How to deal with complicated guests and avoid bad reviews?

How did you end up having such a complicated guest at all? Sure, one always shows up from time to time to challenge everything you’ve chosen to stand for so that you can recommit. But if it is more often than that, investigate what is it that you promise that makes them have wrong expectations?

Today's post has three characters:

• Stinky spirit, featuring your complicated guest,

• Chihiro - the saviour, featuring your team and

• River spirit, featuring your ideal guest.

This is how I see it.

Moral of the story: It is not about having more guests but having the right ones. To host only easy going guests, continue reading.

Stinky spirit featuring your complicated guest

Let's review your guests. Are they easy to serve or needy in general?

Many small hotels rather focus on what is happening on the market and how they can catch up instead of focusing on their guests' needs. When you are following the competition and what things are currently popular in industry, you might be getting some notions about global trends, but is this what really serves you? If this is what you are doing too and the best way to check is to see if your guests are taking too much effort, you should start looking into the demand and who you can actually serve well.

Focusing on your current guests, on the other hand, gives you so much power to conclude what you can do better now and if you are going in the direction you actually want to go. Beside getting to know your guests better, the first insight will be whether of not that guest is your guest at all. You might be booked with the guests you did not have on your mind when you were creating the whole concept of your hotel. And this is exactly why it is getting difficult.

So, how would you describe your current guests? Who are they usually? Yes, all those demographic characteristics but also get specific, think about actual guests, do you see some patterns?

It might sound normal to you that everyone are needy and always expect more. You may even started to believe that people can never be satisfied fully. This is true only when you are dealing with the wrong group of guests, the ones that belong to some completely other hotel. This is not the case when you are booked with your people, the ones who enjoy your hotel and approach fully.

If this is familiar, let's think about everyone who are NOT your guests yet. Think about them in stages of how likely they are to become your guests, e.g. some may never heard of you, others have but would unlikely pick you out of all other hotels in area, some have you on their wish list, etc. Eventually, circle the ones you would really like to host and work with regularly, no matter how far or close they are to actually staying with you.

Ask yourself, what connects all these people, both my current guests and potential ones? Instead of focusing on how much they are all different and what their individual needs are at this stage, try to conclude on similarities and collective expectations. Why do you think you can serve them well? What connects you and the concept of your hotel with these conclusions on their preferences, values or attitudes? Now, merge these insights with your brand image.

See these people in your hotel. What would they need, want, expect while staying with you? How do you need to change and in which direction you need to go in order to meet these? In this moment, you will be moving towards them but also towards implementing your true values in new, fresh and bolder ways. Read more about implementing your values in this post.

Eventually, revise your offer. How your offer fits these new people, your ideal guests? What is it in your current offer that you can reduce, increase, eliminate and create so that it fits both your concept and your ideal guests? More on this later.

How can you save the day?

Find that itch!

Once, that monstrous guest is there, complaining about things, not getting what they expected, you have to save the day and LISTEN.

Yes, listening is number one thing you should do. Try to understand them. This will not only help you deal with them but it will also reveal you what you communicated wrong or not clear enough in your marketing to attract them. Finding more about what they expect is excellent opportunity to conclude where in your messaging on any social network, online platform or any other way you made them build such expectations.

Obviously, I was inspired by movie Spirited Away by genius Hayao Miyazaki, but for those of you who did not watch it, the girl called Chihiro baths the monster, thought to be Stinky spirit, while working in the bathhouse in The Spirit World in order to break the spell which turned her parents into pigs. During the bath, she discovers that there is an itch in the Stinky spirit's stomach that is polluting the him while in fact it was a beautiful River spirit.

This took courage, curiosity and patience. This is exactly what you need to do too.

Train your employees to listen, understand the guest and investigate how they can help instead of judging and pretending to care. Learn them how to ask productive open end questions, be curious about guest's perspective on a problem, stimulate them to express themselves and describe the situation as they see it. Train them to search for hidden information, the one negotiators call the black swan. This will give you the answer on how to escalate the whole situation, solve the problem and make them leave happier than what it seamed possible at the beginning.

All these insights will definitely lead to resolution of the situation but the most important result will be clarity about the cause. What made that guest think they can expect some thing from you, how you managed to promise something you never planned to provide without realising you are actually communicating it, etc.

Extreme ownership

They will leave but you are to stay.

This is the moment to recommit. Would you choose the same values you stand for, today as well? Would you run the exact same concept today as well? Would you hire the same people today as well? And no, this is not exaggerating, you can, and should, literally go through everything and ask yourself if that thing is still on brand today and if you would choose it again today. Refine your offer. Who is it made to fit today?

Is everything in your current offer just right for your ideal guest, the one you concluded on in the first step, or is it there to provide diversity for everyone including your wrong guests? The point is not to be for everyone and have content that will entertain many different types of guests. Maybe this was popular once, but today the value is created with the specific guest in mind. Everything is made to measure for that one guest. So the question is again, what can you reduce, increate, eliminate and create in your offer?

Reduce everything that it is not completely connected to your concept but you want to offer because that is what people are used to (e.g. food and beverage facilities, entertainment, wellness, etc.). If something is very far away from your concept and values, it doesn’t belong there, therefore you should opt to eliminate it. That can be widely spread buffets, spas as a must or music and entertainment. It all depends on your concept. On the other side, what can you increase that is right to the point of your values and story but you haven’t done it because it felt too much off-topic (e.g. cooking classes, personal chief, nanny that teaches your children, etc.). Eventually, what can you create and present at the market that you may not have seen before but feels necessary and natural to your concept (e.g. ice cream making experience, dance classes, no stuff, rent a pet opportunity, etc.)?

It is always the right time to recommit to your values, systems and ideal guest. Only when you have the values chosen in such way to truly be your unique selling point, you can create the systems that support their execution and book with the right guests.

I invite you to share your business wisdom! Tell us, how well your online ratings describe the reality? Comment bellow.

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