Author Archives: TrueGuest

About TrueGuest

Headquartered in Los Angeles, TrueGuest was created by former hotel executives to serve the hospitality industry by measuring and improving guest service and internal controls. Our Service Experience Audits are used by top brands such as Ritz-Carlton, St. Regis, Marriott, Renaissance, Hilton, Hyatt, W Hotels, Intercontinental, Sheraton, Radisson, Holiday Inn, Wyndham, and many more.

Marriott, Starwood, & Wyndham Scale Back Time-Share Business

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WSJ-Logo-e1352844751634The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the major time-share developers are scaling back their time-share business as they are going through some pretty tough times.  Investors are demanding higher interest rates and buyers are becoming more and more scarce.  Also, a higher percentage of time-share-backed loan securities are becoming delinquent each month.

Our take:  Good news for hotels.  Time-shares have been popping up everywhere in the last 10 years and have really overbuilt in many vacation destinations causing too much competition.  While customer satisfaction has really improved with time-shares, they are still one of the most expensive ways to take a vacation.  Time-shares tend to lose 80 percent of their value the day you buy one.

Have a time-share and disagree?  Post your comments below.

Unsatisfied Guest Takes Revenge

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This story really shows the power of the internet when it comes to poor customer service.  We have reported before how sites such as TripAdvisor, Expedia, and Yahoo Travel give power to guests to sway future guests from staying or not staying at your property.  This story takes it to a new level.

Back in the spring of 2008, a musician named Dave Carroll was on a United Airlines flight and witnessed the baggage handlers throw his guitar case.  When he arrived at his destination, his $3500 guitar was severely damaged.  He spent 9 months trying to get reimbursement for the damaged guitar and was treated poorly by United Airlines’ customer service department.  After getting the runaround for 9 months, he promised the last customer service representative that he spoke to that he would write and produce 3 songs about his experience with United Airlines and post them online.

He posted his first song and funny video on July 6, 2009.  Check out the video here:

The video called ‘United Breaks Guitars’ has already been watched by over 3.2 MILLION PEOPLE in only a week.  The story has also been picked up by many major news networks such as CNN.

It just goes to show the power of the internet and why every single guest complaint must be resolved.

You can also check out Dave’s story on his website here.

California to See a Record Number of Hotel Foreclosures

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According to an article by Alan X. Reay that appears on hotelnewsnow.com, the number of CA hotels in default or foreclosed on jumped 125 percent in the last 60 days and the state now has 31 hotels that have been foreclosed on and 175 in default.  Not surprisingly about 87 percent of the hotels in default are non-franchised hotels.  Also, 75 percent of the hotels that are in default were either purchased or refinanced between 2005 and 2007.

The author estimates that hotel values are currently 50-80% lower than the peak as a result of declining revenues.

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.

Continue reading →

Extended Stay Hotels File for Bankruptcy

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ExtendedExtended Stay Hotels has more than 680 properties under brands like Extended Stay America and Homestead Studio Suites.

Bloomberg is reporting that they filed bankruptcy on June 15th because they are ‘significantly over-leveraged and the projected cash flows cannot continue to service over $7 billion in debt’.  Extended Stay Hotels employs about 10,000 people.

W Hotel Hands Over Its Keys

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wThe W Hotel in San Diego basically foreclosed itself last week, telling its lender to take over as they would no longer be able to pay its mortgage payments.  The hotel owner, Sunstone Hotels, made its decision as their low cash flows were no longer sufficient to continue with the property.

Unfortunately, this may become more common as other companies continue to evaluate their portfolios while they are struggling to get out of this recession.  There is no word on whether the hotel will continue its operations in the hands of the bank.

Read the full article here.

