The Leela Mumbai and Gamification

Last Saturday, I had a meeting at 1130 at the Leela Andheri and asked my wife & kids  to come along, hang out while I finished and then do something later in the ‘burbs’ 🙂

While waiting, we entered the ‘24×7’ coffee shop ‘Citrus’ and had the most unexpected experience of our life!

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The manager almost INTERROGATED us on entry:

1) Are you here for breakfast? (at 1120 he asked us!)
2) No? Oh.. why not use the lobby lounge?
3) Are you staying with us?
4) This section is Noisy… you can’t sit here
5) The window table? hmmmmmmmmmmmmm…. ok… let me check… it’s dirty… no…no … it’s reserved.

We walked back to the lobby and my kids SWORE never to come back to this “shitty hotel”. I went into my meeting.

But what transpired after I got up was the FUN PART.

The Hotel Manager met me (he claimed to know me from the Lands End) and asked me about the problem…

I could have ranted and given some BS, but instead I used the METAPHOR of Gaming:

I asked him to VISUALIZE the hotel as a game and the restaurants and lobby as ‘chapters & levels.’

Then, I explained to him how ‘speed-breakers’ (Asking Q’s, saying NO) makes Drop Offs happen (never to return).

I told him about UX and UI and how he must study the business of games, retention, returning user, level funnel progression and gave him REAL LIFE EXAMPLES of what I would do to measure guest movement in the lobby if I were him.

I said, create a ‘Share of Guest’ metric (SOG) and let restaurants COMPETE for who snatches which guests rather than throw them around like footballs!!!

He kept saying “yes sir, yes sir…”

Takeaway: Life and everything inside, is a GAME. Play it to have fun and make others have fun too!

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Do you have any interesting gamification ideas? Share them in the comments below. Also go through The Gamification of Everything!

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