Category Archives: Guest Service

Tripadvisor.com’s Reviews Called Into Question

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If you have been following our blog for a while, you probably remember an article that we posted a little over a year ago on how to maintain your hotel’s internet reputation.  In the article, we stressed how important it is to check out your hotel’s reviews on various websites like tripadvisor.com.  We also praised TripAdvisor for allowing hotels to recover guests by contacting them after they post a poor review and we suggested that you work to improve your TripAdvisor rating.

trip-advisor-logo-tnIt appears that many hotels have taken our advice too far and are now manipulating their TripAdvisor ratings by posting fake reviews.  Check out this terrific article by Jason Cochran titled ‘Is TripAdvisor.com One Big Joke?’  His article mentions that TripAdvisor has had to place disclaimers on at least 92 hotel pages because they believe the hotels ‘may have attempted to manipulate our popularity index by interfering with the unbiased nature of our reviews’.

The authors provides some great tips for people to interpret user-review sites.  One tip he has is ‘If a hotel’s management consistently responds to negative reviews, take it as a promising sign that testifies to their attention to service’.

Continue maintaining your hotel’s internet reputation!  But do it legitimately please!

WSJ Catches Hotels Piling on Fees

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In a new article posted on the Wall Street Journal’s website, the author catches hotels piling on extra fees to make up for a loss in room revenue.  Some of the fees that they have found are mandatory valet parking fees, increased resort fees, housekeeping and bellman mandatory gratuities, and other fees such as a mandatory fee for in-room safes.

Should you be adding fees like these to make up for a loss in room revenues?  Absolutely not.

First off, mandatory fees are often illegal.  The article describes how Wyndham Worldwide and Marriott were sued and settled with Florida’s Attorney General over adding mandatory surcharges.  The Florida AG also has six ongoing investigations.  Undisclosed energy surcharges (we all remember those) and in-room safe fees are among the issues being investigated.

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Three Hotel Brands Named Customer Service Champs by BusinessWeek

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businessweekFour Seasons Hotels & Resorts (12th place), Ritz-Carlton (5th), and JW Marriott (25th) all made the top 25 of BusinessWeek’s annual best companies for customer service.  All three hotel brands received an ‘A’ on both Quality of Staff and Efficiency of Service.  All three also scored about 50 percent on Definitely Would Recommend Brand.  JW Marriott did the best on Will Definitely Repurchase by scoring 48 percent, a tremendous score for a hotel.

Other travel companies that made the list were Jetblue Airlines (19) and Enterprise Rent-A-Car (16).

To view the full list on BusinessWeek’s website, click here.

The Benefits of Mystery Shopping

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Many managers usually ask us, “Why do we need mystery shopping?” or “How will mystery shopping benefit our hotel?”We are here today to answer these questions for you and more. Let’s start with the most basic, but very important question of, “What is Mystery Shopping?”To TrueGuest, mystery shopping is a training and observation tool for managers. With shoppers acting as normal customers writing detailed reports about the service they experienced, managers are able to get a rare glimpse of the service from a guest’s perspective. Mystery shopping provides a great look at the service a hotel provides that you, as a manager cannot personally see. By using these reports, a service improvement training program can be implemented with the proper accountability. How often do you train and train on service standards only to get poor “official” scores on guest service? How do you know where to begin to find out what went wrong? Mystery shopping reports provide that accountability tool for managers. They can find out exactly what is or is not happening that creates poor service.

There are many hotels that tell us, “We are doing well in our guest service scores, so we do not need any mystery shopping!”To those hotels, we say, “Congratulations!”But think of it this way; who fills out those comment cards that you regularly base your success on? The guests that take the time to fill out the comment cards are almost always either the guests that had a wonderful visit or the guests that had a completely terrible visit. This probably accounts for only 1% of your total guests. What you are essentially saying is that you do not care about how any of the guests in between feel; a good 99% of them. You are risking the loyalty of the guests that you provided below-average service to, who did not feel like filling out your comment cards. How would your corporate office respond to that? Comment cards are like a crapshoot; you hope that you get “good” guests this month and that they give favorable scores. Why not turn that crapshoot into a sure thing? Mystery shopping provides an unbiased, objective look at your service at any given time. Managers are then able to focus on keeping service consistently high by pinpointing and correcting any service deficiencies instead of waiting for a guest to comment on them. Unfortunately, they probably will have chosen another hotel by then.

