The Modern Hotelier #195: The Naked Experience & Surprise and Delight a Staypineapple | with Beth Anne King
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David Millili: Welcome to The Modern Hotelier, hospitality's Most Engaged podcast. I'm David Millili. I'm Steve Carran. Steve, who do we have on the program today? 
Steve Carran: Yeah, David, today we have Beth Anne King, the Regional Director of Operations. Thanks for sitting down with us Beth Anne, how you doing today? 
Beth Anne: I'm great. Thank you so much for having me.
Steve Carran: So one thing that has stood out here, Beth Anne, is the Naked Experience. It's all over the beds. Can you tell us a little bit more about that and how it reflects luxury, where it counts? 
Beth Anne: Absolutely. The naked experiences are, uh, in-room experience for the guests. We have high-end luxury beds black Napa from Serta, linens are top of the line. We use the double duvet system from Europe, uh, which our founder brought back from a family vacation. So each bed has, uh, two twin sized duvets, so no one has to fight over the covers at night. We have extra large fluffy towels in the bathroom. Uh, and we have very nice Terry robes, which I think you enjoyed. Last night I did, if I recall, all of those things combine, it's a feeling that's so fresh and clean. You just wanna sleep naked. 
Steve Carran: It was one of the best nights of sleep I have had in a minute, so I'm so glad. It is. It is a great experience. So one thing, as soon as you walk into a staypineapple, you notice it's a kind of a playful, cheeky atmosphere here. Why does that matter when you're building a brand like staypineapple? 
Beth Anne: Since the beginning we've always said that we're for the young and the young at heart. We like to offer exceptional service, but we don't like to take ourselves too seriously. We want for people to just come and have a good time, and have some laughs and feel a fun vibe. 
Steve Carran: Absolutely. And you mentioned in the naked experience about the double duvet concept. Can you tell us a little bit more, you mentioned your owner brought it back from Europe. Can you tell us a little bit more about that backstory? 
Beth Anne: Yeah, so our founder, Michelle Barnett went on a European vacation with her family at the hotels they were staying at they had the double duvet concept. She called the corporate office from Europe and said, we've gotta do this. This is amazing. We gotta figure out how to do this in the states. So, we spent a lot of time researching vendors, finding the right ones, the right quality linens, uh, from inside the United States, and we rolled it out and it's been a, a huge hit. People love the coziness of it, the not having to share blankets. It's, it really is spectacular. 
Steve Carran: And when you're in a bed by yourself, you get both w So true. It's fantastic. Yeah. Took advantage of that last night. So, um, the Naked Experience is a pretty unique experience. Can you tell us almost an evolution of the naked experience?
Beth Anne: You know, it was around before I was with the company, so I don't know how they came up with the naked experience, but, um, we've always been a brand that's just, uh, likes to toe you with the edges and just have fun. 
David Millili: So now we're gonna talk about surprise and delight. So how does surprise and Delight show up at the staypineapple? 
Beth Anne: Yeah, so staypineapple, and surprise and delight. It is just at our core of our culture and, um, so when we hire new team members, we really look to empower them to treat our guests with a friend style service, which means when we welcome a new guest into the hotel, we're treating them like you would welcome a friend to your house.
And typically, what's one of the first things you do for a guest at your house? You offer them a drink, right? So we do that as well. We have our core coaster program. So every guest who checks in gets a welcome drink from the bar. They can have a beer or a glass of wine, a soda, whatever they want. We're welcoming them to our home.
And then that should carry on throughout this stay. You know, every hotel chain has a tagline of which is the same as surprise and delight, right? It's all about hospitality. And we, like every other hotel chain, acknowledges birthdays and anniversaries and tries to make those stays special. But we try to take it a step further and really get to know our guests and what are, what are our guests trying to get out of their visit to Chicago?
What brought them here? What are they interested in? And then we do whatever we can to help make their stay personal and what they were wanting from their stay. 
David Millili: Can you give us one of your favorite surprise and delight moments? 
Beth Anne: I have two. Okay. We'll take them at one of our, uh, hotels in Seattle at the Maxwell Hotel.
We had an everything person who was talking over the phone with a guest and they were having car trouble and you know, so they're in a city that they don't know. They have two kids in the car, they're. To the max, right? And they're talking to our everything person in Seattle and they're trying to help 'em get directions and figure out how to get to the hotel.
But with the car trouble, it clearly it was. They were gonna be trapped there for a couple of hours. So our everything person took the initiative to have a pizza door dash to their broken down car. And just to show that that care and empathy it, they just knocked it out of the park. Yeah. And this isn't a general manager deciding to make that decision, that's an everything person. 
David Millili: Yeah. 
Beth Anne: Knew what they would want in that situation, knew what could make this a little bit better for that guest and just did it. So we'd love that story. Um, and then here at our Chicago property a couple weeks ago, we had a note and a reservation incoming guest let us know that they were bringing their partner to Chicago.
