Sunday, August 29, 2010  A recent stay by a friend at the HOLIDAY INN on 2001 Clearview Avenue, Atlanta, GA prompts an amazing response! That is WHAT THE HECK? Yes, the friend booked a room on the second floor and upon returning at about 10:30pm discovered that a band was playing in the banquet room directly below their room with a loud thumping base making it difficult to watch TV much less get some sleep. Now we all expect hotels to book receptions and parties and we all should be understanding about these types of things but after midnight my friend thought the festivities from the pounding base speakers that were vibrating the room should cease! How about you? What time do you think other hotel guest should be entitled to their rest? Two phone calls to the desk and two hours later - Houston! We have a problem!
OK, the first response is.. who the heck booked a room above the banquet hall ANYWAY when there were other rooms available, at least they appeared available by the lack of cars in the parking lot.
And upon a first phone call why didn't the properly trained night clerk/manager take control and either shut the music down or if they were booked to go to 2am inform the guest that the music was going until 2am and that the hotel would be more than happy to relocate them to a much quieter room? Oh yes... I know now, they were NOT properly trained to handle these situations.
At 12:51 when the occupant telephoned the front desk again, nothing was done and when the music finally shut off at 2am, well, you can imagine the evenings rest was already past the point of no return.
How about you? Would you have handled this situation differently? Would your staff?
And now of course we get to the next morning when the guest came down to confront the Hotel Manager at 11 am and you guessed it... no manager on duty. After a brief telephone conversation where the manager enlightened the guest that they had booked through Expedia and therefore there was nothing they could do about a refund or any other course of action the guest was left holding the proverbial bag and while vowing to never return, simply disappeared into the daylight of another day of terrible management.
Is this how great managers are made? Trial and error? Frustrating your guests? Alienating potential clients? Getting bad write-ups on the Internet?
I seriously doubt it.
Now take this into your consideration.. so many things went wrong in this situation. 1) Poor room fulfillment 2) Poor reception room planning  3) Poor night staff training  4) Bad lack of knowledge about potential solutions  5) Either bad night staff with no insight for the guest OR bad general management because the staff was afraid of consequences if they had taken action without consulting the manager. 6) Poor general management for not satisfying the guest the next morning resulting in bad press and a bad rating online for that hotel via Expedia.
The only solution is to retain the staff and management to take positive and pro-active steps to avoiding these situations to begin with.
This is your MANAGEMENT Guru, http://www.stevesapato/ hoping you train your staff ever day every week every month every year with proactive management training and outside ideas and enlightenment.

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Give me 60 minutes and I will change your life.
Author of the forthcoming book - The Twenty, things you need to learn in order to find the love of your life
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