HOTELS

Laurence Geller

Are Baby Boomers the Next Dinosaurs?
May 9, 2007

After almost four and a half decades in the lodging industry, I have to now learn a new vocabulary. Words like pod-casting, micro site linkage, electronic data task protection, i-pod, Tivo, and an endless list of mind boggling words enough to fill dozens of pages in Webster’s dictionary (is it still printed or digitalized?) have to be learned in the same way as I added languages as a young man when learning my trade in half a dozen different countries. By the way, spam to me was a strange pink meat sort of thing in an odd shaped can. Now I learn it is something to be filtered out.

I have been preaching for the past three or four years that our industry is going through systemic changes. None more critical and important than the systemic change in lodging decision makers.

For the past 25 years countless millions of words have been written (it used to be only with ink and paper – now it is also digitalized through cyber space!) on the baby boomer generation. That’s me – I was born in the late forties and am an early boomer (who in heaven’s name comes up with these nonsense terms – someone from an ad-agency in Madison Avenue – if any of them are left paying sky high Manhattan rents?). It was the boomers we all had to understand, cater to, and pander to. They made the decisions. They were the subject of all our consumer research.

Well my fellow boomers, we’re not so powerful anymore, as we slip into our 60’s, and are scorned by the younger generation in our industry as the very same dinosaurs we ourselves used to laugh at. Yes, we have money, second homes, and make leisure decisions. But are we the major decision makers on lodging? – Hell No!

It’s Generation X’ers – sort of 28-45 years old. They’re today’s road warriors. They’re making the bulk of the decisions where to stay and why to stay there.

Take meeting planners for example – our research indicates that the majority are under 40, and over two thirds are women. Curiously Gen X’ers think they are unique. As such they are ushering in the era of customization enabled by technology. I’ve got news for them; they are really a homogeneous group in the bulk of their demands. Even in wanting to be different and unique, they really are the same. Our job is to make them think each one is different. Cynical? You bet! Practical? You bet!

In this era of fast moving change in demand preferences and technological enablers, any of us “old folk” who want to return to the “good old days” (they never really were that good!) and allow our own tastes and experiences dictate the hotel amenities and services of today, (let alone tomorrow), are truly going to be dinosaurs.

Make no mistakes we are in a consumer research driven era where tastes will change increasingly quickly on a local and global basis and the days of being all things to all men, (there’s my age showing – how politically incorrect can I be?) okay – all things to all “persons” (Yuk!!) are long gone. We’d better concentrate on Gen-X and learn all we can about the evolving needs, wants, and desires of Gen-Y. They’re going to be beating on our doors, seeking attention, pretty darn quick!

This is a long winded way of saying I’ve had to learn a new word “blog”. I had never paid it much attention until Jeff Weinstein asked me if I could write a regular blog. After I realized that it wasn’t something vaguely primordial, I agreed without having an idea what I’d agreed to. You’ve now read my first blog and more will come. I’ve never been shy and don’t intend to start, even as I enter my rapidly advancing decrepitude and my progress towards dinosaur status.

By the way, can you imagine a Latin class in high school today? “Decline the Latin Blogare, To Blog - Blogo, Blogas, Blogat, Blogamus, Blogatis, Blogant”.

Am I now officially a blogger?

Posted by Laurence Geller on May 9, 2007 | Comments (0)