Ensuring sustainable service
Have you ever gone to a restaurant and experienced a great meal with excellent service only to wait for 40 minutes for the check as the service intensity gradually declined throughout the evening? Perhaps the wait staff got tired or the supervisors went home early for the evening. The finish line is when the customer leaves satisfied!
Let's examine a typical site inspection process for a hotel. The arrival time is noted, a message gets distributed to the operating departments to be on the lookout for Ms. Charlene Lient and even a photo is shared. The department heads all gather at the front drive of the hotel and welcome Ms. C. Lient. Even the chef gets involved in the sales process and makes a special dish for her based on her food preferences. The salesperson says goodbye to her, and she asks to receive a contract for her company's board meeting.
The following weekend, Charlene returns with her mother to show her the hotel that she will be selecting for her boss and experiences something quite unlike the courtship she received only days earlier. No one was expecting her, and the staged experience she had was simply that — "staged."
How can you as an hotelier ensures that service is sustainable no matter who the guest, no matter what time they arrive and no matter what rate they are paying? It reminds me of hotels that spend thousands of dollars to attend national tradeshows that neglect to follow up with the customers after the event. It was almost as though their task list only included "attendance" at a tradeshow and not "follow-up" or "revenue."
How can you ensure that your sales efforts are sustainable?
Bart Berkey - Author of the book “Most People Don’t” started his career with Hyatt Hotels & Resorts before joining StaCite as VP –Sales, Bart then served as Regional VP for the Long Beach Convention & Visitors Bureau, before heading up the Washington DC office of the St Louis Convention and Visitors Commission. His current role (Senior Corporate Director, Eastern Region Global Sales Office with a luxury hotel company) allows him to lead a sales team that represents an entire portfolio to the brand's top group and transient customers.
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