Why settle for crumbs when you can have the whole banquet? (Part 2)
Excepting one hotel, where the person showing us around sounded confident in what he was telling us and dealt with the initial enquiry somewhat efficiently, the interactions at the other hotels were below par. There was this one coordinator who tried hard to impress, but, somehow managed to sound very condescending. All it did was jog me memory about something I had read a while ago- where it is written that in one day Samson slew 1,000 enemies with the jawbone of an ass. This employee certainly had the same weapon to kill potential business.
The hotel facing the green, offered us a venue that could only be reached by climbing a circular winding stairway. Upon pointing out that accessibility for the elderly and differently enabled people was non-existent, the hotel’s solution was to offer another venue that moved guests via elevators. But there was a price to pay…the hotel insisted that I increase my guest list by 50. This meant my having to fork out an additional Rs. 330,000/- to compensate for this hotel’s inadequacy. At Another hotel we could not see the only available venue for our function, as it was occupied on the day of our visit. Instead, we were shown some photographic images that depicted it as promising – which simply wasn’t the case, when we actually saw it on another day. It was a blotched makeover, of a low ceilinged no-longer-in-use, restaurant with dirty a/c vents and a tired and badly stained carpet.
None of the hotels’ staff thanked us for making the visit or for our enquiry. As for following up-that is another story. It was one-sided; all from my (customer) side. Either the local banquet business is booming or it is something vehemently disliked by hotel staff. From my experience, one can conclude that most of the staff encountered is at best BM’s. BM is the acronym for ‘Bare Minimum’ and BM’s do just enough to not get noticed, pulled up, suspended, or fired. BM’s have no interest in exceeding expectations. For them barely meeting expectations is an achievement.
The award for ‘worst experience’ goes to Hotel X. After the ‘cursory glance’ type of welcome we received, we made our way to a coordinator, who, whilst remaining seated, signaled to us with a hand gesture to sit. Acknowledgement of our presence and invitation to sit were all done sans any acoustically conveyed sound patterns. Having verified that a hall was free for our planned event date, he pulled out a set of menus. Using a calculator he furiously began writing down the net rates as we continued to sit in silence for the next two minutes or so. Placing the menus and a few more inserts (plain copy paper prints - unlike that of those in the other hotels), into a folder, he handed it over, saying “All the information is in there. My card is also attached. Call us within the next Y days and confirm. By the way, have you seen our hall?’ When I said that I have attended some functions held there, he merely nodded his head and replied ‘Ah Okaay’ – implying I guessed, that a show round was unnecessary. In all, we were in and out in less than five minutes. Interestingly, at Hotel X, the rates for the same menu differed between Thu/Fri/Sat (more) and Sun/Mon/Tue/Wed (less). Although first off-the-blocks on the science of ‘yield management’, in the art of ‘selling’, it was the slowest on the track.
If I were to rate the hotels visited on my voyage of discovery; on a scale of ‘1 to 10’ where 10 =‘very positive’ and 1 = ‘very negative’, three of the four hotels would score less than 4. Only one hotel would make it to a 5. Given that the menu rates at these four hotels ranged from Rs6,600/- to Rs 7,200/- per person, it was disheartening that at none of these hotels’ could I identify a USP, or point of differentiation from the competition. To me they appeared to be competing in a commodity market. As Sam Walton once said, “There is only one boss - The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.”…And, that’s exactly what we did!
Shafeek Wahab – Editor, Hospitality Sri Lanka, Consultant, Trainer, Ex-Hotelier
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