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Ask TrueGuest: PBX Basics

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Dear TrueGuest,

I was recently promoted to PBX Manager at a 4 diamond hotel.  Our service scores in PBX have been awful.  Can you help?

Thanks,

April

 

We can help.  Good phone skills are a lost art.  If you are experiencing poor scores when it comes to handling phone calls, focus on the basics.  The secret to PBX is consistency.  Here are some basic tips:

1.  Make it your goal to have every single phone call answered within 3 rings.  Test to make sure that it is happening.  Call the hotel during different times of the day and score each shift.  Don’t forget night audit.  We often call night audit and don’t get an answer even after 20 rings.

2.  Place a small mirror by every phone in the PBX office and teach every operator to answer every call with a smile in their voice.  If they have a smile in their voice, they also have a smile on their face…  hence the mirror.

Basics on answering external calls

All calls should be answered by using a greeting (good morning, good afternoon, good evening), announcing the name of the hotel, and announcing the name of the person answering the call, and an offer to help.  Example:  Good morning, thank you for calling the World’s Best Hotel, this is April, How may I help you?

The secret here is consistency.  The phone should be answered the same by every operator on every shift.

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USA Today Article About Guests Noticing Hotel Cutbacks

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USA Today posted a pretty good article titled ‘As Hotels Struggle For Business, Some Guests Find An Upside’. Click on the link to read the entire article on their website.

The article talks about how guests are finding much better deals on hotel rooms now than ever before, especially at luxury hotels.  But the most important part of the article is the section titled ‘Guests Notice Cutbacks’.  From the article: Hotels cannot hide all the cutbacks. Some frequent travelers say they’re starting to notice little things.  From the article:

usatodaySome amenities — such as a bottle of water in the room or a newspaper delivered to the door — are gone. The quality of complimentary food and beverages has diminished in some club rooms or lobbies, or at hotel managers’ guest receptions, they say.

Because many hotels have cut their staffs, frequent travelers say they’re waiting longer to check in and out, have rooms made up and have cars retrieved by valets.

“There are fewer people to provide basic services, answer questions and make suggestions for restaurants and activities,” says Howard Knoff, an education consultant in Little Rock.

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Simple Guest Service Reminders

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For the new year, resolve to improve guest service throughout your property.  We all know it will be a tough year to hit budgets and to attract more business.  A great, and cheap way to keep the business you already have is to make sure your guest service exceeds standards.  A very simple way to do so is by making sure that your team is trained to say the right things to guests.

At a recent stay at a very fancy and expensive hotel, we ran into many issues.  The issues ranged from very small to a very large one but regardless, it did not seem that the guest service team was properly trained to handle the problems that we encountered.  Though they were able to fix the problems quickly and satisfactorily, the guest service team was not empathetic or even apologetic at all.  This made our mystery shopper feel very unimportant even though we had just paid over $400 for the night.

To see the effect of slight changes in your team’s words on your guest service, please read this article on the Hotel & Motel Management website.

The author, Doug Kennedy, provides great examples of what many of your associates currently say to guests and what they should say instead.  It is a great way to improve your guest service without much cost!  For example, Kennedy points out the dreaded way to greeting a lone-diner at a restaurant with, “Just One?”, making the diner feel even lonelier.    He provides an excellent way to greet those guests by using, “Welcome to the restaurant  are you ready to be seated?”  The author also gives a few other great examples but leaves you to figure out how this concept can be applied to the many other areas of guest contact in your hotels.  It is a great way to keep your current guests happy and have them continue to choose your hotel in the future without spending any money!

