Our analyst was first sent to visit the Holiday Inn.  The analyst had never visited this Holiday Inn before.  He arrived at the airport and called the hotel to request a shuttle to pick him up.  The GSA who took the call verified the analyst’s name and checked the reservation before sending over the driver.  The hotel was only a few minutes from the airport so they analyst arrived a the hotel pretty quickly.  As soon as the analyst walked into the lobby, the GSA greeted him with ‘welcome to the Holiday Inn, Mr. Smith’.  Obviously, the GSA was really prepared.  He logged the analyst’s name when he requested the shuttle so he knew to use it when he saw the shuttle drop off the analyst.  Even though the analyst had never been to that hotel before, that initial 10 seconds really made the analyst feel like he was returning home.  The GSA then conducted the check in as he normal does by thanking the analyst for being a Priority Club member, telling the analyst about the hotel amenities, and then directing the analyst how to get to his room. 

A few days later, our analyst was sent to the Ritz-Carlton.  This was the first time the analyst visited this Ritz-Carlton.  The analyst arrived at the hotel by car and pulled into valet parking.  The analyst was immediately greeted by a valet attendant and welcomed to the hotel.  The valet attendant asked the analyst if he was checking in and then asked him for his name.  He wrote the analyst’s name on the valet ticket and had the bellman load up the luggage onto a bell cart.  The valet attendant then told the analyst that he could enter the lobby to register and the luggage would be delivered and the car would be parked.  As soon as the analyst entered the hotel, a GSA greeted him with ‘good afternoon, Mr. Smith’.  The GSA was wearing an earpiece and was told by the valet attendant that Mr. Smith would be entering the lobby.  Just like at the Holiday Inn, it is a truly amazing feeling to be welcomed to a hotel by name.  It made the analyst feel like a celebrity.  The Ritz-Carlton also repeated the experience at check out.  The analyst called down to ask for a bellman to check out.  When the analyst arrived at the lobby with the bellman, the GSA who never met the analyst before immediately greeted him by name.  He was also tipped off by the radio so he knew that when a guest came down with the bellman that it was Mr. Smith. 

How often does this type of service happen?  Almost never.  But I can promise you that if your hotel can achieve this level of service with your guests, you will have more repeat guests than you can imagine.

The top score was a tie between Ritz-Carlton in the ‘fanciest’ category and Homewood Suites in the ‘upscale’ category.  The Homewood Suites scored an excellent in value and the Ritz scored very good. 

Here are the rankings for a couple of the categories:

Fanciest – 1. Ritz-Carlton  2. Grand Hyatt

Luxury – 1. Renaissance  2. Embassy Suites  3. Marriott  4. Westin  5. Hilton  6. Hyatt  7. Doubletree  8. Sheraton

Upscale – 1. Homewood Suites  2. Walt Disney Resorts  3. Residence Inn  4. Hilton Garden Inn  5. Harrah’s  6. Springhill Suites  7. Hyatt Place  8. Courtyard by Marriott  9. Wyndham  10. Crowne Plaza  11. Radisson

Some interesting observations:

Out of 48 brands, only one hotel, the Ritz-Carlton, scored excellent on service.  Only 10 others scored very good.  The other 37 hotels scored average or worse on service.  Ouch.

Many full service brands like Doubletree, Sheraton, Wyndham, Crowne Plaza, and Radisson, are falling behind the limited service brands in overall satisfaction. 

Guest are experiencing a surprising number of problems.  Out of the 48 brands, not a single brand scored excellent, and only 7 brands scored very good.  The chain with the least amount of problems (Drury Inn & Suites) still had 14 percent of guests reporting a problem!  The chain with the most problems had 47 percent of guests reporting a problem.

Sounds like we all have some work to do on our guest service!

Google has now started to do ‘Real-Time Searches’.  What does that mean?  Google says real-time search is:

“… new features that bring your search results to life with a dynamic stream of real-time content from across the web. Now, immediately after conducting a search, you can see live updates from people on popular sites like Twitter and FriendFeed, as well as headlines from news and blog posts published just seconds before. When they are relevant, we’ll rank these latest results to show the freshest information right on the search results page.”

