I read an interesting article called It’s the Little Things today about the type of small services that only come from loyalty, and it got me thinking. I’ve stayed at hundreds of hotel over the past ten years, but there are some where the personal service really stood out – and where my loyalty paid off.
It’s a chicken-and-egg thing, of course, and that’s what I think the article misses out on. The hotels where you’ll stay frequently enough to build loyalty are the ones that treated you well enough as a guest initially to cause you to return. It speaks about the commitment of the hotel management to really understand what their guests want, whether it’s for a single stay (when you get the standard package) or for a long-term repeat visitor who gets a little more special treatment.
I’ve certainly had the kind of treatment that the article talks about from a few hotels where I was a ‘regular’, and the extra service really makes them stick out in my mind.
In New Orleans, the sales manager of the hotel knew that I liked a particular room, and she made sure that it was always available for me whenever I stayed at the hotel. At the hotel bar, the staff learned that I liked Guinness (not on the menu) and arranged to have it special-ordered and kept in the bar when I was staying at the hotel. It was a really nice, personal touch. When the lifts were slow, I was escorted to the staff lift and taken downstairs the ‘back way’ to avoid the queues. Each time I arrived at the hotel, the front desk staff greeted me like an old friend. The sales manager at the hotel would invite me for a coffee every few weeks to find out personally how I was enjoying my stay.
At another hotel in London, it was the same story. There was one room in the hotel that was furnished differently from all the others – it was a prototype for the redesign that they rolled out to the entire hotel, but some of the higher-end features were cut from the final design, so only featured in this room – making it the nicest in the hotel. Once again, the hotel manager learned that I liked this room, and made sure I had it on every visit. He’d often invite me for a drink in the bar to hear my thoughts about the hotel and service – it was a really personal touch that made a huge influence on my decision to stay with the hotel. When the food & beverage manager learned that I had eaten everything on the room service menu and was bored, he asked the chef to propose some specials from the main restaurant and have them sent to my room. It was a nice touch.
In Singapore, there was no formal loyalty programme at the hotel where I used to stay regularly, but it was clear that the hotel was tracking my stay and preferences each time I visited. There was a sort of one-upmanship in the welcome I received each time I visited. The first time I arrived, there was a pot of tea waiting for me in my room. The second time, it was a pot of tea and some cookies. After that, tea, cookies, wine, fruit, even a tub filled with rose petals. I was afraid of what they’d think of next if I went back again! Still, it made an impression that they really valued my business and were interested in making me happy as a customer.
As much as a hotel can track preferences through loyalty schemes and guest preference cards, there’s no substitute for the real customer service that comes from a genuine human. It’s becoming more and more rare these days, but there are still some places that make the effort.
