Top 8 Guest Complaints

“More than one third of consumers will not book a hotel room without reading (online) reviews first.” – LateRooms

Discussion of hospitality trends is a constantly changing one that’s usually very unpredictable.  “Online Reviews” is one of those “trend” words that we’ve all been hearing a lot lately.  Online reviews have become directly related to the success of your property.  With the number of online users only increasing as time goes on, these reviews will come to determine the future success of hospitality businesses.  Monitoring and interacting with online reviews has become a cornerstone of successful hospitality business practices.  The engine for which these reviews are shared and posted will always be changing.  Right now, the popular sites are Yelp and TripAdvisor, but in 5-10 years, it could be anything.  Regardless of where people go to post these reviews in the future, they will forever and always be doing it.  It’s your job as a hospitality professional stay on top of these reviews.  One can try to avoid negative reviews from occurring altogether, but if that doesn’t work, then you need to be online fielding these customer reviews; good and bad.

How can you stay on top of your hotel operations to make sure bad reviews aren’t posted in the first place?  HotelInfo.com published a multiple year study detailing the comments and causes related to a negative online customer review.  Here are the top 8 things guests complained about:

1. Extra costs for internet access, parking, breakfast, etc.
   1. Free WiFi has become an expectation. If something as simple as free parking will provide your property with positive customer reviews, it’s worth it.
2. Lack of service
   1. This isn’t always in your control, but making sure your staff is happy and knowledgeable can combat this issue. With emphasis on happy; a happy employee is a happy guest.
3. Breakfast choice
   1. Again, if it gets your property a good review, it’s worth providing some additional breakfast options.
4. Uncomfortable beds
   1. If your beds are uncomfortable, it’s not an easy/cheap upgrade. But to remain successful in the longer term, guest comfort is essential.
5. Dirty rooms
   1. This is no different than lack of service. If your rooms aren’t clean enough, your housekeeping staff needs to be re-evaluated.  Keeping your staff happy is the best preventative measure.
6. Unfriendliness
   1. Same as dirty rooms and lack of service.
7. Quality of breakfast
   1. A cheap breakfast with multiple options is no better than a good breakfast with no options.
8. Hotel does not offer what it promises.
   1. Keep track of your online/print listings and descriptions. If your hotel doesn’t offer listed options, get the info changed to appropriately market your property.

As you can see, a lot of these negative reviews stem from issues that can easily be prevented from occurring in the first place.  If you’re constantly seeing negative reviews for unfriendliness, dirty rooms or general lack of service, you may need to re-evaluate your staff.  Keeping your employees happy and making sure to keep yourself open to them is an easy way to prevent these issues.  If they can knowingly come to management with their questions and issues, they’ll be sorted out much quicker and hopefully help avoid negative reviews in the first place.  Besides issues with your staff, the majority of these complaints come from additional charges for services.  These charges may bring extra income to the property, but they cause negative buzz to your online community and ultimately harm your establishment.  These extra charges should be carefully reconsidered in your future hotel operations.  Extra benefits like this can generate positive reviews and ultimately loyal customers.

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To see the full article including percentage statistics on these top complaints, please visit the link below.

http://www.eturbonews.com/48354/tips-hoteliers-what-do-about-negative-hotel-evaluations?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Eturbonews-TravelAndTourismIndustryNews+%28eTurboNews+-+for+the+global+travel+professional%29

Role of Reviews and Reputation on Buying Success

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewbender/2012/07/27/americans-biggest-complaints-about-hotels/

Online Reputation Management Gone Wrong

**UPDATE**

Just recently we were at a hotel and upon arriving, as I always do, I “checked in” to the property on Foursquare via smart phone.  This is a practice that thousands of people do with literally everywhere they go.  Upon checking in, I was welcomed with a laundry list of negative reviews about the property.  None of these reviews were responded to by members of the property but rather flooded with comments from other Foursquare users agreeing and disagreeing with the negative comments that had been made.  The majority were not positive comments.  This is another medium that needs to be monitored for online reputation.  Managing your online reputation is crucial; as this post continues to detail.  This was a perfect example of not monitoring their online reputation.  Instead of attending to these guests and possibly changing their minds, the negative comments continue to flow and build on one another.

