3am-website

Tell me your story..

Sat, 06 Dec 2025 14:51:52 GMT

Save the towel for the bathroom..

Sat, 06 Dec 2025 14:49:33 GMT

Service is not about stars

Sat, 06 Dec 2025 14:37:10 GMT

So what is the real bottom line?

Sat, 06 Dec 2025 14:27:19 GMT

You are either inspired by or afraid of

Sat, 06 Dec 2025 14:24:26 GMT

Successful Hotel Brands are all about Emotion

Sat, 06 Dec 2025 14:12:38 GMT

Building your brand experience one customer at a time

Sat, 06 Dec 2025 14:01:07 GMT

Signs in Most Spaces Are a Comedy of Errors

Sat, 06 Dec 2025 06:46:58 GMT

Same goes for service, it should be invisibly good..

Sat, 06 Dec 2025 06:42:25 GMT

People remember how you made them feel

Sat, 06 Dec 2025 06:29:12 GMT

We are in the Experience Economy

Sat, 06 Dec 2025 06:16:46 GMT

When building your hotel brand, play the long game.. buy and hold!

Sat, 06 Dec 2025 06:07:57 GMT

AI is not the bogeyman

Sat, 06 Dec 2025 06:05:06 GMT

The Fifth Hammer

Sat, 26 Oct 2024 05:41:31 GMT

You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Math was never my strong suit, and I often found myself intimidated by the complexities of numbers and equations. However, I was lucky to have two extraordinary mentors who helped guide me through my math journey. In middle school, there was Mr. Alford, a math whiz who could compute the square root or cube root of any number with a snap of his fingers. His expertise was astounding; it was like having a human calculator in the classroom. Later in high school, Mr. Kayal took over as my mentor. He tackled subjects like algebra, calculus, and trigonometry with a care and patience that ensured all of us could successfully pass our exams. While much of what they taught me has faded from memory, one story still resonates: the legend of Pythagoras and his five hammers .

Legend has it that Pythagoras, a renowned mathematician and philosopher, once encountered a blacksmith's shop where he noticed something intriguing. The sounds from the hammers striking anvils were harmonious—except for one. Pythagoras found that hammers with specific weight ratios created harmony, while the fifth hammer, which didn’t fit this pattern, caused discord.

This story of the five hammers can be seen as a metaphor for the “why we do what we do”?

At 3AM HOTEL CONSULTANTS, our role is to foster harmony and balance within teams, much like how Pythagoras discovered harmony in the sound of weighted hammers. By skilfully balancing diverse skills, personalities, and roles, we ensure that each team member makes a unique contribution. Achieving the right balance of talents leads to exceptional results.

We identify discrepancies and uncover the "fifth hammer"—elements that disrupt the harmonious pattern within an organization, causing discord. These disruptive factors may include inefficient processes, mismatched team roles, or internal conflicts.

We base our decisions on data, much like Pythagoras, who employed ratios and mathematical relationships to comprehend harmony. We utilize data and analytics we instil date driven decision-making processes . By identifying patterns and relationships within data, we optimize operations and enhance outcomes.

We share continuous improvement best practices, as illustrated by the story of the hammers, which emphasizes the importance of understanding and refining processes. We cultivate a culture of continuous improvement and encouraging teams to pursue better processes, to achieve greater efficiency and effectiveness.

We adopt a holistic perspective . The harmony in music that Pythagoras studied reflects the concept of a comprehensive approach in management. Rather than concentrating exclusively on individual elements, this approach considers the entire system.

Things they didn't teach in hotel school.

Thu, 29 Aug 2024 05:51:59 GMT

"A collection of things I've learned, mistakes I've made & the stuff they never taught me in hotel school."

by Paolo Campillo

1) Spend at least a few months in Stewarding! You will learn to clean up all sorts of shit, learning to clean up shit will come in handy later.

2) Spend a few months in Housekeeping! Back-breaking work! You will quickly understand the dignity of labour.

3) Spend some time in the Kitchen! You will understand the concept of mise-en-place!

4) Learn the art of kindness your staff today could be your boss tomorrow.

5) Learn to eat humble pie! Practice the “the art of humility” -your staff and your customers are always your best teacher.

6) Learn to smile while you eat a shit sandwich! You will receive loads of if so you might as well enjoy it.

7) Eat in the staff cafeteria as often as you can! And don’t waste time eating alone!

8) MBWA-manage mentor by walking around.

9) Make your associate entrance more exciting than your guest entrance.

10) Help serve/cook breakfast for your guests whenever you can.

11) Help your Housekeeping strip beds whenever you can.

12) Inspect at least 3 guest rooms per week. (adjust for a larger hotel)

13) Reply to all your guest's posts on TripAdvisor.

14) Know what drives your NPS, just as well as what drives your RGI.

15) Running a hotel is not rocket science…follow the KISS principle. (keep it straight & simple)

16) Occasionally go back to lessons 1 or 2 it will keep you grounded. If all else fails you can go back to doing these roles.

17) Learn to do sales calls-you are always selling something.

18) Meditation, mindfulness, marathons, MMA- whatever rocks your boat! Find it, do it. Trust me! Thank me later.

19) Manage your boss, before he manages you!

20) Owner relationship! (repeat this mantra 3 times) It’s easier to replace a GM, than it is to find an new owner.

