23 Story Hilton Hotel to Shut Down For 4 Weeks to Save Money

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A Hilton Hotel in Portland, Oregon is preparing to shut down for 4 weeks to save money.  The hotel is the largest in the state of Oregon.  The hotel consists of two different towers located across the street from each other.  One of the towers will remain open.  The story was originally reported in the Oregonian and can be found here.

Our take:  This story has been picked up by many news outlets and is being used to show how badly hotels are hurting.  The main problem in that area is the 500 new hotel rooms that opened recently.  We think the hotel is just being smart and planning ahead.  Even in good times, many hotels close floors or even entire towers for weeks or months at a time.  Closing floors can save a lot of money on cleaning and energy costs if the demand for the rooms is not there.

The story does a good job of reminding us all to take a look at our upcoming forecasts.  Do we have an opportunity to close floors and reduce costs?

Ask TrueGuest: Improving In Room Dining

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Dear TrueGuest,

I am the In-Room Dining Manager of a large hotel.  Our In-Room Dining sales have really dropped over the last year.  Our service scores are also suffering.  Where do a start?

Great question!  Many hotels are reporting a drastic decrease in F&B sales per occupied room.  The In-Room Dining sales have taken the biggest hit during these tough times.  Guests are really cutting back on the more expensive amenities of the hotels and room service is usually at the top.  Here are our recommendations:

1.  Revisit your menu and specifically your menu prices.  Many hotels dramatically increased their room service menu prices over the restaurant prices.  We recommend that the prices are similar, especially if your hotel is near many other restaurants…  especially if they are within walking distance.  Guests typically look at the room service prices and assume they are the same as in the restaurant.  If a guest feels they are too high, you have lost them as a customer in both room service and the restaurant.  Guests will grab breakfast from a quick mart and eat dinner at the restaurant next door.

2.  Review the basics of room service selling with your Room Service Operators.  Now more than ever, they need to maximize the revenue on every call they receive.  Check out this article on how to increase your room service sales by as much as 50 percent!

3.  For help on improving your service, check out this article on how to deliver room service orders the right way!

Have any tips of your own?  Post them below!  Have a question that you would like answered?  Post it below or send it to us via the contact page.

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.

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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!