The hotel industry's ratings have fallen to their lowest since 2006. If hotels know what's good for them, they'll pay attention.
Market research company J.D. Power and Associates surveyed more than 61,700 North American hotel guests between August 2011 and May 2012, and arrived at an industry rating of 757 points out of a possible 1,000. The 7 point drop from 2011's survey may not seem like much, but, as the company notes in a press release, that masks steep drops in satisfaction with several categories: hotel facilities and services, guest rooms, check-in/check-out, food and beverage (the difference was made up mostly by improved satisfaction with cost).
Chief among the complaints:
Internet. In this day and age, when internet access is free in coffee shops, restaurants and, increasingly, airports, customers are indignant that many hotels continue to charge for it. And when guests do get online, the connections are often slow or unreliable. This dissatisfaction is compounded as ever more hotel guests are connected: some 55 percent of guests used hotel rooms' internet in this year's survey, up from 20 percent in 2006.
"Also, people are connecting though multiple devices," says J.D. Power's Jessica McGregor, "so I might have my cell phone, a tablet and and my laptop. If I have to pay a $20 fee for each of those, it’s probably going to make me quite unhappy."
Noise. Although hotel guests complained to J.D. Power about noise in hotels, paradoxically they'll inform hotel management in only about half of the cases, McGregor says. Say you're awakened from your slumber by rowdy neighbors. Many guests will tough it out, go back to sleep and in the morning decide it's not worth reporting. "That doesn’t give the hotel a lot of opportunity to recover on that problem," McGregor says.
Hotel room maintenance. Shoddy equipment in the room: coffee makers or lights that don't work, dead batteries in the TV remote control, etc.
General issues of room cleanliness, room smell, heating, ventilation and air-con – a tie. Case in point: hotel AC and heating systems can be hard to control, and guests can't adjust the settings to their preferences. This creates a Goldilocks effect of rooms being too hot or too cold.
So what's the best solution for hotel operators?
"First off," McGregor says, "preventing problems is the most satisfying thing for guests." It's completely within a hotel's control to monitor room maintenance, cleanliness and properly operating facilities, as well as not nickel-and-diming guests.
And when complaints arise, as inevitably can happen even at top hotels, McGregor counsels that "problem resolution is key to recovery," quickly, efficiently and with empathy and understanding. According to J.D. Power stats, an unresolved problem drops the customer satisfaction score to 573 out of 1,000. But with a successful resolution, it soars to 842, higher than if there had been no problem to begin with.
To improve rankings, McGregor encourages hotels to empower staff to solve problems. Top performing brands, she says, have staff orientation in their culture, to personalize the stay, resolve problems on the spot and go the extra mile for the guests. Improved product offerings and technology also help.
This is J.D. Power's 16th annual survey of hotels. Ritz-Carlton hotels have topped the luxury hotel segment of the survey for three consecutive years (864 points in 2012), but hotels need not be high end to satisfy customers. The mid-scale, limited-service Drury Hotels group (841 points) has just completed its seventh consecutive year atop its category, thanks to offerings like complementary evening receptions for guests with appetizers and beverages.
View a summary of the results here.
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