Business Traveller

How frequently should we meet when there’s ever more ways in which to communicate… and where does this leave business events?

It’s hard being a modern businessperson. Is the telephone too intrusive now that everyone deals in email? Is a text message too informal? Are out-of-the-office meetings an expensive waste of time when a Skype video call on ubiquitous mobile devices – or a telepresence session – can work wonders? Are face-to-face catch-ups integral to keep our business relationships ticking over?

It’s enough to turn the most alpha exec insecure.

The hotel industry has always had a love-hate relationship with technology; they love adding tech toys to their rooms and meetings suites but loathe the fact that these very gadgets have stopped many of us needing to (or being allowed to) meet up in said facilities.

To remind us how important personality is in building business relationships, Holiday Inn Kensington Forum in London invited a psychologist and a PR man, among others, to address the subject. A small gaggle of attendees, some nervously checking their smartphones, stood around sipping coffee waiting for the session to begin.

I’ll summarise their arguments for your benefit.

The personal touch
Hazel Carter-Showell of business psychologists Carter Corson began with the message that it is very easy to rely on virtual relationships – but one shouldn’t if one wants to build trust. We buy from people who we know and like. To know someone you have to understand what matters to them and you need to spend time with them.

Skin-to-skin contact, during a handshake for example (not too much, that’s sexual harassment), triggers oxytocin and creates a sense of rapport and bonding. We also need to know whether someone likes us back. We’ll observe this by the genuine smile around their eyes, not the forced gurning smile around the mouth.

This subtle managing of perceptions is tricky to conduct through technology.

Nick Rabin, Weber Shandwick’s head of broadcast was in agreement. He thought it “was really quite nice” when his Blackberry stopped working in the recent outage; it made him rethink the way he was doing business. “I started talking to people on the telephone, as human beings.”

Loose connections
Rabin made the point that you can be inextricably “connected” but still friendless. His LinkedIn network of 140,000, which widens to over four million people, is largely meaningless. It’s all about trust, relationships: “There are myriad ways to connect to people now, but you can’t make a judgement about someone until you meet them, look in the whites of their eyes – do they have a limp handshake?”

But this doesn’t mean we should have lots of time-wasting meetings, thinks Rabin: “The quality of a meeting isn’t about length – it’s about creating something tangible, useful.”

He concluded that we don’t need to meet each other to work efficiently – you can do that on email/ phone/video call – but you do have to meet, fairly regularly, to work well.

Holiday Inn Kensington Forum's new business lounge

Get a room
Of course, in promoting the personal touch for their clients, hotels must make sure they practise what they preach.

Holiday Inn parent IHG’s meetings and events tsar David Taylor is all about people getting the right things from meetings.

“There is a tendency towards more efficiency – but meetings are more beneficial if customers achieve their objectives and we can help them do that if we spend more time with them, asking the right questions.”

Asked for a specific example, Taylor harks back to a conference in Blackpool where the hotel’s chef met the client and suggested embedding their corporate logo onto sticks of Blackpool rock. A nice, quirky touch that attendees probably still remember each time they see the sugary beachside confectionary.

“What we’ve got to do more of is find out what those nice touches are,” Taylor suggests, conceding that an effective meeting is not about the room or the furniture, but “the human way we can deliver the experience.”

Holiday Inn Kensington Forum has recently spent £4 million on new business facilities (including a WiFi’d £39-a-day lounge where free food is served throughout the day and complimentary beer/wine in the evening; a business centre; and a executive boardroom), and has employed a “business host”, 21-year-old Lisa Splieth, who is “responsible for providing the highest possible level of service for our business guests.”

Punters used to staying in B&B accommodation, or visiting the sort of boutique lodges favoured by Mr & Mrs Smith are used to a personal touch. I asked Taylor how a guest can expect that level of personalised service in a large-scale chain hotel like Holiday Inn.

“You have to give staff the opportunity to step back from the chores that they do, to create those little magical moments of time when you can have that really good communication.”

In other words, chat amicably to guests.

It seems to me that the further our software “advances”, the more we have to remind ourselves and each other that our hardware – our actual selves – remains the same.