The Ultimate Arrival Experience

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Many hotels have valet service, bell service, and a good team at the front desk but still, fail to provide a great arrival experience. The main problem is that the three teams do not work together as one team with the guest’s interest at heart.  While the valet attendant, the bellman, and the guest service agent may all do a great job individually, the guest sees the arrival as one experience and may be frustrated.

The solution is communication…  communication between associates and the guest.  Here is how the ultimate arrival experience takes place:

A guest pulls up to the hotel and is immediately greeted by the valet attendant. The valet attendant welcomes the guest to the hotel and offers luggage assistance.  The valet attendant does the normal tasks such as filling out a luggage ticket and asking the guest his/her name.  The valet attendant loads up all of the luggage onto a bell cart and escorts the guest to the front entrance of the hotel.  The valet attendant is then ready to hand off the guest to the waiting bellman.

Here is where the first important communication is required.  The valet attendant should introduce the guest to the bellman and the bellman to the guest by saying something like “Mr. Smith, this is John.  He is going to assist you with the check-in and then escort you up to your room”.  We also recommend that the valet attendant discretely hands the bellman a small card with the guest’s name on it.  Hopefully, the valet attendant got the guest’s name when the guest first pulled up.

Now the bellman can escort the guest to the front desk to check-in.  Again, here is where communication is key.  The bellman should introduce the guest to the GSA and the GSA to the guest by saying something like “Hello Lisa, this is Mr. Smith.  He has a reservation for this evening.”  Again, the bellman can refer to the card the valet attendant gave him if the name is difficult.  Lisa can then handle the check-in while the bellman waits off to the side.  Once the guest is checked in, the bellman is ready to escort the guest to the room.  The bellman can escort the guest to the room, tell the guest about the hotel’s amenities, and thank him/her for staying at the hotel.

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TrueGuest Service Tips for Every Hotel!

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Logo_Mark-Five_Diamond_Hospitality copy2We are very fortunate to be able to stay at some of the top hotels, including some amazing five-diamond properties.  While your hotel may not have the staffing budget of a five-diamond hotel, there are still plenty of service tips that everyone can learn from the five diamonds.

Here are some tips for providing five diamond service that does not cost much:

  1. Teach all of your associates the phrase ‘my pleasure’:  When a guest says ‘thank you’, associates at top properties always respond with ‘it is my pleasure’.  Other properties respond with ‘you’re welcome’ or ‘no problem’.
  2. Every associate must be guest-focused instead of task-focused:  At a three-diamond hotel, a housekeeper held up the elevator that I was in to wait for her friend so they could go to lunch together.  The next day at a five-diamond, an engineer who happened to be walking near an elevator saw me walking down the hallway and automatically pressed the elevator button.  The engineer was aware of my need as a guest.  The housekeeper was only aware of her own need for a lunch break.
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Hotel ‘Hidden Charges’ Under Attack This Summer

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Parking Picture

Maybe it is just a sign of the weakening economy, but the major news outlets are attacking hotel hidden charges this summer. Just last week, I saw two different morning news channels run pieces on how to avoid hidden hotel fees.  This article has appeared in the main section on MSN as well.

Hotels have been notorious for high fees since the beginning of time.  Who doesn’t know that picking up a phone in the hotel room is disastrous for your wallet?  I remember once staying at a resort and calling to reserve a time to go horseback riding.  The hotel charged over $18 for the 2-minute phone call…. and the horse stable was on the resort’s property!

How badly do these ‘hidden fees’ impact your guest service?  More than you can imagine.  The $18 phone call was almost 10 years ago and I am still a bit bitter today.  The real reason for my anger was that not only was I taken for $18 but then I was insulted when I asked about the fee at check out.  The snobby GSA responded with ‘phone calls come at a real premium at the resort.’

Charges for parking, internet access, phone calls, and resort fees are part of hotel life.  How can your hotel charge the fees without hurting guest service?

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