Easy Hotel Search
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
Bad things can happen at your hotel. Your reservation may be lost. The front desk agent may be rude. The room may be dirty. A naked man may be sitting on the bed. The room may be too hot or too cold, and the thermostat may not work. The TV in the next room may be blasting. The soap or shampoo may be missing. The toilet may flush continually. The tub may not drain. Room service breakfast may arrive an hour late and cold. The line to check out may be long, and the room charges may be wrong.
Richard Laermer travels every week for business and has experienced it all.
“Hotels have put me in rooms with other folks already there, put me in rooms without beds, sent me to restaurants that were shut down and even ignored me because they didn’t like my tone,” Laermer says.
So what’s an unhappy hotel guest to do? What will management do when things go wrong?
“A lot,” says Florence Berger, professor emeritus of hotel administration at Cornell University and an expert on hotel management and customer service. “Hotels want to make up for their mistakes. They don’t want valued clients to leave unhappy.”
Studies show that customers tell twice as many people about bad experiences as good ones, so complainers can hurt a company’s image. Customer happiness shows up on the bottom line.
What should an unhappy guest do when something goes wrong at his or her hotel?
“When a guest feels disgruntled, it may seem easier to live with the problem, write off the hotel and never go back,” says Marilyn Suttle, co-author of “Who’s Your Gladys? How to Turn Even the Most Difficult Customer Into Your Biggest Fan.” “There’s a better way. Make a direct request. Decide what you want the hotel to do and ask as whether you are certain you will get it. Guests go wrong when they say, ‘I don’t know if there’s anything you can do for me, but…’ Instead, express confidence that the hotel will take good care of you, ‘I’m sure you’ll want to set this right immediately. Here’s what I need. …”
Ask to talk to a manager, Suttle adds. Don’t take a “no” from someone who does not have the authority to say “yes.” Keep going up the chain until you reach someone who is allowed to approve your request. “A well-trained hotel manager understands that unhappy guests can become raving fans who spread good news about their establishment when they go the extra mile to remedy mistakes.”
Check sites such as Twitter to search out and gain access to high-level hotel management. A 140-word Tweet that asks for help with a problem just might accelerate your progress.
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