In an overall survey around guest loyalty, one of the biggest contributors to guest attrition rates was found to be the noise level of the hotel when the guest was trying to sleep.

　　Poor sleep experience was cited as one of the main reasons for guests not returning.

　　Before I share my personal experience on this subject. I would like to first share some numbers from the 2012 JD Power report, that may cause you to have a sleepless night as well. Out of 100% of people who didn't have a good night's sleep during their hotel stay, the main reason cited was the noise level. Only 16% of these hotel guests complained at the time about the noise disturbance. While 57% never told anyone at the hotel of the noise problem or that they did not receive a good night's sleep. Of the 43% that complained the next day, the hotel refunded their money or compensated them. Only 15% were willing to consider using the brand again.

　　In an overall survey around guest loyalty, one of the biggest contributors to guest attrition rates was found to be the noise level of the hotel when the guest was trying to sleep. Twenty-four percent said this was the main reason for not returning to the hotel property or not using that hotel brand in the future. Sleep is the number one reason why people stay at hotels. If they cannot sleep, all other amenities are useless, and this affects Rev PAR opportunities. Bottom line, the diminished guest experience affects the ability of the business to build brand loyalty capital with the guest, and even returning their money will not help overcome this situation.

　　My personal sleep experience with one of the leading hotel brands.

　　In a past business trip, I ended up choosing a hotel brand that very much prided themselves on providing a great sleep experience. It was one of the main reasons why I chose this particular hotel brand and was willing to pay extra, because they differentiated themselves through the sleep experience offering. This was a very important amenity to me since I was putting in solid 12+ hour days in an intensive educational learning program. But, the hotel did not deliver on their promise. I wasn't able to sleep very well during my stay, and it ended up really affecting my performance.

　　There was no doubt about it. This hotel had made heavy investments in the physical elements of the room experience to create a good sleep experience. As a customer experience design specialist, I really appreciated the effort on their part, from the actual bed experience with the very nice bedding as well as the extensive pillow menu. The clock radio offered different sound settings. There's was one critical key element that they forgot to manage in the sleep experience. It was the sound level of the hotel, a.k.a. noise levels.

　　All those investments, operational commitment and design processes that go in to the sleep experience initiative will have diminishing returns on your investment if you don't manage the sensory aspect of the guest experience, beyond just touch or feel. Guest experiences are very three-dimensional in nature and all the sensory elements of a human being have to be considered as well as the environment that may negatively or positively engage your guest. When creating an exceptional hotel stay it has to go beyond just the touch of the physical aspects of the sleep experience. Another very important point to bring in the guest experience design process is the emotions you want to invoke in this aspect of the guest experience. It actually should be the starting point of the design process, but so often it's not part of the strategic design process at all. Hence this can create a gap between the brand promise and the brand values being delivered by the business.

　　For example, what type of emotions do you want your guest to experience from your sleep environment? Do you want to create an experience that makes your guests feel taken care of by your business enterprise that invokes emotions of trust, confidence and love for your business like the way customers love Starbucks or Apple? Then from this point, you want to look at your overall hospitality enterprise on multiple levels, from your business disciplines to your business model as well as your operational processes, on how they align with guest experience excellence business approach. Start asking these simple questions: Does this add to the customer experience or the sleep experience initiative? Does it support or detract from the guest experience? Another important question is does it add value to the guest stay? Is it only supporting customer usage or is it creating guest loyalty value to the company and enhancing the guest satisfaction scores of the property? If it doesn't meet this litmus test, then you should strongly consider discarding anything in your business that's not adding to the guest experience excellence initiatives.