What does that mean to you?  Well, for starters, your hotel will now appear in Google if people post a tweet on Twitter about you or mention you in their Facebook status update.  This can be either really good for you, or really bad for you.  Here is how I first noticed Google’s real-time search.  I was going to go out to a local restaurant and needed the address so I did what I always do… pulled out the iPhone and googled it.  I found the address on the first Google entry.  I happened to scroll down to the bottom of the page and saw someone’s Twitter tweet that said ‘got food poisoning at XYZ Restaurant’. 

Obviously not good for business.  I know that I found another restaurant to eat at.  I am sure that many others did as well.  So, what should you do?  First, have a good plan in place to monitor your hotel’s internet reputation.  Then act on anything both positive and negative that you may see.  It is very easy to contact someone who posts about your hotel on Twitter or Facebook or in their Blog.  Be sure to send them a thank you if they say something positive about you and make sure that you offer to fix any problems they may have had if they say anything negative about you.  Make sure that you have a plan in place today!

“For every guest that rates their stay as VERY SATISFIED, we will issue 20,000 points to your priority club card”

The reader asked the manager who said that his intent was to thank people for completing the survey.  Consumer reports adds ‘but not, it seems, for completing it honestly.’

What are you doing to bribe your guests?

Our take:  We agree with the travel industry analyst who said ‘it is the absolutely the wrong decision to make at a time when hotel demand is down from corporate business, conferences and leisure.”  It will save cash, but the timing is very poor.

In a follow up post, found here, three other brands seemed to distance themselves from Hilton’s strategy. 

Our favorite comment was from IHG’s Jim Abrahamson who said that rewards members are twice as profitable and elite-level members are 12 times as profitable.  He goes on to say “if one platinum-level member leaves us, we’d have to go out and find 12 new customers just to replace that one.”

Market Metrix and TripAdvisor did a recent study and found that “85 percent of hotels have no guidelines for monitoring, responding to or acting on guest reviews.”  85 percent!  They also state that “only 4 percent of negative reviews are responded to!”  The entire article can be read here.

The article suggests many of the same techniques that we do for mainting your hotel’s internet reputation.  You wouldn’t ignore a bad comment card, right?  Then why would you ignore a bad internet review of your hotel?  Get a plan in place today!

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 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.

It appears that many hotels have taken our advice to 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 managment 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!

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 the Florida’s Attorney General over adding mandatory surcharges.  The Florida AG aslo has six ongoing investigations.  Undisclosed energy surcharges (we all remember those) and in-room safe fees are among the issues being investigated. 

Second, it is a pretty short sighted plan to increase revenues by upsetting guests… or should we say soon to be former guests.  Check out the comment section on the article.  One commenter says that ‘I have been a loyal Marriott customer but this disgusts me’.  Another commenter says ‘I do not really understand why hotels do this.  How many guests leave thinking to themselves I will never stay here again’.  Another commenter says ‘I’ve been successfully fighting these hotel surcharges for years’.  Finally, another  commenter cracks everyone up with ‘last week I had a phone charge for calling room service.’  Ok, that is pretty funny.

What ‘fees’ make sure that we never become a repeat guest?

Mandatory gratuities or service charges – Hey, if I want to give a tip I will give a tip. 

Fees for internet access – Those of us with cell phones with built in Wi-Fi know that free internet access is everywhere.  There is no way that I would ever pay $12.95 a day for it unless my company reimbursed me and I didn’t like my company.

Resort fees – $30 bucks a day for local phone calls and use of the fitness center?  I have a cell phone and I am on vacation.  There is no way that I am using the fitness center.

Any fee that comes with poor service – In room dining and valet parking are the top two for us.  The service is often poor in those areas and the fees are incredible.

We really believe that these ‘hidden fees’ are really short sighted and bad for your future business.  Stay away from them if you can!

Other travel companies that made the list were Jetblue Airlines (19) and Enterprise Rent-A-Car (16).

To view the full list on BusinessWeek’s website, click here.