I may die of boredom if I see another macaron or fruit “VIP amenity” in a five-star hotel.
It’s always the same: a long plate, a black slate, a dome, some unnaturally glossy discs, and a note so cloyingly sycophantic it might as well have been written by Mr Collins.
“Welcome, dear guest.” As though I’ve been airlifted in from the 18th century and require delicate sustenance before facing the perils of room service.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against the macaron itself. It’s a delightful little sugar beasty.
But like the scented towel at reception or the opera-length hold message at luxury call centres, it’s a gesture that’s lost all semiotic potency.
It no longer says “you’re special.” It says, “we’re going through the motions and we have 40 VIP arrivals today so you’re all getting these because they’re easier.”
This, I suspect, is the great mistake of luxury hospitality: the conflation of standardisation with service.
“This is what we ‘always’ do for our VIPs,” they proudly declare, unaware that the moment something is ‘always done’, it becomes, by definition, unremarkable and mind numbingly boring.
The rare becomes routine. And the routine is never luxury.
Real pleasure, the kind that elicits irrational loyalty, comes from the unexpected.
The one time the hotel replaced your shaving foam because they noticed it was empty (Trident in Chennai).
The driver who brought an espresso because your flight landed at 5am (Sofitel Mumbai).
The waiter who overheard you say you were allergic to sugar and brought you sugar free petit fours with your coffee (Conrad Pune).
Macarons are easy. Real thought is hard.
Behavioural science gives us a clue. It’s the unexpected gift heuristic, reciprocity, delight, and memorability all rolled into one.
Like Five Guys chucking an extra scoop of chips in the bag. Technically pointless but psychologically priceless.
The problem with predictable hospitality is that it forgets one simple truth: people don’t remember what you do. They remember how you make them feel.
And right now, I feel bored.
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