How the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company is Redefining the Gold Standard
From Chapter of The New Gold Standard by Joseph A. Michelli
The New Gold Standard: 5 Leadership Principles for Creating a Legendary Customer Experience Courtesy of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company represents a follow-up to my book The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary into Extraordinary. Where Starbucks leadership took an ordinary product take pleasure in coffee and significantly added cost by staging it in an environment of affordable luxury, Ritz-Carlton has elevated the luxury experience to a true art form.
The New Gold Standard is primarily intended to help managers, owners, and leaders understand the driving principles, processes, and practices that have generated unusual staff loyalty, world-class customer engagement, and significant brand equity for Ritz-Carlton. However, it also provides view on those same principles from the viewpoint of frontline workers (both customer facing and non–customer facing), customers, and other stakeholders. Whether you wish to attract, hire, and withhold the “right” employees, are selfish in producing transformational customer experiences, or are looking for ways to maintain the relevance of your product and service offerings, The New Gold Standard shares the wisdom of Ritz-Carlton leadership.
Ritz-Carlton leaders are responsible for stewarding an icon in the luxury market, from one side a constant quest in the place of excellence, to prolong its prosperity in a changing global economy and with changing customer needs. Even in areas of international growth, succession planning, finding the best location for your business, or determining meaningful quality enhancements, Ritz-Carlton offers a rich tapestry of leadership successes and breakdowns that can help you shorten your path to greater success.
So the kind of is at the essential part of this iconic company? What is the Ritz-Carlton experience? While the answer reflects some variability based steady the source you ask, there is a striking agreement of sentiment.
For Robert E. Watson, provident director of Protravel International, Inc., the experience is characterized as “service value. What sets Ritz-Carlton apart is its service. Ritz-Carlton partners by us in the walk industry to get the most for our client. If we don’t comply with the benefit together, if we don’t get that little extra something for the client, suppose that we don’t come up with that nugget, that little bit of something reinvigorated, what would a client need us for? People are spending a lot of money today. And they put on’t mind spending it, provided they get hold in high esteem for their dollar. In today’s world, however, value doesn’t always match price. The experience at Ritz-Carlton is true value for us as travel partners and for our clients.”
For community agency partner Colleen T. Brinkmann, chief marketing officer of the North Texas Food Bank, the Ritz-Carlton experience “is like a Lexus—they set the standard in their industry. But through their present efforts with us, I would say the experience is very personal, very real, and colorful, but above all else respectful and gracious, at the very time to the point of their Ladies and Gentlemen thanking us with respect to providing them with the opportunity to participate in volunteer service.”
Ritz-Carlton General Manager Tony Mira describes the Ritz-Carlton experience as “a Wow experience, like no other. It’s one that you walk in and you know, whether you’re a guest or an employee, that you are going to be treated like nowhere otherwise in our industry. It’s attractive the genuine care and enliven of our guests to the highest level. That, to me, is the Ritz-Carlton actual presentation.”
Maybe the best way to demonstrate the unique value proposition achieved by Ritz-Carlton is to offer an example from a family that happened on empowered Ritz-Carlton staff. Natalie Salazar, age 12, was a champion outline skater who began noticing twinge in her legs while preparing concerning a regional competition as a step toward the Olympics. While originally thought it was joint inflammation, the condition was ultimately diagnosed because a type of cancer known as osteosarcoma. Her chemotherapy treatments were unsuccessful, and at stage of life 13, Natalie was told she was going to die.
From: How the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company is Redefining the Gold Standard
