Best and Worst Experiences in the Hospitality Industry

 Best and Worst Experiences in the Hospitality Industry

         The worst and the best experience that I have ever had at a hospitality industry happened at the same place, one year apart. The place that I had both good and bad experiences at was a Family Inn and Suites with free access to a water park across the street. Every year, my family and I will take a vacation to wherever our heart desires and for this year we wanted to really surprise our son. We booked a suite with a view of the lake and two queen size beds with continental breakfast and I prepaid for a lunch and dinner at the local restaurant that had great reviews all threw a website with decent prices. The day before the trip, I called ahead to double check the reservation, and everything was going according to plan. As we arrived at the Inn we ended up having to park across the street for the parking lot was packed full of vehicles. When we tried to check in we were informed that our room was no longer available due to a mix up with the system. So we were put into a smaller room with no view and were only able to get back half of my money because we had used another booking agency and did not go threw them directly. To top it off the restaurant did not honor the prepaid meal vouchers so I had to pay out of pocket. Luckily I was able to get my money back from the site. The owner was notified about the mix up with my room and located me right away to try and settle the problem.

            Now what was a bad experience ended up turning into a great experience a year later. To make up for the smaller room and money vouchers not working which were not the Inns fault at all, the manager gave my family and I a rain check good for a year. On this rain check it gave me a 50% percent off any suite in the hotel with one free night’s stay included on top of it. He also made sure that my room service included lunch and dinner which the place did not even serve. So, one of the workers had to go to the local restaurant and pick up the food and bring it back for delivery. He only did this for us because he felt really bad and we seem like really nice people, since we didn’t blow up on him for the room mix-up. We also had a reserved parking spot just in case it was busy again that weekend.

            A negative experience can impact a business in many ways, very fast, for example, when a customer has a bad experience their more than likely going to write a negative review about it. That negative review is going to be read by lots of people and deter them away from that establishment. With less people means less money.

            One technique that would help out a lot with negative experiences is simply just making a plan and taking the initiative to figure out the problem and solve it. You need to turn a “non-wow” situation into a “wow” situation. There will always be problems; you just need to be prepared ahead of time for it and you have to be committed. Because the manager used this technique I ended up returning for a third time. And I plan on returning again in the future.

           

References

Michael Hyatt (July 7, 2009) TURNING BAD CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES INTO WOW EXPERIENCES Retrieved from http://michaelhyatt.com/turning-bad-customer-experiences-into-wow-experiences.html