I have a very specific memory of my early years in hospitality.
I was earning next to nothing—what today we’d probably call an expense allowance rather than a salary. But back then, those ridiculous paychecks carried the romantic, slightly naïve charm of doing something simply because you wanted to do it.
Being in a hotel at two in the morning, talking to unlikely guests, solving absurd problems, and feeling part of a living, breathing organism somehow seemed more exciting than what most people would have called “real work.”
Then, as often happens, someone started paying us.
Not much, admittedly. But enough to transform a game into a profession, a profession into a career, a career into performance, and performance into that semantic meat grinder where every human action needs to be justified by a KPI.
I was reminded of this while reading about the Overjustification Effect, a phenomenon explored by psychologists Edward Deci and Mark Lepper.
Their research suggests that expected external rewards can reduce intrinsic motivation for activities people already enjoy.
The most famous experiment from the 1970s is both simple and devastating.
Take a group of children who love drawing. Divide them into groups. Promise one group a reward for drawing, while the others draw freely with no expectation of receiving anything.
At first, everyone draws.
Then remove the reward.
That’s when the dark magic of motivation reveals itself: the children who were rewarded become less interested in drawing than before.
In other words, if you pay me to do something I love, I may eventually convince myself that I’m only doing it because you’re paying me.
Translated into hospitality terms:
Imagine a child who loves drawing hotels.
Then you start giving that child pocket money every time they sketch a lobby.
Soon enough, they stop loving drawing and start asking how much the client is paying for the rendering.
I suspect that child is all of us.
We started by drawing hotels in our minds—imagining rooms, breakfasts, conversations, arrivals, departures, and those tiny logistical and human miracles that make hospitality special.
Then we grew up inside an industry that taught us every smile must convert, every relationship must generate ancillary revenue, and every interaction must scale.
Perhaps one reason younger generations are hesitant to join our industry is that they look at us and see adults who are still drawing—but with the expression of people who no longer enjoy holding the crayons.
Because disillusionment has a smell.
Guests notice it.
Employees breathe it.
Newcomers recognize it immediately.
Which makes the question less rhetorical than it sounds:
Do we still want to host people?
Or are we simply staying inside the lines because, at some point, someone promised us an allowance for coloring?
See you next week,
SIMONE PUORTO
