A time
when I received outstanding customer service was at the Four Seasons Resort on
the island of Lanai, Hawaii. The garden
view rooms were $850 a night and when I was checking in and they realized I was
local, from Maui, they discounted my room by $600 a night and they upgraded me
to a $1,250 ocean view room for no extra charge. Not only was the discount and the room
upgrade nice, but they would walk around the pool and spray you with chilled
Evian water and hand out fresh pineapple on a stick! A time I had a negative experience was in
Cancun, Mexico, when we were checking in, they said we had to go have our “free
breakfast” first. We said we didn’t want
it and we just wanted to check in. They
insisted, so we left our luggage at the front desk and went for the “free
breakfast’ which turned out to be a timeshare presentation. My friends and I told them we were all in the
timeshare industry so they didn’t make us tour, but they charged the poor salesman
with a tour. Therefore, I flipped the kid
$50 and said sorry. Don’t get me wrong
the resort was beautiful; however, what made the experience negative was that
the front desk tried to trick us into doing a sales presentation.
A negative experience at a
hospitality establishment can have a bad impact on it by the word of mouth
advertising from the guest that had the bad experience. Word of mouth in the hospitality industry can
make or break the business (M.U.S.E., n.d.). For example, I still tell people
about what they did to us at the Royal Sands 15 years ago. There are ways to handle a negative guest and
ways to give outstanding customer service. As soon as you have a negative guest, drop
what you’re doing and make it priority #1.
Turn the negative into a positive and give the guest an apology and be
honest and sincere then offer the guest something as an apology, like comp one
night stay or a dinner, or a free round of drinks (Blog, n.d.). Had the Royal Sands done something like that
for us, I would probably stay there again.
No comments:
Post a Comment