Over the course of the last few months I have been travelling like crazy. As a result, I have been staying at various hotels across South India. Last week during my travel, something rather unpleasant happened, which immediately sent me to the computer to type out some expletives about the hotel. It was then that I stopped to think...
Over the past 2 months, I would have stayed at 11 different hotels, all in the 3 to 5 star segments. At each of the properties that I visit, there is a certain baseline expectation that is already built up within my head (or a guests head). Incidentally, all of this travel was being undertaken in order to help setup a hotel business. This meant that there was a constant focus on details and weighing up of the expectations of a customer from a property or a brand.
Last week, during my stay at a top end hotel, I had reported a problematic gym equipment to the reception. One of the employees (I hope she was responsible for the gym) came to us during breakfast the next morning and; let us say, interrogated us about the problem and further told us that the problem was being faced only by us and that the equipment was not faulty; instead of just saying, "We will look into it".
Now, if the property is owned by this individual, I can understand this (they tend to take it personally); but coming from an employee of a hotel chain was another thing altogether.
Till that time, everybody in the hotel had been extremely co-operative, courteous, polite and kind to us. The property was not all that great but it was not all that bad either, it was passable.
No sooner had this incident happened, not only did we check out of the hotel and got ourselves into another one. I also used the free internet service the other hotel to log onto tripadvisor.com and post a scathing review of the hotel.
Now, as I think, in retrospective, it was probably a knee-jerk reaction and was not required. By the way, the hotel manager called up and apologised personally for what had happened, courtesy the feedback form.
It also makes me think anger such an active feeling, you want to do something about it immediately and happiness is such a lazy feeling, you just want to wallow in it. Probably why a bad word spreads faster than a good word.
It also makes me think; one bad experience is all you need to trash the entire system and write scathing commentaries about it.
One black sheep is all it takes to make a mess of it.
Well said srini, its often the reaction at the spur of that moment which causes a trail of events thereafter. In your case your trip advisor thing.
ReplyDeleteRemember while doing the prove the following questions, you just need one example to prove an assumption wrong but not even a hundred examples can prove the same true.