From the Editor
Our writers are not armchair travellers.
Rest assured any assistance we accept from the travel industry in the course of preparing our stories does not compromise the integrity of our coverage. six MONTHs ago, I shared a list of things that hotels often get wrong. Much of it centred on design (impossible-to-find light switches; bathrooms without doors), while some of it focused on customer experience (no wi-fi; exorbitantly priced water).
But, as I stressed at the time, most hotels endeavour to offer us seamless travel experiences. So in the spirit of fairness, I polled some of our premium hotels and asked them to reveal what guests do that makes their jobs more difficult.
Their most common gripe? Hotels will often discover a guest had an issue well after they’ve checked out – when they see it writ large on TripAdvisor, Facebook or Twitter. “We’d like our guests to advise us of a problem when they’re still in-house so we can fix it,” says Ben Sington, managing director of The Langham, Melbourne. “Then they will have a positive experience rather than a negative one.”
And there are those guests at the other end of the spectrum who threaten to write a negative review unless they get a discount or compensation. Charming.
Without exception, every hotel bemoans the scammer. The guest who asks for an upgrade because it’s their birthday (but the date doesn’t match the driver’s licence). The customer who uses valet parking then claims the car’s been damaged. The man who drinks the minibar dry but tells reception he didn’t touch it. “Sometimes they try to cover their tracks by replacing the contents of a bottle with something else,” says one executive at an upscale hotel. “That doesn’t go down well for the next guest – literally.”
Thankfully, those cases are rare. But we can all watch our manners. There’s no need to get irritated with the front desk because you can’t access your room several hours before check-in. Yes, you should supervise your children. No, you can’t light up in a smoke-free room. And speaking on the phone during check-out? It’s just discourteous.
Hotels should always be upping their game. But perhaps that challenge also extends to their guests.
Have a great month.
Kirsten Galliott Editor-in- Chief
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