**END UPDATE**

We always like talking about online reputation management here because it’s such a simple and valuable tool for your organization.  Unhappy customers take to the internet to trash your property on websites like Yelp and TripAdvisor.  The beauty of this practice is that not only are other guests able to see it, so is your sales and marketing team.  You’re given the glorious opportunity to make things right with that unhappy guest where in the real world they can bash your property by word-of-mouth to all their friends and colleagues and there’s nothing you can do to defend yourself.  Companies that monitor these reviews and appropriately respond to the negative comments not only fix things with the unhappy customer but often find the negative comment deleted soon after.  A Scottish hotel fired their manager who recently took it upon himself to respond to a few customer reviews and showed us exactly what NOT to do.

After several guests wrote negative reviews on this 3/5 star Scottish hotel one of the responses found from the hotel’s manager read, “Thanks for your money, sucker. Long may the idiot line continue.”  As obvious as it seems, this customer did not delete their comment or change their mind.  These reviews and responses help construct an image of your company.

Online reputation management is a free and easy tool to use that can greatly benefit your property.  Set aside a few hours a week to browse through these websites and respond to negative (and positive) reviews to let guests know you care.  Sometimes it’s hard to add that “special touch” that causes a guest to return when you’re busy, this gives you the opportunity to do it once they’ve left.

Click the link below to see the rest of the negative comments this hotel manager left on some guest reviews:

http://www.hospitalitynet.org/external/750386770.html

Online Reviews Play Huge Role in Customer Relations

In the past, hotels have relied heavily on post-stay surveys to determine guest satisfaction and obtain knowledge on what can be improved in their operations.  Most travelers don’t want to take the time to fill out a review which relies heavily on closed-ended questions.  Even if a guest does take the time to fill out this survey, with the minimal room for open-ended questions, your feedback will only be so extensive.  Most of the time, guests want to focus on the pieces of their stay that stood out to them, in either a positive or negative way.  So how are hotels obtaining guest reviews and feedback more successfully?  The answer is simple; digital/online reviews.

With online reviews, guests have the option to focus on the individual issues which affected them directly while staying at your property.  With post-stay surveys, guests are often in a hurry as they are checking out and packing their things while being asked to fill out a closed-ended survey that limits your ability to provide feedback.  The option to post online reviews helps obtain more robust information on your guests stay,” technology makes it possible to easily analyze and report on unstructured data in just as reliable a way, with a much richer data-set.”

A huge impact of online reviews is that they are useful to both consumers and hoteliers.  Hoteliers are able to gather this information to provide a strong set of data on how their operations are running.  “The TripBarometer Survey states that 93% of travelers worldwide say online reviews have an impact on their booking decisions.”  That means before customers are booking at your property, they go online and peruse your customer reviews to make sure they aren’t making a poor choice for their accommodations.

Many hoteliers show concern for the amount of negative reviews posted on their property’s site or on various hotel aggregate sites.  The truth is it’s time to accept the fact that guests are already online writing reviews on your property whether you like it or not.  With that understanding, it’s time to embrace online reviews and field responses to negative and positive posts.  Customer relations are obviously a huge piece needed for success in the hospitality industry.  A lot of these customer relations are now being handled online.

It’s time to accept the fact that hotel customers and travelers are doing the majority of their research and ranting online.  If hotels want to stay relevant and competitive, it’s absolutely necessary to be constantly engaged with your customers on these digital forums.  This includes responding to negative and positive feedback on both your own site and hotel aggregate sites as to manage expectations and understand negative feedback.

For more info on this subject:

http://thehospitalityblog.ecornell.com/rethinking-traditional-guest-satisfaction/