Guests are ALWAYS right…………………or are they?

I believe that guests do not really complain unless they have some grievance to complain about and want solving, even if it is connected to ‘feelings’..

I am not talking about those guests that bring nails with them to ‘find’ in their food later on, or a dead bug to ‘find’ in their room (It has happened to me!). No, I am talking about guests who have experienced bad service, whether it is in the restaurant, the room or any other situation where there is interaction between staff and guest.

If you stop to think of the hundreds of actions and interactions that happen during a guest stay at your property, it is no wonder that mistakes do happen. These must and should be remediated as soon as possible, and certainly prior to the guest departure if at all possible.

But I am not talking about those guests with a bona fide reason to complain. I am talking about the badly behaved guests that believe they bought the hotel because they rented a room in it. Unless controlled closely, these guests can cause sometimes irreparable damage to your hotel and to staff morale. These guests are NOT always right and I would like to illustrate.

During my decades of managing hotels I have only ever requested a guest to leave my hotel once.

The guest in question sat in the lobby lounge of the hotel, and, thinking that the waitress was taking too long in approaching him, clicked his fingers at her for attention.

The waitress, understandably upset, requested that he not call her in that way, and added that this was how you call a pet perhaps. This latter part was wrong of her, and she should not have done it.

The next thing that the guest did was to swear at her, include her mother in his juicy description of her among his other curses. She burst out in tears and ran to me.

When I approached him in the lobby I noticed that all tables were now silent and waiting for my response. They had witnessed the interaction and there was a tense anticipation in the air as to my reaction.

I considered my choices very carefully. If I apologized to the guest and let matters stand then I would be undermining my staff who were basically defenseless against such behavior. Perhaps the guest had waited too long for service, but that did not excuse his approach.  Further, I was out in the public area and my actions would be telegraphed everywhere within the hotel in short order. In other words, my staff was also waiting to see how I would react.

I started by apologizing for the tardiness that may have been in the service, and that all customers are valuable to my hotel. He looked placated, but the waitress looked very upset at my apology.

I then asked him if he had cursed at the waitress and if he was a guest staying at the hotel.

“What if I am a guest and what if I did curse her?” came the answer.

“Well,” I said, “If you are a guest at my hotel and if you did curse her then I would have to ask you to leave the hotel. So I ask you again, did you curse her and are you a guest in my hotel?”

“Yes and yes.”

“Then,” I said, “I must ask you to leave my hotel.”

I booked him into a sister hotel and, in the privacy of my office asked the waitress to not answer guests in that way again but rather request the manager on duty. Following this incident I gave the service staff coaching in how to treat troublesome guests. It never happened again.

Acting as I did I achieved two things:

1. I placated the customer and apologized prior to requesting he leave. This stopped him from becoming even angrier and forced him to realize that he had overstepped the boundaries of accepted behavior. The tables around the ‘incident’ saw how I treated the situation and judging by their reactions were very satisfied with the outcome.
2. I gave a strong clear signal that if customers behaved in any other way than courteously towards my staff there would be consequences. They knew that they were not alone but had the backing of the management if someone mistreated them.

I think that it is vital for staff morale to know that while they may take some bad behavior from guests, if it in any way oversteps accepted norms they will have 100% backing.

That is the only guest I ever threw out of one of the establishments I managed. I did not even throw out the irate guest who, upon learning that I was the GM, told me that since he was paying my salary I should lick his feet.

Angry customers happen.

The way you treat them is the key to how they will behave, and more importantly, how your staff will work for you when they know that you are on their side.

Stephen Ayers

CEO, STAY Ahead Hospitality

www.stayaheadhospitality.com

Asset management, Hotel diagnostics and executive coaching.