By Tim Hunt, CEO of Quick Request Technology

I was recently in a very nice hotel in downtown Atlanta Georgia.  The architecture of this hotel was so incredible I had to take pictures to show the family.  The room was nice and well cared for.

The only thing that went wrong during my trip was housekeeping threw away my personal bottle of shampoo after my first night.  In their defense my stay had been extended to 2 nights so I had 2 reservations for the same room, one night after the other, and the housekeeper may not have known that.  The odd thing was all my other toiletries were still on the sink and my luggage and all my clothes were still in the room.

I went down and mentioned it to the desk manager, who politely applogized and asked what size it was.  I told him it was a small travel size and the brand.  He then did nothing.

Why is it hotels say they want to increase guest satisfaction, but are not willing to do anything to change their ratings?

Ways to Improve Guest Satisfaction

It may sound simple, but there are only 2 things hotels need to do to improve their ratings.

  1. Give all the guests more ways to communicate with the hotel about their stay.
  2. Makes sure the guest communications are recorded and that there is a record of what was done by hotel staff to fix any problems.

1. Give Voice to the Guests

It amazes me to think with all our modern advances that most hotels today still require the guest to call someone to report a problem.  Especially when research within the industry says that 90% of guests who have a problem will leave the hotel and not report it.

The reason they won’t report the problem is that calling someone to complain is uncomfortable.  First, we don’t know if you will listen or do anything about it if we do complain. Case in point, my experience above.

Quick Request provides hotels with free guest satisfaction software that will allow a guest to use their smartphone and report an issue and have it be automatically recorded and sent to a staff member to fix and report on.  This is not our complete system, but it can have an amazing affect if used properly.

For example, the director of operations at one of the hotels on the system told me the following story.

“We had an elderly couple check into one of our rooms and when the wife got out of the shower and reached for a towel the chrome on the towel bar had pealed up and cut her hand.  Her husband was very upset and scanned the code for their room.  He completed a survey and said he would never stay in this hotel ever again or any other hotel in this brand and rated the hotel with 1 star on each aspect of the survey.

The message went directly to me and I sent staff members to their room with a first aid kit within 2 minutes.  I contacted the front desk and they had them upgraded into a new room in 15 minutes. This same guest received one our corporate surveys after they left and retold the story and gave us glowing ratings.  He said, ‘I will always stay in this hotel when I am in town and I will always look for your brand of hotel wherever I go.’  Even though he had an unfortunate experience, his attitude towards the hotel and brand had been changed by a quick response to his problem.”

When a hotel exceeds a guests expectation in solving a problem it is an opportunity to win them over for life. The Quick Request system gave the hotel staff a way to impress the guest.  The guest thought they were doing the typical survey that goes into the ether where maybe someday someone will look at it and make a change.  He never expected the response he got.

2. Make Staff Accountable

When hotels rely on the hotel staff to record an issue and don’t give the guest the means to report an issue and have it recorded automatically, the staff can be selective in what they report and what they don’t.  This is why my problem during my last stay in Atlanta was never resolved.

My only remaining course of action is to go to Trip Advisor and report my experience for the next guest to see. Of course, this doesn’t do anything to help me or make me want to return to that hotel the next time I am in town.

The only way the staff can be held accountable to the guests is if the guest have the means to report their problems directly to the hotel without going through the staff to get it reported.  We have smartphones let us use them.  However any solution needs to follow these few rules.

  1. It has to be easy to use.
  2. It should take less time than a phone call.
  3. It should feel more like I am using a quick touch remote.
  4. It should not make me thumb out a long message on my phone.
  5. It should track the response time of the staff and record what they did to fix my problem.

Make a Change Today

Now it’s time for hotels to get a free system to solve these problems and make a significant difference in guest satisfaction.  One hotel on this sytem increased their Guest Satisfaction score by 12 points on independent corporate surveys.  Now that may not seem like a lot, but when you figure they were at the bottom of the ratings in their category in the brand and went to number one in the ratings it was a significant enough change to catch the attention of the corporate staff.

If as a traveler you are tired of not having a voice, tell the hotels you stay at about this free system.  It is truely free. As a hotelier if you want to improve your ratings don’t hesitate.  Click on the button below, fill out the form and we will get you setup with your own system today.