Hotel Executives’ Complimentary Consulting
As part of my ongoing commitment to public service, here is some free consulting help, from one of the finest consultants in the world, for those senior managers and executives responsible for daily operations in hotels. I’m someone who readily spends thousands of dollars a night for penthouses and tens of thousands on meetings. I expect to be treated at least decently and the same as someone spending $150 per night, because we’re all your customers.
• Don’t have servers or desk clerks with facial piercings. These can be removed (I’m told) during working hours. It’s unappealing to deal with someone who has something punched through their chin, tongue, or eyebrow, sorry.
• “There you go” and “no problem” do not mean “you’re welcome.”
• Equip your housekeeping department with the information they need to avoid banging on doors when the guest room has already been serviced or a late checkout has been granted.
• Ensure that any diner in your restaurant is greeted and asked if they’d like a drink within two minutes of being seated.
• See to it that your hosts and hostesses do not appear to be dressed as if they’ve just changed a tire on an 18-wheeler.
• Clear the trays out of the halls before the food remnants turn into other life forms.
• Throw out the mini-bars that charge you automatically if you so much as read a label. If you don’t trust me, tell me that when I make my reservation and I can go elsewhere.
• Provide Internet access for free. Stop nickel-and-diming us.
• Do not employ people who can’t speak at least rudimentary English (or whatever the native tongue is in your country). It’s very dangerous in case of emergency, and it’s annoying when you simply need some help.
• Every employee you encounter in the halls should establish eye contact, smile, and say “hello,” “good morning,” or whatever is appropriate.
• If your operators can’t pick up the phone within 7 rings, you’re understaffed or mismanaged.
• Don’t use outsourced concierges. They don’t care as much as your own people and they show it.
• Stop installing television/movie/game combinations that require a Cal Tech degree to turn on and off, let alone find American Idol. (The same goes for the alarm clocks.)
• Tell your housekeeping staff that after a guest checks out the radio/clock alarm should be turned off on the assumption that the next guest does not have to get up at 4 am to catch an early plane to Peoria.
• Your staff should call me “Mr.” or “Doctor” (or, “Your Grace”), but not “Alan,” because I don’t like forced familiarity and we’re not peers.
• If your personal phone and/or email are off limits and you are screened by underlings, you are a failure as a leader and a fool as a manager.
• When I request a group breakfast or break at a certain time, I don’t mean that your staff should leave the kitchen at that time, I meant they should have set up and been leaving my conference room by that time.
• Why is it, in 25 years of delivering keynotes and workshops to the best of the best, NOT ONE person in hotel management has ever requested that they or their staff attend such topics as leadership, innovation, customer service, and so forth? (I find that the staff in charge of the room often stays around discreetly to listen.)
• If I have to escalate a request that, if finally granted, overturns a subordinate’s decision or a “policy,” I’ll bet dollars to donuts that you haven’t granted sufficient discretion to your front-line people, and you’re therefore wasting your time and mine.
• Assuming people change their clothing daily, have a week’s worth of hangers in the closets.
• Knock off the hidden charges. When you charge $2 to call a toll-free number, I don’t like it. But if you charged an extra $2 for drinks or $5 for entrees, I wouldn’t care.
• First and last impressions are critical. Your doormen are fundamental, therefore, to your success, no matter what shift they are on. Make sure they know it and appreciate it, and that you show them you appreciate it.
© Alan Weis 2010. All rights reserved.
Ann Manion
Brilliantly put Mr. Weis!
Every Hotel GM would benefit from reading this blog. I’m going to put a link to it in the May Advantage Newsletter, a monthly e-publication I write for hospitality executives and property management teams.
At Hotel Advantage, we believe that what the hotel guest thinks is the MOST important thing, and bring this core value to our work in the area of guest experience consulting.
About 6 weeks ago we started a Facebook business page, and it serves as a Listening Lab to tap into what hotel guests want & their ideas for advancing the guest experience in the 21st century. I’ll share your blog there too, and invite you and your readers to join our conversation at:
http://www.facebook.com/HotelAdvantage
Thank you for taking the time to share your hotel insights!
Ann Manion
President, Hotel Advantage
Gareth Kane
The internet charging has always annoyed me – not because I don’t want to pay per se, but that it turns a quick e-mail check into a major operation with credit cards etc. Lots of independent budget hotels have complimentary internet, why can’t the big chains?
Alan Weiss
And I remind you that Spirit Airlines now wants to charge for carry-on baggage and rest room use. These penny-ante charges are excuses for lousy management unable to run a profitable operation.
Jay Werth
I never thought I’d be telling a service person how appreciative I was that he/she said “you’re welcome,” instead of “no problem, or no prob.” As if it MIGHT have been a problem if you were in a lousy mood that day, or I didn’t make your day more difficult due to the reasonableness of my request.
Karen Blakeman
Sums up most of my pet hates! I’m not so bothered about numbers 1 and 2 but “Clear the trays out of the halls before the food remnants turn into other life forms” ..yes! There are times when I expect a triffid to emerge from one of those festering trays.
A good hotel is when they ask me at check out if there had been any problems with my stay, I say no but later remember there had been. The ‘problems’ had been dealt with so efficiently, without fuss and in such a way that my brain no longer registered it as a problem.
I do wish that more hotels, especially the major chains, would use social media (twitter, blogs, Flickr etc.) to monitor what people are saying about them and respond appropriately. I was very impressed when the supplier of a hotel’s broadband picked up my moans about the hotel’s tardiness in sorting out my duff connection. They pestered the hotel staff to rectify the problem but the hotel couldn’t have cared less about the bad press they were getting.
Tom Johnson
And I would add:
*) All the managers should spend a night in a typical room and then try shaving or putting on make-up. The lighting in most hotel bathrooms — especially around the mirrors — is ridiculous.
*) Don’t pre-set your TV channels to Fox (so-called) News in the rooms, in the bars, in the restaurants or lobby. I’ll pick my own channel, thank you.
tlmaurer
I’ve stayed at those same hotels…I’d be the one in the $150 room. It’s depressing to hear that the service in the top tier rooms is just as bad. Why are the leaders of these establishments so afraid to aim for the Wow factor in customer experience?
Alan Weiss
I never know how many people know what a Triffid is!
Tim, bad performance is bad performance. It doesn’t discriminate by wealth or price!
Julie Squires
Alan,
Have you tried 4 and 5-star hotels? Best, Julie
Alan Weiss
You must be kidding. I stay in the best of the best: Ritz Carlton, Four Seasons, Peninsula, New York Palace, etc. How do you think I spend thousands a night, as my article indicated?
Julie Squires
Ok, thanks :-). Best, Julie
Rob Novak
I’ve one to add, Alan, that while order is all fine and good, I’d like to rearrange my own toothbrush instead of finding it neatly placed on a washcloth by unknown hands in my absence. Strangely, this only seems to happen in higher end hotels.
One of my employees (a self-proclaimed germophobe) has this as a pet peeve — to the point of placing his in a plastic bag and into the safe!
Alan Weiss
There’s also the hair dryer power cord which is knotted up, inexplicably, every morning; the belts of robes similarly convoluted; and hotel elevators that make the stairs seem like the express route.