Don't Go Chasing Unicors

Thu, 29 Aug 2024 05:46:07 GMT

Find diamonds in the rough...

Today everyone is complaining that they cant find talent! Tom Peters one of the greatest business guru's of our generation predicted a war for talent in the early 2000. Here we are 22 years later and the war is really turning nuclear.

At my workplace, our stakeholders want us to find not only the best talent- they want the brightest, with extensive experience in the hotel industry, with proven track records of success and they want them at a rock bottom prices. I often ask myself: Am I searching for a Unicorn?

Finding great talent is like trying to find a unicorn. They are rare, people believe they exist, no one has actually seen one. Maybe they exist. I once believed in Santa!

I am of the opinion we should stop looking for Unicorns and start looking for diamonds.

Diamonds...Everyone has seen one, true they are rare but not as rare as you think. In addition, diamonds are strong, they forged under pressure they are brilliant and timeless. Much easier to find are diamonds in the rough. These gems are hidden in plain sight, no one is looking for them so you can pick them up at a steal, sure they need a bit work to polish up and oh will they shine. Diamonds in the rough are very easy to find. If you look closely, you will see you too were once a diamond in the rough.

Let me start with an easy example, Chef Thomas Keller owner of famous restaurant The French Laundry with 3 Michelin Stars and a 3 month waitlist. Chef Keller started his career as dishwasher! That's right.. definitely diamond in the rough. Surely someone saw something in this steward and mentored him into the legend he is today.

My wife, a reformed hotelier, headed up several customer care centers in Southern Metro Manila in the early cowboy years of the telecom industry in the Philippines. She managed to hire brilliant staff. I asked her how she did this? She told me her recipe was that during the interview she just looked & listened for "shiny, happy people". Well her team members became the most coveted in the company and many went on to manage their own customer care centers. Most have moved on and grown well beyond what she saw in them 20 years ago. Again "shiny, happy people" who shone bright like diamonds.

I once read a story of a certain company using a Brick Test to test potential hires for creativity. They would place a brick in front of a potential candidate and asked them to figure out as many things in a minute they could do with the brick. The successful candidates got over 20 in a single minute. When I tried this test with my leadership team the highest score was 6. (Door stop, Life saving device, bookend, toy, marker, cooking utensil... ).

So I adopted this to the hotel industry, into different social experiments of sorts.

My thesis is this: hire people who have an a innate disposition that closely matches the specific task they will be assigned to do. Our job is to find that predilection, that one thing they would probably do for free.

As hoteliers in search of chefs we often become pre-occupied with the resume we pour over their previous work experience. Where did they work, who was the chef, was the restaurant any good. We spend countless man-hours doing background checks. I often ask a simple question "can the guy cook?" The answer typically is "yes his background check came back with positive reviews". How is that for a non-answer.

How often do we just ask the chef candidate to cook something. Even something as simple as an egg. After all we are searching for some one who can cook well not someone who can write resumes well. This cooking test will tell you in a few minutes all you need to know about a candidate.

When I opened a hotel many years ago we wanted savvy candidates who could immediately engage and charm our guests. So during the interview process we crafted a mini social experiment where front liners had to basically choose and vote off candidates. If candidates could not charm their own colleagues in a few minutes how could we expect them to engage our own guests. Most of those hires had little or no experience in the hotel industry, we planned it that way. We suffered during our first few months; but the end result was a #6 ranking on Tripadvisor in the city at that time. I attribute this primarily because of the quality of the associates we had on-boarded.

I vividly remember when I knew my Executive Housekeeper was a diamond in the rough. After a busy week for her whole team, I told her that it was "ok" with me if she let her team go home early as a reward and she could leave some rooms to clean for tomorrow as the occupancy would allow it. She looked at me in horror and I immediately knew it was "not ok" with her. She replied curtly stating that she would not be able to sleep knowing we had "dirty rooms" left over for the evening. She quickly said 'It's ok sir, my supervisors and I will stay to finish the rooms, no overtime". I walked away sheepishly, but it was a great a-ha moment, I knew from that day onwards, I never had to check on her work again because she took so much pride in "her rooms". Found another diamond...Bling!

So I encourage you to create your own experiments, find your own gems. Look for great people who are passionate about what they do and tailor fit the hotel job to their passion. Instead of quixotic search for experienced unicorns, start looking for diamonds in the rough. There will always be less people looking and there will always be an infinite number of diamonds in the rough.

The gems that I have stumbled on along the way know who they are. They will simply smile and "mentally tip the hat" for the effort in helping them shine. I always tell them I get more satisfaction from their success than mine.

It would also be remiss of me to not to "tip the hat" and pay tribute to the many mentors I have had. Specially those who took the time to polish a lot of the imperfections in my leadership game.

I will end with one more anecdote, one of the happiest days of my career was when I received a call from an old colleague (another diamond in the rough) and he had just been promoted to General Manager for the first time and he wanted to express his gratitude. He just wanted to call to "thank me". I said thank for what, looking back maybe I have a disposition for discovering diamonds? I wish it were the other type of diamonds. We have kept in touch ever since and have shared our highest and our lowest moments with each other. It was memorable because he was the first, there have been more gems since them and will be more diamond discoveries to follow.

I have been in this game for close to 30 years. If you are looking for Unicorns for the hotel industry you wont find them. Start looking for those diamonds in the rough! Let me know how you go.