He's Puerto Rican, and he was missing home. So they were coming to visit the Humboldt Park neighborhood and which is a heavily Puerto Rican neighborhood. So we thought, okay, he's missing home. What could we do to just make his welcome a little bit more special? So we ordered some Puerto Rican treats, some um, coconut bites and, oh, I forget what the other couple of treats were, but had those set up for him in the room.
And then, once they arrived, we ordered DoorDash from a great Puerto Rican neighborhood restaurant and had that delivered to their room just to help 'em feel a little bit more special. We're paying attention. We, we see you, we hear you have a great time in Chicago. 
David Millili: That's great. Great stories. And so how does the surprise and delight connect to the overall service culture of Stay Pineapple?
Beth Anne: It's everything. It's everything goes back to surprise and delight and it's, you know, it's not a, task on our checklist, it infuses everything. Um, we keep notes in our reservations. We learn about our guests, we share that information, and our team collaborates. Together. So the front desk is listening for verbal cues, and when they hear those things, they share 'em with housekeeping, and then housekeeping can take over and help decorate a room, or if they hear that someone's sick, put some extra kleenex in a room or, some extra tea in a room, those sorts of things, it is from top to bottom running through this hotel. 
Steve Carran: That's fantastic. Absolutely. I actually have a good story about your surprise and delight from staying at your San Francisco property. Oh, great. I, um, I'm type one diabetic and I was low. And I was kind of freaking out. I went down to the front desk and I'm like, Hey, do you have any Coca-Cola or any candy?
And they're like, are you okay? I'm sweating. Mm-hmm. I'm pale and they're, I'm like, I'm just type one diabetic. I'm low. And they're like, oh my goodness. Grab a coke. They gave me a bunch of candy and they're like, you need anything? Just come down and let us know. So, oh, that's great. Being a type one diabetic.
That was awesome. Another hotel told me, I'm like, Hey, I need a Coke. And they're like, sorry, this shop's closed. And I'm like. If I don't have something, I'm going to die. And her response was, people die every day. So having that response apart from that one a little different was, was much better. So yeah, that kudos to the team at San San Francisco.
Yes. So kudos to the team in San Francisco for that. Yeah. Thank you. Kind of on that, I wanna talk about, um, people and empowerment. Can you tell us a little bit more about what it means to know to say Yes culture? 
Beth Anne: Absolutely. So we call it the everything person mentality. And what we empower our team members to do is anytime a guest needs something, it doesn't matter if that's typically housekeeping's job or engineering's job, you take it on, you're the person who spoke to the guest, you take care of it for the guest and we enable our employees to be able to say, yes, I will take care of that for you. And so we challenged our team members to never say no. no to say yes. 
Steve Carran: That's great. And kind of, I'd love for, to hear you elaborate a little bit more on that. How are team members empowered to elevate that guest experience by saying yes.
Beth Anne: Well, we never say no to them if they, if I have a team member who comes to me and they think doing something would be really cool for the guest and would enhance their experience. It's my job to say yes to the team member and to help them make that happen. Um, we always want our guests to walk away happy, and so we instill that from day one and we really have to back it up because you can say to any new team member, we want you to do whatever for the guests and, you know, take care of 'em. And then when they do something. Then we can't be, well, you really shouldn't have been doing that. You know, you have to walk the walk.
And so we work very hard at that. Uh, make sure that we're giving 'em all the tools they need. They need to, to take care of our guests. 
Steve Carran: And how do you see every one of your team members from housekeeping, operations, the bartender, how do you see them elevating the guest experience By making personal connections with the guests?
Beth Anne: By really listening to the guest and understanding that not everyone is here for the same reason. Not everyone wants the same Chicago experience or the same vacation, and taking the time to understand what they're looking for, uh, and then finding a way to make that happen. 
David Millili: That's great. And so can you share with us what's one of your favorite attractions that's nearby the hotel?
Beth Anne: Sure. There's so many, right? 
David Millili: You can get more than one. 
Beth Anne: I honestly, I love the Chicago River. There's so much to do connected to the river and it really, I think. Accurately represents the spirit of Chicago. You know, we, we die green on St. Patrick's Day. Yep. There's all the architectural boat tours that go on the river, taking the water taxi, it takes you out to Navy Pier, it connects Lake Washington with the Chicago River, it's really a cool thing and it, it's so cool to have such a massive city coming up on all sides of the river. 
David Millili: That's great. Well, that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier Beth Ann. This is where you get to tell people how they can get in touch with you and how they can learn more about staypineapple.
Beth Anne: We'd love to see you come and visit us staypineapple.com
David Millili: That's great. Well, that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier Hospitality's Most Engaged Podcast. Whether you're watching or listening, we appreciate you and hope to see you again soon. Thank you.