Hospitality Isn't Just for Hotels

Walk into a well-run hotel and something happens in the first thirty seconds. Someone knows you're coming. The information you need finds you before you think to ask for it. You stop scanning for cues and start relaxing.

Now walk into an office building for a client meeting. Or a stadium suite for the first time. The needs are almost identical — where do I go, what's included, who do I ask — and in most cases nobody has thought about it at all.

The concierge instinct, unbundled

Hospitality has always been treated as an industry rather than a discipline. But the underlying work is portable: anticipate the question, remove the friction, make the person feel expected.

Reception desks handle a version of it dozens of times a day, usually while doing three other things. Suite attendants handle it between events, on foot, with printed sheets that are out of date by the second period.

The instinct is right. What's missing is the infrastructure.