In February, Norwegian Cruise Line told its passengers that shorts and flip-flops would no longer be welcome in six of its restaurants. The passengers were not delighted. One called it "idiotic". The company called it "slight modifications", which is what a company says when it has done something completely on purpose.
Look at which six. Palomar, Ocean Blue, Onda, Cagney's, Le Bistro and the Haven. That isn't the buffet. Five are speciality restaurants, the ones you pay extra for, and the sixth is reserved for guests in the Haven suites. The dress code went in where the money is, and I'd be surprised if that was an accident, because it's what I would have done.
A dress code costs nothing. Nobody hires a chef or refits the room. All it changes is who else is in the room, and a room full of people who made an effort is a room you can charge more to sit in. It is the cheapest premium product a business can make, because the customers manufacture it for each other and then pay to sit in it.
Once you've seen it on a ship you see it everywhere this year.
United Airlines now lists "passengers who fail to use headphones while listening to audio or video content" in its contract of carriage as people it can refuse to fly. Quiet used to be something you bought, either with a seat nearer the front or with a pair of headphones that cost as much as the flight. Now the airline can promise it on the ticket, and the person delivering it is the man in 23C, unpaid.
And on a hill above Montreux, the last finishing school in Switzerland is still open. There were once more than sixty around the lake. Viviane Néri, who runs the survivor, told TIME back in 2011, "People now realize that good manners make for good business", and she was charging about $20,000 for six weeks at the time.
Why now
My read is that we spent ten years making everything come-as-you-are, and it worked so well that every hotel lobby and every restaurant ended up being the same room. If anyone can walk in wearing anything and doing anything, then walking in isn't worth much. The scarce thing used to be the table or the seat. This year it's how people behave once they have one, and behaviour is very cheap to supply if you're prepared to write it down and mean it.
The catch is that a rule is only a product if you can afford to lose the people it removes. Tampa International Airport posted "We've had enough" about passengers in pyjamas this year and it was a joke, it had to be, because an airport cannot choose its customers. A speciality steakhouse on a cruise ship can. Most businesses are somewhere between the two and haven't worked out which end they're nearer.
So before you copy the cruise line, do the unglamorous sum. Who does the rule take out of the room? What were they spending? Would the people who stay pay more because they've gone? If you can't answer the third one with a number, you haven't got a premium product. You've got a sign on the door and a one-star review on the way.
And if you think you don't have any rules, you do. You just haven't written them down, which means your loudest customer is setting them for you.