New Consumer Reports Restaurant Study Has Suprising Results

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In a study of chain restaurants in the July 2009 edition of Consumer Reports, customers reported at least one complaint during a whopping 43 percent of the visits!  The complaints reported are very surprising and an area that we should all be focused on improving in our hotel restaurants.  consumer-reports-logo

Here are the top complaints:

  1. Noise (reported in 26% of visits)
  2. Poor Service (18%)
  3. Cleanliness Issues (10%)
  4. Food Quality (7%)

Most people would automatically assume that food quality issues would be the top complaint in a restaurant.  Keep in mind that this study covered restaurants from Denny’s all the way up to Morton’s Steakhouse.  You probably spend a lot of time working on your menu and your food quality.  Keep in mind that this is the area that the fewest people complain.  Where should you focus most?  First, hopefully, your hotel restaurant does not have a noise problem. Very few of the restaurants our mystery shoppers visit have any sort of noise problem.  However, many of the hotel restaurants have both a service problem and some cleanliness issues.

Service problems are the biggest problem areas during our mystery shopper’s visits.  Surprisingly, the biggest problems are the most basic service standards.  Many servers struggle to do basic standards such as taking orders, pre-bussing tables, and delivering the check correctly.  Schedule a mystery shop today to see how your service ranks.

We also see a few cleanliness issues during our visits.  The main culprits?  Buffets and bathrooms.  Bathroom cleanliness was also a complaint in the Consumer Reports study.  Have a messy bathroom in your restaurant is probably the quickest way to scare a guest.  The buffet problems we report are issues such as dirty plates in the plate rack and messes left on the buffet from other guests.  Be sure that dishes are inspected after they come out of the dishwasher and before they are put on the buffet.  Also, be sure you have someone monitoring the buffet to clean up the mess left by guests who don’t know how to operate a set of tongs.

Keep focused on the basics to improve your guest satisfaction scores!

Hilton Passes Marriott in Customer Satisfaction, Hyatt Plunges

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asciLogoIn the newest results (First Quarter 2009, released May 19, 2009), The American Customer Satisfaction Index is reporting that Hilton Hotels has passed Marriott Hotels in customer satisfaction.  The ACSI ranks different types of businesses each quarter in customer satisfaction.  This quarter they ranked hotels, airlines, cable television, fast food, and utility companies.  The hotel scores come out once per year.  You can read the full report on their website.

Hilton scored a 79 (a 1 percent increase) while Marriott scored a 77 (a 1 percent decrease).  Hyatt’s scores have plunged 5 percent since last year and now two budget brands (Choice Hotels and Best Western) actually scored higher.  Wyndham scored the worst of any hotel.  Here are the 2009 rankings from best to worst:

  1. Hilton
  2. Marriott
  3. Choice Hotels
  4. Best Western
  5. InterContinental
  6. Hyatt
  7. Starwood
  8. Wyndham

Overall, despite the rough times that hotels have faced in the last year, the average score in the industry remains unchanged.  However, that is mainly due to guest’s satisfaction with the budget hotels.  Both Choice Hotels and Best Western had a 7 percent increase since last year.

Our take:  Guest are certainly demanding more and it shows.  While it is great to see that overall satisfaction is unchanged, it is tough to see that the budget brands are passing the luxury hotels.  Once luxury brands lose guests to budget brands, it is very difficult to get them back.  What do you think?  Is your hotel losing guests to another brand?  Post your comments below!

Hotel Crime Rises In Recession according to USA Today

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In an article that may soon appear in the newspaper you deliver to your guests, the USA Today is reporting that Hotel Crime Rises In Recession. The article can be found on USA Today’s website.  The article says that tough times cause people to do desperate things.  The article also blames hotels for reducing security staff during the recession or having them do other things such as deliver room service or help with housekeeping requests.  The article provides some good recommendations to improve security such as:

usatoday2

  1. Require all employees to politely confront non-guests in hallways and ask them if they need assistance.
  2. Keep room number private (the article mentions breakfast servers asking for guest’s room numbers).
  3. Limiting access to guest floors to only guests.

In addition, we recommend:

  1. Have a consistent policy on how GSAs handle lost or non-working guest room keys.
  2. Inspect all guest room doors to make sure they automatically close and lock from a 45-degree angle.
  3. Do a complete background check on every employee before you hire them.  Conduct safety and security training before new employee’s first day on the job.
  4. Do a quarterly security training at your all-employee meeting.  Be sure to include employees from areas that you outsource such as parking and security.
  5. Make sure guest areas such as guest room elevators and floors, swimming pools, and fitness centers can only be accessed by guest room keys.