The hotel guest from hell
Thursday, 29 May 2008
By Kirsty Dunphey
I’m staying in a newly refurbished hotel room as I write this on gorgeous Hamilton Island. I honeymooned here and the room I’m in is really a vast improvement décor-wise on my last visit.
The only problem is, I’m the first person to stay in the room since it’s been opened and I’ve had to call maintenance for the following reasons:
- I couldn’t get my key to open the lock.
- The power key to activate the hotel room power just stopped working.
- There were two conditioners and no shampoo in the room.
- When I plugged in the hairdrier it blew the fuses in the entire room, not once but twice.
I’ve got one more night here and you might think I’m sitting here pretty upset with the hotel – but I’m not.
You see the way they’ve handled each one of these problems has actually endeared me to the hotel a little more.
When the maintenance chap came around to fix the lock he also noticed that the door was shutting a little quickly and loudly banging – so he asked if he could fix that at the same time.
When the power key didn’t work I was shown exactly how to get it fixed, and the response to that (and all my calls in fact) was immediate.
When housekeeping came over with shampoo they made a point of bringing two (just in case, they said).
And finally when my fuses were reset housekeeping also brought with them a spare hairdrier, just in case that was the problem, and they showed me how to flip the fuse back on if it happened again (it did 10 minutes later).
Now obviously I would have preferred not to have called up about these issues at all; but things go wrong, that’s life. Each time I called up I was assisted in a caring and helpful way.
As a guest in a hotel I don’t need perfection, but I do need to be treated with respect. I think you’ll find most customers are the same, and the way you can attend to a complaint or problem can either endear you or alienate you.
Kirsty Dunphey is one of Australia’s most publicised young entrepreneurs and is the founder of www.reallysold.com - the ultimate tool to help real estate agents write amazing advertisements. The youngest ever winner of the Australian Telstra Young Business Woman of the Year award, Kirsty started her first business at 15, her own real estate agency at 21, was a self-made millionaire at 23 and a self-made multi-millionaire at 25. For more information on Kirsty or either of her books – Advance to Go, Collect $1 Million and Retired at 27, If I can do it anyone can, or to sign up to her weekly newsletter head to: www.kirstydunphey.com
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