Hotel Towels making a difference

Are you familiar with Dr. Robert Cialdini?

If not, think of Dr. Robert Cialdini as one of the world’s leading experts at the intersection of marketing and psychology. His books Influence and Pre-suasion have both been New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers. I first met him through my mentor Paul Martinelli who posted some of this material in a recent post.

Like Paul, I do not want to talk to you about either of those massively popular books, however. I want to talk to you about one of his lesser-known studies, about the use (and re-use) of hotel towels.

Yes, hotel towels.

Ultimately, we have Cialdini to thank for the “Please reuse the towels” signs in hotel rooms.

You see his study (published in the Journal of Consumer Research in 2008) experimented with the use of social norms in motivating environmental conservation from guests staying in American hotels.

They tried a number of different messages:

·       “Help Save the Environment”

·       “Join Your Fellow Guests In Helping To Save the Environment”

·       “Join Your Fellow Citizens In Helping To Save the Environment”

·       “Join the Men and Women Who Are Helping To Save the Environment”

The researchers also added a variant to the “Join your fellow guests…” sign. The subtext was either, “75% of guests at this hotel re-use their towels” OR “75% of guests who stayed in this room reused their towels.”

Any guesses about the results?

Each sign was about helping to save the environment, but the versions that added the social norm (“Join your fellow…”) vastly out-performed the original message of “Help Save the Environment.”

The “winner” was the variant that added the extra contextual information about “75% of people in this room.”

Why do I bring this up? It’s highly unlikely that you care about the state of hotel towels, but there is an important principle that I want you to learn.

Nearly every washroom in every hotel room across the world now uses the signs that Cialdini declared the “winners”.

Every hotel has decided to invest in proven strategies.

And you can invest in proven strategies, too when you take advantage of one of our time-tested practical leadership programs for you or your team. From the reception desk to the receiver’s desk and everyone in between can take advantage of our Leadership and Empowered Life Lessons.

This is your opportunity to explode into a new normal for yourself and your team by utilizing the proven, powerful content from Art Alexander and Associates.

Just like with the hotel towel signage… in your business, use what has been proven to work!

As a Certified John Maxwell Speaker, Trainer and Coach our material stands above the rest and has been applied in virtually every sector you can imagine. Our programs and content can also be found wherever your business grows to where at the moment we are in 163 countries of the world. 

If you have thought of growing yourself or investing in your team and helping them to grow to greater heights personally and professionally we have a perfect program for you.

Here are just a few of our session’s titles,

·       Developing the Leader Within

·       Maintaining the Right Attitude

·       15 Laws of Leadership

·       Becoming a Person of Influence

·       Intentional Living

Grow your team and Grow your Business

To your success 

Art

Art Alexander

204-782-4097

artofleadership.ca