Deskless Hotel Rooms? San Francisco's Hotel Nikko Remains Committed to this Unpopular Design Strategy

Having lived in Memphis, Tennessee for some time, one of the business lessons that you hear a lot about is the story of Kemmons Wilson. If you haven't heard the story or aren't familiar with Wilson, he founded Holiday Inn. Here's a little bit of background for you, from the Kemmons Wilson Company site:

The idea of Holiday Inns was born from a frustrated father on a family vacation. In 1951, Dorothy finally persuaded Kemmons to take a break so they packed up the children, all five of them, and head to Washington, D.C. to visit the national landmarks.

By the time they reached their destination, Kemmons had formulated an idea, borne from the discomforts he had encountered as he and his family trekked across the land. Outraged at being charged extra for each child at every roadside lodging where the family stayed, not to mention the cramped, uncomfortable accommodations, Kemmons decided to reinvent the lodging industry. His idea was to build 400 motels across the country, each within a day’s drive of the next. Kemmons measured every nook and cranny of every room where the family stayed.

By the time he returned to Memphis he had the ideal dimensions for efficiency and comfort in a motel room. His formula was so accurate that it remains the standard for many hotel rooms built today.

With the traveling family in mind, he developed other features that would become industry standards:

•     Standardized room size (12ft x 26ft with bathroom)
•     Swimming Pool
•     Free in-room Television
•     Telephones
•     Ice Machines
•     Restaurant
•     No charge for children under age 12 who stayed with their parents

While it's not listed here, I have to imagine that if Kemmons Wilson were traveling today, one more thing that he would expect in a hotel room would be a desk.

The Hotel Nikko San Francisco Goes Deskless
Last year the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco underwent a significant remodel. It was so substantial, that they actually closed the hotel down for three or four months. As someone who regularly stayed at the Hotel Nikko during events in the city, I was somewhat excited to experience the hotel, post-remodel. I finally got my opportunity to stay there during the Semicon West conference in July of last year. Sadly, I wasn't particularly thrilled with the results of the remodel and I first wrote about it in this post, Design, Remodel, Alienate? The Hotel Nikko in San Francisco. Here's part of what I wrote:

For some reason that is still entirely unclear to me, the people designing the Nikko remodel eliminated the desk from the room. I noticed it immediately, as the first thing that I began to do when I arrived was to begin setting up my workspace -- or at least, that's what I intended to do. At that point, I went back down to the front desk to request a different room, one with a desk. The staff at the front desk were very courteous, but informed me that none of the rooms -- except for the smallest ones -- had desks now. Apparently, it was not an unusual complaint; they told me that they'd heard the issue from others, and that they would share it with management. So off I went back to my deskless hotel room, questioning the design decision, what my colleagues would thing of the deskless room, and whether the Hotel Nikko would continue to be my preferred hotel in San Francisco.

As you can see from this quote, I was baffled by the the removal of the desk. As a design decision, it didn't make any sense to me. It was only as I was preparing to write this post, when I began to question my own experience -- that I've never stayed at a hotel that didn't have a desk -- that I searched (and found) other evidence of this deskless design approach. 

When I searched "hotel rooms without desks." I come across a broader chunk of information about the practice. As it turns out, the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco isn't the first hotel to explore this direction, but they may be clinging to a failed design direction.

The first result, Hotel Industry Trends Include Rooms Without Desks, details several interesting aspects of this trend.

1. Strategy: according to the article, "The shift away from dedicated work spaces is part of a bid to win over millennials, which consultants believe prefer to work in more casual, flexible spaces." In some respects, this really seems like a stupid rationalization to me. If you want to work in your bed, the existence of a desk doesn't prevent that. What's more, if you look at the new credenza at the Hotel Nikko, it's not like they traded desk space for some alternatively useful space.

2. The trend may be bigger than you might think: According to the article published in March, 2016, Marriott had announced in December 2015 that it would start a chainwide redesign that would remove the desks. Klimpton Hotels, the group that owns a number of boutique hotels throughout San Francisco had redesigned their rooms with only sofas and coffee tables, And Hilton's Tru brand had laptop trays instead of desks.

3. The Real Driver may be cost: To quote the post, "Eliminating things such as desks and closets can save tens of thousands of dollars in each room’s construction costs." They also note this example, "Hilton’s Tru will cost just $84,000 per room to build, compared to its Hampton Inn brand, which comes in at $110,000 per room." It makes you wonder how much they'd save if they scrapped the whole indoor plumbing thing.

If you're like me, you read this and you start making a mental note of hotels you'll never stay at. As it turns out, there are a lot of other people like me -- and more to this story. Because by the time that this story was written, the whole deskless design approach already had already generated a pretty significant backlash.

The Backlash Against Deskless Hotel Rooms
In this post (from December 2015), Hotels Tried To Eliminate the Traditional In-Room Desk But Created a Backlash, you can learn more about the backlash to Marriott from their deskless initiative. The piece details some rather extensive backlash on the Flyertak site, including this list of Marriott properties without desks (hotels to avoid).

