Hotel Customer Service – The Beginning

J.D. Rowland, Sales and Marketing Manager of Sunshine Inn

It amazes me how two businesses that offer similar products in the same town can both start off at the same time and one will take off and the other may get by, but eventually will fail. Being in business in the first place means you want to be the successful business, the one that attracts customers and continues to grow and prosper. I have experience in making that vision a reality. In this article I will demonstrate how we at the Sunshine Inn have made ourselves the top hotel in a saturated market in under a year.

Know Your Customer

It is important to identify who is coming in to your establishment. It is the responsibility of all our staff to make sure and great every guest they see and ensure that the guest is having an enjoyable stay. This helps us to build a quality relationship with our customers and makes them feel welcomed. We also encourage them to ask our guests what brings them to town, as this often allows us to learn more about them and to understand what is bringing people to town, and how we can tap into that market. Just the other day we had a gentlemen come in to the hotel and while checking him into his room I learned that he was working on a project for a major company in the region and through discussions with him was able to learn about a major market that will be opening up quickly. This has allowed us to make the proper contacts to ensure we are in a good position when the opportunity fully develops. Often these chats with guests do not turn out as fruitful, but they have always helped us to connect with our customers, which is what makes us successful.

Invest in your business

For any business the lifeline is customers. It is the same for Ford Motor Company as it is for little Billy’s lemonade stand. If no one shows up to buy what you have, then you are sunk. We have adopted the yes mentality at the hotel. If the customer needs something, our answer is yes we can. Over the winter there was a storm in our region and a flight going to another town was diverted to our airport. The passengers showed up at our hotel understandable upset because they weren’t at home, and most of them did not have much in terms of overnight gear because they were planning on being home that evening. We got them all settled, handed out toothbrushes and other supplies and made sure they were all comfortable. It was shortly after this that an elderly woman came down and said she needed to go to the store to buy some medication , as she had run out. Rather than make the grandmotherly woman walk the 2 blocks in the 30 below temperatures I took over the duties at the front desk and had the assistant manager drive her to the store. Fifteen minutes later they returned. She with her much needed medicine and the hotel had gained a fan for life. Not a customer, but a fan. To this day we still have her card on the wall with the other thank you cards, all hung with care. These are the experiences people talk about. Taking the extra step to ensure satisfaction is our niche.

JD Rowland is the Sales and Marketing Manager of Sunshine Inn – Northern British Columbia’s only boutique hotel. With hotels in Smithers and Burns Lake, the Sunshine Inn caters to the business traveler throughout Northern British Columbia. For more information on Sunshine Inn call (250) 847-6668, visit
www.sunshineinn.ca or email
sunshineinn@ymail.com.

Short URL: http://northernbcbusiness.com/?p=1068

Posted by oneadam on 11:27 am. Filed under Business Advice, North West, Smithers, Uncategorized, Viewpoints. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry