光技师。

需要完成整个测序，才能将所有灯一起熄灭。

Oh, and there was the hotel in Manila that forced me to drag the entire desk across the room to ensure it was close enough to the internet cable to allow me to work. No electricity plugs next to the bed usually gets me a bit wound up, although a friend who works in wellness told me this would fry my brain (the plug near my head that is, not me getting wound up). Okay, but I'd still like to be able to watch more than half the movie before I start to consider how the brain-fry might end my life.啊，马尼拉有一家酒店，迫使我穿越房间挪动整个桌子才能离网线足够近来工作。

没有挨着床的电源插口这件事经常让我有些紧张，虽然在健康中心工作的朋友告诉我，这会烧坏大脑。

好吧，但在开始考虑烧脑是如何结束我生命之前，我仍然希望能看超过一半的电影。

And don't you hate that 'hospital corner' style of tucking in the bed sheets? You just can't move your feet, which - I've just checked in The New England Journal of Medicine - is important to maintain life-preserving circulation. And I have a grave aversion to those ridiculous glass covers they put over the breakfast goodies to keep them hot (I'm talking about the ones without the hinges). What do you do with the blasted things when you're trying to spoon out your congee or baked beans? Put them on your head? Use them as cymbals?你厌恶在床单上进食“医院的床单折角铺叠法”形式吗？不能移动双脚--我在《新英格兰医学杂志》上查到，这对维持生命循环很重要。

而且我极其厌恶这些不可理喻的罩在早餐上保温的玻璃罩子（我是说不带铰链的那种）。

当你试图勺出稀饭或焗豆，你该拿这该死的东西怎么办？放头上？当钹用？Before I get completely carried away with reminiscences of the ridiculous, there is a solemn lesson to be learned here. However much time you spend crafting abrand-led (and therefore unique) organisational way of life and whatever effort goes into creating distinctive and authentic guest-facing brand experiences, none of it will matter if the basics are not 'done right'. You won't give a hoot what the uniqueness of the brand is all about if you're constantly being baffled and bamboozled.在我完全忘却这种荒谬的记忆之前，要上严肃的一课。