Episode Details

Today’s guest spent time working in Japan and brings his cultured view to hospitality. Andrew Benioff is the Founder and Managing Partner of the Llenrock Group. He’s also the Founder of the Philadelphia Real Estate Council and the Independent Lodging Congress. Listen to this week’s episode as he shares #hospitality insights with Dan Ryan today!

Takeaways: 

• Service is the act of serving, but hospitality is the feeling an empathic employee gives to a customer. It’s difficult to have good hospitality without great service.
• Japanese culture is a mentality. A big part of it is the wellbeing of a group of people over an individual. 
• In Japan, perfection is expected in your work. While it can be demanding, it brings out the best work in the person and allows them to achieve the highest goals they have.
• While perfection is expected in Japan, it’s not always a good thing. It’s ok to fail at something that is a new attempt. Failure can be a great teaching moment.
• Try to be flexible in your thinking. A new approach to a process might be an idea that can turn out to be helpful. 
• Two things that hotels absolutely need to have: a shower with great water pressure and a comfortable bed. If a hotel has those two features all other issues are forgotten.
• Be patient and have an open mind. Try not to think that things need to go a certain way, it’s almost more important to know what you don’t want rather than to know what you want to do. 

Quote of the Show:

48:32 “The longer I've done ILC (Independent Lodging Congress), the more I've become interested in indie hospitality in indie hotels.

I think that the indie space is fascinating for so many reasons in that it takes so much more attention to detail to work on one of those projects. And it also takes so much more of a connection to the community and the area that the project is in. And so I'm working on a number of different projects that are all indie focused, and I love them because each one of them is so distinct and different.

And I love that focus of really digging into the community.”

Links: 

• Andrew’s Profile: linkedin.com/in/llenrockgroupbenioff
• Company website: https://precouncil.org
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/indiecongress?lang=en

Shout Outs: 

3:06 Danny Meyer

4:12 Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company

6:00 Four Seasons 

6:10 Rosewood

8:23 The Rock House in the Bahamas

12:38 Team Building ILC

16:18 McDonald’s

19:46 Jiro Dreams of Sushi documentary 

24:07 Penn Pacific in San Francisco

24:08 Nico in San Francisco

24:10 Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco

44:44 The Birth of Sake

49:44 Fairfield Inn

49:45 Hampton Inn

50:15 Hortz Schulze, founder of Ritz-Carlton

51:45 Michael Bedner

Ways to Tune In: 

• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0A2XOJvb6mGqEPYJ5bilPX
• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/defining-hospitality-podcast/id1573596386
• Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZGVmaW5pbmdob3NwaXRhbGl0eS5saXZlL2ZlZWQueG1s
• Podbean:  https://www.defininghospitality.live/