Why get so hung up about hotel towels?
July 2024, by Damien Field
Recently, I’ve been doing a lot of international qualitative research. This has led me to travel widely across Asia, Australia, India, the Middle East and the Americas. (MM-Eye’s Ecologi carbon offsets have been working overtime to cover this)
Along with Starbucks and hand sanitiser, another ever-present during these trips was a little card in my hotel bathroom encouraging me to hang my towels up, use them another day, and save the environment.
Now, I don’t know about you, but at home, the towels get washed every week, so keeping them for 2-3 nights in a hotel is not a major hardship.
So, rather than chuck the towels into the bath and look forward to fluffy, neatly-folded fresh towels every day, I took to hanging them up.
Here’s where the problem started and where I get to the point. More often than not, I’d come back to my room (after a hard day of ethnos and groups) and discover that my limp-used towels had been replaced with fresh ones. On the odd occasion when I was in my room when room service called, they would see it as an affront to their hospitality not to provide me with clean towels despite my asking to keep my old ones.
This is a classic example of the Say Do gap within an organisation. The marketing department and operational team at HQ get together to devise a positive message for customers, endorsing eco credentials. A lovely customer message is created. Yet, operational staff at the coal face are not briefed, trained, and supported to deliver the product. The customer is left feeling perplexed and mildly irked. The business does not get the environmental (or financial) savings.
A small example, maybe, but one that speaks volumes about the challenges businesses face in converting good corporate intention into tangible environmental action – and the customer risks of failing to do so.
MM-Eye is a market research agency that is dedicated to delivering Insights That Power Positive Change, those nuggets of understanding about how customers want, expect and perceive brands to behave when it comes to the environment.
We’d love to hear more about your business, help you sharpen your plans for positive change and close the Say Do gap between your intentions and operational practices.
If you would like more information about the work we do helping businesses close the Say Do gap, explore the details of our latest Say Do Sustainability Study on our website. You can also contact us at info@mm-eye.com or use the form below to book a consultation.