Hospitality Design - November 2013 - 68

3. A revamped, architectdesigned cabin in
Cazadero, in California's
Sonoma Valley, features
bamboo flooring and
picture windows.

4. One of the bedrooms in
a Frank Lloyd Wrightinspired Los Angeles
home perched on the
hillside of Silver Lake.
5. Sea views are the
highlight of this modern
five-bedroom villa on
Portugal's Silver Coast.

3
In those early days of Joie de
Vivre, were you thinking about the
psychology of the guest experience, or
was that something that came a little
bit later in the process?

I don't think I ever put it in psychology
terms. Obviously, if I called the name of my
company a state of being that's an expression
of joy, at the very start, there was something
I was hoping for the company-more than
just making money or creating the best hotel
company in the world; I was helping people
celebrate life and create joy.
I have an honorary PhD in psychology now
because a great institution had me give two
commencement addresses. It's sort of bogus
because I only took one psychology class in
college. I know a lot about psychology, but it's
been self-taught along the way.

I wonder if you were thinking more
philosophically with Joie de Vivre
than psychologically, but were there
any speciﬁc programming ideas you
implemented that had you thinking,
'Wow, that changes the whole picture
for the patron?'

Yes, the 'aha' moment for me in the early
days was talking to Vivian. She's a woman
who I've worked with for twenty-seven years
now, an immigrant from Vietnam who was
a relatively new housekeeper in the hotel.
What taught me about psychology was trying
to understand why she seemed to like her job
when she was scrubbing toilets for a living.
It gave her a sense of calling and made her
psychologically appreciate her work as more
than just a job. She loved the connections to
the guests and other hotel employees. I think
the idea of creating a motivating and inspiring
environment for people creates a wonderful
domino effect in terms of how they treat our
guests. It seems like a simple math equation:
'You treat your employees well, they'll treat

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November 2013 hospitalitydesign.com

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5
Getting treated well and having a memory
in a hospitality experience is probably in the
top three of what a person would want to
share with all of their friends on Facebook
in a commercial way, because it makes them
overjoyed.

your guests well,' but a lot of people in the hotel
business forget that, and I think it's
pretty tragic.

Do you think you've been able to use
this platform to improve people's lives
beyond hospitality?

Whatever's happening to you in the workplace
extends beyond your work. It affects your home
life. If you hate your job, your spouse is going to
feel it, and so are your kids and dog. The truth
is that what happens in the workplace has a
huge extending effect.
There's a term we've used for about a
dozen years now, the environmental footprint,
that speaks to the idea of how it is affecting
the global environment. We've gotten good at
measuring that. What we've not gotten very
good at measuring is what I call the emotional
fist print-as in someone getting socked in the
jaw. A lot of people feel like their work is like
getting socked in the jaw, and then it has an
emotional fist print effect on their family and
their kids. On the guest side, when someone
feels cared for and appreciated and maybe feels
like they are a VIP, it's a memorable experience
that may last a lifetime.
Back in the day when I started Joie de
Vivre, people collected stamps, baseball
cards, and bottles of wine. Today they collect
experiences and trade those experiences on
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Because Airbnb is a different model,
how are you planning on applying this
thinking in that type of environment
and experience?

What lit me up in the early days of starting
Joie de Vivre lights me up about Airbnb. I'm a
rebel by nature. My first book was Rebel Rules,
and so I like disrupted innovation. Boutique
hotels were a disruptive innovator thirty years
ago. Airbnb is a disruptive innovator now. I
like any company that focuses on design, and
I was a huge Apple fan twenty-five years ago
because Steve Jobs was focused on it. Two of
the three founders of Airbnb went to the Rhode
Island School of Design. One of the strategic
competencies or competitive advantages of
Airbnb is taking a careful look at how to use
design in engaging our guests.
I love the fact that the people who
provide services at Airbnb are hosts. At Joie
de Vivre I never called our front desk staff
clerks, but hosts, because I felt like they were
ambassadors, and their job was to help educate
people about the local community. That local,
personalized perspective, which is what Joie
de Vivre was always known for, is also what
Airbnb is about. I love the fact that my job
over the next few years is to help, to teach with
generosity of spirit-that is hospitality. These
are people who maybe have two bedrooms in
their homes, multiple listings, or in most cases
just a single bedroom, and this is how they
make ends meet. They want to know how to
provide the kind of transformative experience
people will talk about.

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