There's also a section in this piece about Holiday Inn Express, their experiments with deskless rooms, and their decision to drop that experiment. What's interesting is comparing the design experiments done by Marriott versus those done by Holiday Inn Express.

Here's what Marriott did...

As part of its transformation, the company conducted a variety of research efforts across generations, Carroll says, noting that its specific target customer is primarily the business traveler. The research included a full mockup room where consumers could walk through the model room to see the look, feel and functionality of it.

Marriott gleaned information suggesting that customer behavior in the room is much more “untethered,” thanks to things like Wi-Fi and mobile devices.

And here's what Holiday Inn did...

Holiday Inn Express’ research consisted of two model rooms — one with a desk, and one without. As guests walked through the rooms the experiment revealed that there was a lot of dissatisfaction with the room that didn’t have the desk.

What I think is noteworthy in that term "untethered" is an applied value, something being ascribed from the outside to the test subjects. What's more, it's implied that that "untethered" aspect is in some way positive. However, suppose we change the subject of this from hotel room to food and use the same terms. Untethered food might be exciting and an interesting bite, but the opposite of that might be "comfort food", something that seems "anchored" and "homey". Now which sounds like the place that you'd want to make your home-away-from-home?

But Wait, There's More
If all of this history surrounding the controversy over deskless hotel rooms is wearing you down, consider this one last bit from September, 2016 in the Chicago Tribune, The desk is back: Marriott is redesigning hotel rooms. That's right, by September 2016, Marriott had reversed course from it's deskless direction.

I suspect that the online "list" of Marriott hotels that don't desks probably drove the change more than the actual guests complaining about the lack of desks.

The Hotel Nikko San Francisco Remains Committed to Deskless Rooms
Which brings me to the call-to-action portion of this post. After complaining to the front desk staff at the Hotel Nikko about the lack of desks during my first stay last July, then publishing blog posts and tweets addressing the issue, I never received any response -- or recognition of my concerns. I stayed there again in January for another conference, and again raised concerns. Finally, after reaching out on TripAdvisor, I was able to connect with a representative of the Hotel Nikko and share my concerns regarding the lack of desks.

Apparently, after they had some internal discussions, I was informed that they were not planning to add desks to the rooms.

With that, I might have been left to search for an appropriate go-to hotel in San Francisco on my own had I not just learned that other hotel chains in San Francisco may not have desks in their rooms -- particularly if you buy into this deluded logic that it's a better way to reach "millenials". So rather than simply looking on my own, I'm reaching out to the various companies that coordinate hotels for the events that we attend and asking them to provide this information. While I may have no clout -- I'm just a customer after all -- perhaps these companies that manage hotel rooms will have a bit more leverage.

So, if you're involved in events, I urge you to ask the company to work with the hotels that they're contracting with, determine whether there is a desk in the room, and to provide that information to you before you book.

Additionally, I'm hoping to build my own list of deskless hotels in San Francisco. If I do, I'll be happy to share that with you. This deskless issue has really annoyed me. I don't see letting go any time soon.

In closing, while Kemmons Wilson may not have identified the desk as a hotel room requirement when he was founding Holiday Inn, it's nice to know that the team at today's Holiday Inn Express recognize it's importance -- even if it did require them to do some A/B testing to get there.

ICYMI - the NYT Story on Facebook’s Chief Information Security Officer Leaving

So I came across a link to this story again this morning -- I'd seen references to it earlier in the week. The story, Facebook Exit Hints at Dissent on Handling of Russian Trolls by Nicole Perlroth, Sheera Frenkel And Scott Shane was published on March 19. I think that the first thing I saw about this article was some back and forth about the NYT had changing the article to soften the treatment of Sheryl Sandberg, but I didn't actually dive into the piece at that time. What drew me back to this piece was a reference that I saw to this quote from a former Facebook employee.

“The people whose job is to protect the user always are fighting an uphill battle against the people whose job is to make money for the company,” said Sandy Parakilas, who worked at Facebook enforcing privacy and other rules until 2012.

Not that that isn't apparent from the Mark Zuckerberg interviews from this week. Clearly the business is in full damage-control-spin mode. In fact, as you read through the piece, it's hard not to come away with the feeling that Facebook management is attempting to do everything they can to avoid really addressing this issue. And they certainly don't appear to be making substantive changes to their operations. At the heart of this is probably the recognition that these issues strike at the heart of their business model.

Personal Data -> Super Advertising Demographic Targeting -> In a Box
In reflecting on it, I'm reminded of this story from 2012, How Companies Learn Your Secrets, about Target's big data team. This is the story where they took all of Target took all of their purchasing data, linked it with a bunch of demographic data, and then statistical analysis, they were able to predict things like when a customer was pregnant based on their purchasing habits.

