Lockers lower churn for Japanese love hotels

I was listening to a marketing presentation the other day and learned an interesting fact. As most of you know, Japanese homes are very small so even married couples often go to "love hotels" to make love. Churn was high and customer retention was traditionally very low because most couples like to experiment with all of the interesting features in the variety of hotels. Recently some love hotels started providing rental lockers, which at first sounds a bit counter-intuitive. Married couples found it convenient to store adult toys and other things that they didn't want their children to find in these lockers. These lockers created a relationship between the customer and the hotel and dramatically increased customer retention. Now these lockers are used to store all sorts of "Not Safe For Home" things.

Apparently, lockers in almost any industry are a great way to lower churn.

7 Comments

01. Anita Rowland - Nov 30, 2003 - 01:38

"Churn and customer retention was traditionally very low"

but the churn is high if retention is low, yes?

02. Jon - Nov 30, 2003 - 03:03

Referring to the next post above (Dvorak):

So when the post is a jab at someone, (couched dubiously as a joke or not) comments are turned off?

Hmmm, suddenly less fun here.

03. Joi Ito - Nov 30, 2003 - 06:02

Sorry. The comments off thing was a mistake.

And my grammar was also a mistake. That should be churn high / retention low.

04. Ross Mayfield - Nov 30, 2003 - 11:40

Lock-in. I love it.

05. Joi Ito - Nov 30, 2003 - 12:04

Fixed the entry Anita. Thanks for pointing out the error.

06. Mark Gehrke - Nov 30, 2003 - 12:48

I have a whole new perspective on relationship marketing :)

07. diasuke - Jun 18, 2004 - 11:18

????you are nerds get a life

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Lockers in Love Hotels from Reinvented
November 30, 2003 1:02 PM

Joi Ito discusses how the installation of lockers a Japanese love hotels has increased customer loyalty. We have a version of this here in Charlottetown: coffee places, like Timothy's and Beanz, where customers store their "frequent drinker" ... Read More

Lockers and customer retention from Seb's Open Research
December 2, 2003 7:06 AM

Joi writes that "Lockers lower churn for Japanese love hotels" and that "Apparently, lockers in almost any industry are a great way to lower churn." What came to my mind as I read this was how a weblogging system, as soon as you've started using it, becom Read More