Understanding guest satisfaction is the priority The guest review will help you better understand your guest’s needs. It is obvious that every guest has their own expectation before they check into the hotel. The guests expect you to understand their needs and prepare for their arrival. In reality, you might be extremely busy with your daily schedule and time is the biggest challenge. Great hotels provide great service to each guest and it requires a lot of staff to go through all of the important details. The early check-in and late check-out are the most common issues caused by poor communication between the hotel and the guest. As a result, the guest gets angry and writes a negative review on TripAdvisor. Remember that the guest has limited patience and if they are dissatisfied you must respond quickly.
Maintain a good reputation and avoid creating a bad one. Double-check guest special requests in advance. The smallest mistake might lead you to a much bigger problem. In the worst-case scenario, it can ruin your hotel’s reputation. If the guest is not happy with your hotel, they might damage your brand and write a bad review on the internet i.e. TripAdvisor, booking.com etc.; and if it happens you need to respond to the comment within 24 hours.
How to deal with an unhappy guest? Let us explain one common scenario. The guest called the hotel reception three days in advance and requested early check-in at 10:00 but when the guest arrived there was no room available. The guest gets upset because the receptionist that they were talking to on the phone forgot to note down the special request in the system. Here I would like to share with you some tips on how to deal with angry hotel guests and turn them into loyal ones.
Step 1: Apologize to the guest
What’s needed the most here is a sincere apology. Guests want to be listened to and they want to be able to find a person to respond to their needs fast. First thing is to give a sincere apology and express your sympathy. You must take this matter seriously and make sure that the guest feels that you are very sorry and trying your best to resolve this incident.
Step 2: Became an ally with your guest and offer the best solution to satisfy the guest fast
Identify the guest’s needs and bring the best outcome. If there is no room in the same class free at the time and the guest needs to sleep badly, consider upgrading the room for the guest.
Step 3: Resolve the issue fast and then follow up on the feedback
After you have decided to send the guest to the upgraded room make sure you follow up for feedback. Check if the guest is now satisfied. A key to fixing this problem is to resolve the customer’s sense of injustice by providing something extra such as an upgrade or a 50% discount. In some cases, you may offer also a partial refund. Leave a guest refund policy to the fornt offce so they could solve the customer complaint fast.
Step 4: Document the issue and analyze the data
Learning from the mistake is the best way to improve – so before the memory fades away you must document the data. Analyze the issue and share the knowledge with your team. This will benefit you and the team because if something similar happens again they will know how to deal with it quickly.
Step 5: Give frequent training to your staff and use new technology to help reduce human error
After you have collected and analyzed the data, you might notice that if there are many phone calls between 14:00 to 17:00 the front desk usually makes a mistake because the receptionist has to do multiple tasks. Checking in the new guests, scanning the guest’s documents, and managing guest’s special requests takes a lot of time. You might need to hire more staff during that hour but hiring more people may break your budget. I suggest you find a smarter solution that will help you to automate most of the work. Here are the solutions that are easy to use and no technical skills are required.
Online or express check-in You can find the express check-in feature at Guestjoy. This feature will allow the guest to pre-fill all the important data such as names, passport no. and nationality etc. It will speed up the check-in process and lift up guest satisfaction to new heights.
Provide 24/7 Mobile concierge This feature will guarantee that the reception won’t miss any details. It allows guests to submit their special requests in advance then the system will automatically send the request to the correct department. Now hotel can pre-arrange all special requests in advance, hotel transfer, romantic dinner, and babysitting without chaos.
Collect and review feedback online 12 pm is when most guests check out and this is the time when they are most likely to express any issues they have. As for the hotelier, it is never easy to listen to the guest’s complaints. Try to use the online feedback collecting tool. An online survey will be sent directly to the guest’s mailbox and once the guest has completed the survey they can easily click submit. This is so simple and you can check all of the answers in real-time. It helps to understand customer feedback better and react to negative reviews faster. Think if you have this kind of solution in place how much time the hotel will save.
Summary Today, the hotel business is crucial. It is a highly competitive and very sensitive business. Your daily mission will not only make your business profitable but you must think about the future. Personalizing the guest experience, investing in good hotel software and trying to improve the quality of service all the time will surely make the guests happy and come back to your hotel.