In some sense, what Facebook does is take all of this advanced technical work that Target did, and sell it to advertisers, pre-packaged and conveniently gift-wrapped. In many respects, the issues from the 2016 election, Cambridge Analytica, and Facebook are all stories about this aspect of marketing. Consider this quote from that story:

“With the pregnancy products, though, we learned that some women react badly,” the executive said. “Then we started mixing in all these ads for things we knew pregnant women would never buy, so the baby ads looked random. We’d put an ad for a lawn mower next to diapers. We’d put a coupon for wineglasses next to infant clothes. That way, it looked like all the products were chosen by chance.

“And we found out that as long as a pregnant woman thinks she hasn’t been spied on, she’ll use the coupons. She just assumes that everyone else on her block got the same mailer for diapers and cribs. As long as we don’t spook her, it works.”

Of course, as I've noted in the past, with Facebook and our broader experiences on the web, there's a built-in aspect of believing that "everyone else on the block got the same" page / view / experience. In the case of Facebook, their core platform and their business model is all about this data -- masked by the presence of family and friend photos so that they "don't spook" users.

Facebook vs. Google and Your Data

This morning, Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo had this thoughtful editorial post about Facebook, Facebook Acts Like a Law Unto Itself. The gist of it is that Facebook is and has been exceptionally reckless with their user's personal data.

As I read through his piece, the thing that came to mind for me is a bit of the contrast between Facebook and some of the other tech companies out there that often get painted with the same broad brush. Take Google as an example. While we often here about how much data Google has on everyone, historically, I don't think Google has shared or exposed that personal user data in the same way that Facebook has built it's business doing. Sure, advertising represents a huge portion of Google's business and you can now do more specific audience targeting, but I think Google has been far more protective when it comes to access of user's personal data.

The Roots of Their Business Model
When I think about the history of Google, it always seems more like the story of a organization of software engineers that fumbled it's way into a successful business as opposed to a team of people trying to build a successful, dominating business. Google's search engine was doing it's thing and growing it's base well before they ever rolled out their Adwords experiment. Adwords made their company, but it's success was in no small part enabled by the accessibility that they built into the core of the program. But ultimately, Adwords was really an experiment. And remember the values that they espoused in those early days -- that they wouldn't simply place ads or rank results based on dollars spent, a quality relationship to the results needed to be maintained?

Over the years, even as Google has experimented in many directions and had their fair share of encounters with regulators and legal systems, for the most part (to my knowledge), they have made an effort to keep their user data secure. Perhaps that may have crossed some bounds when they pushed toward Google Plus and their efforts to compete with Facebook -- and as the company began to run more like a business and less like a collective of engineers sitting on a magic money-making machine -- but even then, I think Google has behaved differently.

Contrast that with Facebook's origins as, essentially, something more like a dating site. Facebook has essentially sold it's user base on the notion that sharing as much personal data with them as possible is a good thing. I remember a story from years ago about how Facebook manipulated your feed algorithm in order to help drive your engagement. The methodology anecdote went something like this: if you are a guy and your engagement metrics were dropping off, Facebook's algorithm knows that you were more likely to be engaged if you posted a pic - so they would push a woman in your friends list to post a pic which would, apparently, increase the likelihood that you would post a pic. And be more active on their platform.

Try and think of an analogous behavior from Google.

Yesterday on Twitter, I came across this thread from Francis Chollet that I think summarized some of the real danger underlying Facebook.

The problem with Facebook is not *just* the loss of your privacy and the fact that it can be used as a totalitarian panopticon. The more worrying issue, in my opinion, is its use of digital information consumption as a psychological control vector. Time for a thread

It's definitely worth your time to take a read through his thread.

It's Not Just You: Apple's Siri is a Dissappointment within the Company

Here's an interesting post from Macrumors about Apples' Siri product and the history of it's lack of development. It's definitely worth a read. The article goes into the history of Siri, including things like how earlier versions of the Homepod didn't even include Siri. The post is drawn from a longer article here, but the article is behind a paywall, so you may not be able to see the longer version.

United Airlines Explores the Idea: What is the Antonym for Meritocracy

So I happened to come across a couple of articles about this. United Airlines shelves lottery bonus program after employee backlash is a summary of the recent news. Here's some additional analysis of the story, A memo the president of United Airlines just sent his staff shows exactly how not to treat your employees.

To summarize, should you not be interested in following the links, United Airlines recently announced a program to their employees stating that they were going to drop a bonus program that gave out bonuses based on meeting certain performance goals and replacing it with a bonus lottery "rewards" program where one employee per quarter might win $100,000. Apparently, they may have also has some smaller prizes as second and third tier awards. (Perhaps second prize is a set of steak knives...)

As I'm sure you can imagine, this brilliant bit of internal marketing (#satire) was not well received by employees. While I suspect that, when they were crafting this plan, they must have been focused on the idea of trying to make something exciting, the first thing that I thought of when I read about it is, what's the antonym for meritocracy? Here's a funny look at that from Quora.