Hello again everyone! After some intense business travelling which I masterfully aligned (more like pure coincidence but who can prove so, really?) with my website migration to a new hosting service, I am back with some great experiences and insights to share.
Before we go into today’s main topic, here’s a general observation: Business travelling is… bad for your health. You try to make the most out of your time, because if you run out of it, rescheduling a return flight, extending accommodation and getting more clothes, is enough of a hassle to cut 10 years out of your existence — I speak from experience: Rescheduling my flight was easy. But my (excellent) hotel was fully booked and could not extend my stay. As for extra clothes, when you are in the office for the most part of the day (and night), you just prefer to give your existing ones to the hotel for a good wash, than take the streets in search for a new outfit which you will then have to throw away because there’s not enough room in your luggage. But leaving behind the omnishambles of my latest business trip where I was really close to spending a night in the office because I couldn’t find a room in a decent hotel and within reasonable distance to extend my stay when it was needed, visiting so many different businesses that are competing with each other, in such a short amount of time, provided an extraordinary perspective, which resulted in some really interesting insights. Here are some of them:
- It is very important for hotel managers/owners to visit competing businesses and stay there for at least five days. I take notes about pretty-much everything whenever I interact with a new business. Imagine what you could learn: Competition staffing levels, quality of service, decoration, practicality of design, I could go on forever…
- Visiting your own property when everyone working there know that you are the boss and will grant you special treatment isn’t as useful at first thought, but it can make sense to do after having already stayed at competitors and assessed them;
- Making sure that food is served at the proper temperature is essential: A good recipe might taste completely different if not properly served. Ironically, this is the first time that I am realizing this, but in Cypriot 4* and 5* hotels, this has never been an issue. Abroad, it has happened to me often, both at self-service and with-service hotel restaurants;
- Most people visiting a hotel, either for business, or for leisure, leave the room early and return late. When they do return, they are usually tired, so any inconveniences will likely count for double in their heads. One of the hotels in which I stayed, had the toilet flush behind the raised cover, which meant that I had to raise and lower it, literally every time I wanted to use the toilet. The manager asked me at the end of my stay what was my view of the hotel. I pointed this out to him and said he had no idea. He had obviously never “bought” his business. Never stayed at his own hotel…
- The same hotel mentioned in the above point (which, ironically, wasn’t the worst of all 4* that I visited over the last month!) had a very serious staffing problem. I knew the hotel was fully booked and indeed, you could feel it, there were guests everywhere. Mostly because there was almost no one around to service them: At the reception, there was almost always a queue of about four to five people. At the restaurants, the average waiting time to order was about 15’ as the one waiter / restaurant, could barely keep up. The hotel manager’s office had a huge glass wall and was centrally located right next to the reception. He knew that his hotel was fully-booked and could see this mess of a (no) service, but curiously did not add any staff members throughout my stay there!?!
- Regarding lighting: I visited a 5* hotel which had only two spotlights to light up a massive room. Granted, they also had quite a few plug-in lamps, but this meant that there were no extra sockets in the room with which to charge my phone, laptop, etc., whenever the sky was overcast (which is a common occurrence in northern Europe);
- General power consumption/management in the room: Nearly all the hotels that I visited needed you to insert the keycard in a socket upon entering, in order to get power in the room. That’s a nice idea which helps save power and preserve our planet. However, removing the keycard in some of these hotels, also cut the power in the sockets. I left my laptop and my electric shaver to charge while I was away, expecting to use them upon returning to the room (especially the latter takes ages to recharge!) I am all about saving our planet, one can just browse through my older posts to confirm this, but going so far as to annoy your customers won’t get you any friends (especially because we all know that the primary motive isn’t to protect the environment, but the hotelier’s pocket).
This post could be endless I still have so many notes that I could share, that it almost seems comical. Just like some of my above observations could be branded as comical for being so obviously nonsensical. Service, decoration and facilities in a hotel are important. But when not coupled with the management’s drive to improve and raise their level even further by doing the small things, the hotelier is effectively taking a daily bet: That they will continue to do equally well, simply because there is no other willing to do better. For now…