Morgridge walked the talk by staying at the Red Roof Inn, but even his example didn’t prove truly contagious. So he came up with a pithy axiom: “If you cannot see your car from your hotel room, then you are paying too much.” When his top executives heard that, they understood that business-class tickets and fancy dinners were out of the question. More subtly—but even more crucially—they understood that the point of business travel was to meet customer needs, not to enjoy perks.
