hotel front bait & switch · 2007-06-02 17:00
If you’re going to be designing (or, more and more in my case) critiquing customer experiences, you need to have a lot of customer experiences – and over the last few weeks, on holiday, I have. Tavernas, restaurants, hotels, airports, museums, conferences, shops, pubs and products. It’s very hard to provoke an extreme reaction these days – kinks are designed out, and nice things are businessed out.
But I’ve just had one. I’ve been in Copenhagen for Reboot (which was, once again, a splendid conference, a nice mix of talks, and great attendees). I decided to stay at Hotel Front, as it seemed like a nice place to spend the last few days of my holiday, and was slightly cheaper than, say, Hotel Fox.
Go and look at the (Flash, natch) website. What expectations does that set up?
This is the room I was originally given:
At best a one-star dirty travelodge experience. I could have had the same experience for probably less than half the price in one of the dodgy hotels round central station.
So I remembered something on tripadvisor about asking for a refurbished room. So, after one night, I did:
Which is a moderately nice 3 to 4 star hotel room (with a few chi-chi boutique stylings, such as a spotlight on an apple placed on your pillow). A completely different experience.
I just can’t work out the business logic on this one. The opportunity cost of putting anyone in such a bad room for their stay is huge, especially these days with sites like tripadvisor. I come to Copenhagen quite a lot for both business and pleasure. I’m sad because Hotel Front had a lot going for it – friendly staff, free wifi, even a free basic minibar (water, Coke and beer), but now I can’t and won’t recommend it to anyone – both because I think it’s bad business practice, and because it could tarnish my reputation by association.
Thing is, there’s loads that the hotel could have done to mitigate the situation (apart from not use the rooms at all, which still seems the best option). If they really can’t operate as a business without those rooms, there’s ways to manage and help the customer experience:
They could have been upfront about it – mention that there’s unrefurbished floors on the website, offer them at a different rate (even free if they can’t offer you a refurbed room until the next day).
Or offer them as a very different experience – fill the minibar with everything, say it’s free, and that you’re allowed parties in your room (which is alluded to in the Front literature already). Even give it a different name. My first room was a lot bigger and had a nice balcony, which would be great for entertaining.
Also, keep them spotlessly clean – my first room had mysterious stains, and some far more stomach-turning things – and definitely offer the better experience wherever possible – the first room had no bathrobe and toiletries as promised on the website. It’s as though everyone in the hotel had given up on these rooms.
Totally baffling.
comments
Yes, it’s all about managing expectations, isn’t it? I booked a very cheap deal in an ‘olde worlde’ hotel in Stratford on Avon last year, and the Tripadvisor reviews moaned about how bad the bathrooms were. It was unbelievably shabby, but the room itself was a Tudor wet dream with low beams, wonky floors, funny little windows, and I knew about the bathroom in advance, and it was dirt cheap, so I lived with it. But otherwise, would have been disappointed.