Read Online The Virgin Way: Everything I Know About Leadership by Richard Branson - Free Book Online
Authors: Richard Branson
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have not experienced in the past. If they cannot envisage what you are talking about because they have never experienced anything like it, then they are likely to be overly guarded in their comments.
For a variety of reasons – and as the New Coke taste-test fiasco demonstrates – I have always had trouble accepting the validity of the kind of consumer feedback that is garnered from formal focus groups. This is the kind where they all sit down in a room and pretend they don’t know they’re being watched and recorded by the people behind the mirror. Not only does it frequently bring out the prima donna in some members of the group, who see it as an opportunity to perform for the cameras, but most groups behave like sheep. Usually one dominant participant will have the most boisterous opinions and the others will meekly get in line behind them. Now while there is always a similar risk within a family group, at least you know a little bit more about the people involved and they also aren’t walking away at the end of dinner knowing their comments will never come back to haunt them. For example, if I had chosen to ignore my wife Joan’s ‘Virgin Condom’ comments and gone ahead with the name anyway, I suspect I might have chosen to eat out for a while.
The approach we have taken in deciding what our new Virgin Hotels should look like is a good example of the Virgin way of taking advantage of family input. Certainly the women in my life, my wife Joan and daughter Holly, have had their say but in this case the ‘family’ I am talking about is the extended Virgin family of companies, their employees and our fifty million or so customers around the world. The Virgin Hotels input in question was not by way of any formal research but by leveraging our years of acquired understanding as to what our customers like and expect from Virgin-branded products and services. It is vital that our new hotels exude all the same elements of unrivalled personal service and design excellence tempered with user-friendly functionality that have evolved by trial and error with our three airlines, at Limited Edition (our resort/luxury escapes division), at Virgin Active and other family member ventures.
As Allie Hope, the head of development at Virgin Hotels, likes to put it, ‘It’s all about stylish functionality – about leveraging what works and transforming what doesn’t.’ An example of something we know works extremely well for our Virgin Atlantic Upper Class customers is our Clubhouse Lounges. As anyone who has ever visited our flagship London Heathrow Clubhouse will tell you, it is just an amazing oasis of pre-flight calm in which to relax, enjoy a meal, play pool, have a massage, a haircut, a shoeshine or – if you must – work! Everything we have learned over the years with the steady refinement of our Clubhouses will be incorporated into Virgin Hotels, which will all have a 24/7 Clubhouse-like space for guests to make their own. It will also make for a very seamless hospitality experience for our airline loyalists who we fully anticipate will be the first ones in line for our new hotel offering. After all, they already sleep with us in the air, so why not do it on the ground as well?
And when it comes to ‘transforming what doesn’t work’ in the hotel space, as with every one of our businesses, we have found there to be no lack of amazing opportunities for us to ring the changes. One big-little facet we have focused on is the needs and expectations of our women guests – where lots of little details that are easily overlooked can make the difference between an ‘okay’ stay and a, ‘Wow, I can’t believe they thought of that’ experience. And again we have an abundance of female executives within Virgin – many of whom travel incessantly – so we have gleaned a wealth of input from this travel-savvy sorority within the family.
Raul Leal, the highly experienced hotel professional that we brought in to head up
For a variety of reasons – and as the New Coke taste-test fiasco demonstrates – I have always had trouble accepting the validity of the kind of consumer feedback that is garnered from formal focus groups. This is the kind where they all sit down in a room and pretend they don’t know they’re being watched and recorded by the people behind the mirror. Not only does it frequently bring out the prima donna in some members of the group, who see it as an opportunity to perform for the cameras, but most groups behave like sheep. Usually one dominant participant will have the most boisterous opinions and the others will meekly get in line behind them. Now while there is always a similar risk within a family group, at least you know a little bit more about the people involved and they also aren’t walking away at the end of dinner knowing their comments will never come back to haunt them. For example, if I had chosen to ignore my wife Joan’s ‘Virgin Condom’ comments and gone ahead with the name anyway, I suspect I might have chosen to eat out for a while.
The approach we have taken in deciding what our new Virgin Hotels should look like is a good example of the Virgin way of taking advantage of family input. Certainly the women in my life, my wife Joan and daughter Holly, have had their say but in this case the ‘family’ I am talking about is the extended Virgin family of companies, their employees and our fifty million or so customers around the world. The Virgin Hotels input in question was not by way of any formal research but by leveraging our years of acquired understanding as to what our customers like and expect from Virgin-branded products and services. It is vital that our new hotels exude all the same elements of unrivalled personal service and design excellence tempered with user-friendly functionality that have evolved by trial and error with our three airlines, at Limited Edition (our resort/luxury escapes division), at Virgin Active and other family member ventures.
As Allie Hope, the head of development at Virgin Hotels, likes to put it, ‘It’s all about stylish functionality – about leveraging what works and transforming what doesn’t.’ An example of something we know works extremely well for our Virgin Atlantic Upper Class customers is our Clubhouse Lounges. As anyone who has ever visited our flagship London Heathrow Clubhouse will tell you, it is just an amazing oasis of pre-flight calm in which to relax, enjoy a meal, play pool, have a massage, a haircut, a shoeshine or – if you must – work! Everything we have learned over the years with the steady refinement of our Clubhouses will be incorporated into Virgin Hotels, which will all have a 24/7 Clubhouse-like space for guests to make their own. It will also make for a very seamless hospitality experience for our airline loyalists who we fully anticipate will be the first ones in line for our new hotel offering. After all, they already sleep with us in the air, so why not do it on the ground as well?
And when it comes to ‘transforming what doesn’t work’ in the hotel space, as with every one of our businesses, we have found there to be no lack of amazing opportunities for us to ring the changes. One big-little facet we have focused on is the needs and expectations of our women guests – where lots of little details that are easily overlooked can make the difference between an ‘okay’ stay and a, ‘Wow, I can’t believe they thought of that’ experience. And again we have an abundance of female executives within Virgin – many of whom travel incessantly – so we have gleaned a wealth of input from this travel-savvy sorority within the family.
Raul Leal, the highly experienced hotel professional that we brought in to head up
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