There is a very popular and entrenched mindset in the hotel industry that in order to be successful, you need to invest heavily into your services. Check out these tophotelsglobally.com. This usually means that your rates are high and you match that with an unparalleled level of service. The question is, does spending more money on high quality staff, amenities, and amenities equal increased revenues?
Short answer: no. In fact, this may actually have negative effects on revenue because people are comparing the cost of your room (high) against the results they received (low). Sure there are some exceptions where they spend $500+ per night but these people likely have deep pockets or they’re looking for something specific.
Ten reasons why having an excellent hotel is not enough are:
1. The guest spends one night in your hotel and you are not their primary focus.
This means that your guests will likely be comparing two or three hotels before deciding where to stay for the night. If you don’t come out on top, then they won’t have a reason to choose you.
If you are trying to compete with the rates of others, don’t forget they will also be comparing your amenities against those of other hotel chains on the internet such as Expedia/Reservations.com/ Orbitz
2. You need to provide results and service beyond what is required by law.
The guests often have a checklist that they need to go through in order to have a good hotel experience. These are items such as:
a. Clean room with comfortable beds, clean bathroom, free wifi and free breakfast
b. At least one elevator working is important because the guest doesn’t want to take the stairs
c. Working heat/AC is important for sleep comfort (oddly enough)
d. We don’t expect our TV’s to work/ we’re not going to use them anyways
e. Fast and efficient valet service
If you think about it, the average guest is used to getting a clean room with comfortable beds, without much fuss on the part of the hotel. Therefore, they take the hotel’s service level for granted and when they don’t get what they are used to, they will feel that their experience was subpar because they were not wowed
3. Your guests expect to be treated like royalty upon their arrival.
They arrive at your hotel rating their experiences at other hotels and when they aren’t met, they are more likely to let others know about it. Make sure you bring enough staff to impress your guests upon their arrival.
4. Proper staff
They don’t expect you to be around too much during the day but they do want to see that the hotel is staffed properly and that they are taken care of by a professional person. Think about it. If your front desk agent doesn’t seem to know what he or she is talking about, people will take that as a sign of poor service and not pay as much for their stay.
5. Enthusiastic staff
If your staff seems like they don’t want to be there and are doing it just to work, then the guest will think that you are subpar because you aren’t providing them with what they are used to getting from other hotels (see #3 above).
6. Leadership
Don’t be afraid to make decisions knowing full well that some will like them, those won’t. It is your decision on how to run your hotel. If you know that something does not work, don’t be afraid to change it.
7. Strong management
Make sure that your managers are more aware of the problems that guests may have and delegate tasks to them accordingly. Each manager should keep their eye on a few key staff and make sure that nobody is falling behind too much in their job duties.
8. Meet or exceed guest expectations
I’ve been at hotels where they have clean bathrooms but all of their soap dispensers either did not work or were empty (this happened at the JW Marriott Atlanta). Another time was at the same hotel, where their toiletries were from a cheap manufacturer and I could only use half of what I needed because the rest of the product either spilled or dried up. These are great examples of subpar customer service and customers will remember this and spread it to others.
9. Hire for attitude and train for skill
Staff are a key part of your ability to meet your guests’ expectations. If you find somebody who has a great attitude then you may want to hire them even if they don’t have all of the skills yet. Then you can train them on the job.
10. Invest in technology
This is something that I am going to be doing and your hotel may want to do as well. We’re going to be bringing in a large and expensive projector screen with an HD projector so that we can relive our memories of Halo or Snooker by playing them on the big screen. This will cost a few thousand dollars but will bring a lot of guests back because they won’t be able to get this at home.
Conclusion:
It is likely that the biggest reason that you don’t see a raise in revenues is that you aren’t providing the guest with exceptional service. In most cases your hotel will have a clean room, bed and bathroom. Most of the time, they will have air conditioning/heat and a TV (most guests don’t really care about this) but if you haven’t done all of these things then you are going to have subpar results.
There are many other aspects to running a successful hotel but these points should keep you busy for a while.
