Responding to a Customer Complaint
Scenario
You are the general manager of Colonnade Hotel and Resort, an independent property in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Having worked at the Colonnade for four years, you are no stranger to customer service complaints. As the general manager, you rely on your front desk agents to provide quality service and prevent most issues from being escalated to you; however, of course, not all customers can be satisfied.
When you arrive at the property on Monday morning, you are faced with one of those customer situations that requires your attention. As you open your email inbox, you see a message with the subject line, "Shut out of the Colonnade." You take a deep breath, sip your latte, and open the message.
As an experienced manager, you know to gather more information before responding to the guest. You discuss the situation with Kathy, the front desk agent on duty, who confirms Mr. Ward's version of the incident and tells you that his son "got the whole thing on video."
When you go back to your office, you do what you know must be done: search the Internet for posts about the situation. On TripAdvisor, you see a negative review about the hotel. On Twitter, you discover Mr. Ward's tweet. And on YouTube, you find the video that captured the front desk exchange:
Assignment
Write an email response to Mr. Ward. In your message, you will want to acknowledge and apologize for the incident and invite his family to return to the hotel. If done well, your email will encourage Mr. Ward to post an update on TripAdvisor that presents Colonnade Hotel and Resort in a more positive light. You might consider how much detail to provide about the overbooking policy. Regardless of your rationale, overbooking may be difficult for even the most agreeable customer to accept.
Background Information
For more context, read about the Colonnade, overbooking policies, and the hotel's procedure for "walking" guests.
About Colonnade Hotel and Resort
The Colonnade is a 250-room, 4-star hotel that caters to business and leisure travelers. The hotel has been open for ten years and recently went through a complete renovation. It is centrally located, close to both the major office centers and the well-known city parks and museums. The hotel has received fairly good reviews on TripAdvisor and other travel sites and has a high rate of repeat guests. In addition to the 250 rooms, the hotel has approximately 50,000 square feet of meeting space and three restaurants.
Overbooking Policies
Like most hotels, the Colonnade overbooks to protect itself against no-shows. The number of rooms the hotel overbooks depends on how many no-shows are expected each night. Management tries to predict this number with 100% accuracy, but they are not always successful, which is what happened when Mr. Ward arrived with his family.
The hotel asks guests to guarantee their reservation with a credit card. If guests with a credit card guarantee do not show up, their credit card is charged for the room. Customers are informed of this policy when they make their reservation, and it is reinforced in an email confirmation.
For more information about overbooking at hotels, you may read a New York Times article about the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City.
Colonnade Hotel and Resort's Walking Procedures
The following information is communicated to employees in the Colonnade handbook:
As you know, even though we take credit card guarantees, we still have some no-shows. Because of this, we will sometimes overbook the hotel. This is usually not a problem, but there are times when you may need to relocate guests to other hotels. When this happens, be sure to follow the Colonnade Hotel and Resort Walking Procedures:
Negotiate walk rates with referral hotels before walking guests.
Obtain the selling status of comparable area hotels.
Avoid walking Colonnade Prestige Club level members whenever possible.
Inform the guests that the hotel cannot honor their reservation because of unexpected stayovers, but that we will pay for their room at a comparable hotel.
Offer to forward all messages or calls to the guests at the other hotel.
Provide relocated guests with a "walk letter" from the shift leader so that charges can be directly billed to the Colonnade.
Enter the walked guests' name and the referral hotel's phone number in the property management system under the VIP guest section. This ensures that we provide the guests with exceptional service and do not walk them on a future stay.
If the guests return the following day, provide an upgraded room, if possible. Also, a personal note of apology from the general manager should be placed in the guests' room.
Send a VIP gift from the front office manager or general manager upon the guests' return.
If the guests do not return to the hotel, send a personal note to their home address.
