How Minor Hotels Combined Effective Tools and Processes to Increase Guest Satisfaction

In hospitality, it is often intuitive, rapid and reliable service recovery that makes the difference between a good stay and an exceptional experience. As part of its commitment to making that distinction, the Minor Hotels brands sought out the tools and supporting processes that teams needed to meet the company’s goals. The tools needed to help team members identify guest needs and issues while on site, as well as spot priority areas for longer-term operational and service improvements, all in a seamless and automatic manner.

Luxury hotels may offer more or less the same amenities, room standards, or product features. To really standout, the whole experience from A to Z needs to be special. That is what the combination of the ReviewPro tools helps us to do.

-Marcus Christiansen, Director of Operational Excellence, Minor Hotels

Team members are fully trained according to the company SOPs which are supported by the ReviewPro tools. In keeping with the company’s entrepreneurial spirit, issues are dealt with at the property level rather than at the corporate level. The company believes that hotel teams know their guests best and provides the training and empowerment they need to keep guests happy.

Method: GSS In-Stay + ACM

In-stay surveys are employed to help guests communicate needs or complaints while still on site. This real-time feedback enables Minor Hotels’ brands to act quickly and provide elevated service in the moment rather than having to wait until after the guest has checked out to report and manage complaints. With in-stay feedback timeliness is very important, so the company implemented automated processes and procedures to react quickly, efficiently and consistently. By integrating ACM within-stay surveys, Minor Hotels brands ensures that no issue is left unattended.

“Knowing what our guests like and sometimes maybe don’t, in a precise, fast and concise way, is key for us to read and understand trends. This in turn allows us to apply tweaks where necessary.”

-Thomas B. Meier, Senior Vice President Operations Asia Minor Hotels

Here’s how the system works:

1. Guests who stay for three nights or more are sent an email on their second day at 10 am with a single question: ‘How satisfied are you with your stay so far?’ They are asked how they would like to be contacted (or can specify that they do not wish to be).
2. All responses to in-stay surveys trigger the creation of a case which is sent to the relevant hotel workgroup(duty managers, heads of departments and hotel manager). The case must be followed up within 20 minutes to prevent it from being escalated to the General Manager.
3. By using the ReviewPro mobile app the hotel teams can receive alerts, assign cases, leave case notes, or resolve cases all while on the go.
4. The guest is always contacted in the manner requested at the initial touchpoint. If they do not want to be disturbed team members will wait until they are out of the room to attend to any in-room requests. The hotel always leaves a small token of appreciation and a thank you note to guests who respond to the survey.

“Sometimes guests prefer not to raise an issue face to face with the team during their stay, so it’s not until after they’ve checked out that we hear of what could have been improved. At this point, it is often too late to activate good service recovery. In-stay surveys are an unobtrusive service intervention; a discreet and efficient way of catching and resolving any needs or potential problems before our guests checkout from the hotel.”

-Marcus Christiansen, Director of Operational Excellence, Minor Hotels

Method: GSS Post-Stay + ACM

A post-stay survey is employed to identify any issues during the stay, respond to the issues, and use the information for longer-term operational improvements and service changes.

Here’s how the system works:

1. The day after check-out the guest is sent an email survey.
2. Each brand has a different survey, but all include the Net Promoter Score (NPS) question, a question about overall satisfaction, and a question about whether the guest experienced any problems during their stay. If the guest gives an NPS score between zero and six (detractor) or between seven and eight (passive), a case is automatically triggered for team members to respond. If the guest indicates a problem, a case is automatically created for that department’s workgroup.
3. Each departmental workgroup has 12 hours to add any information to the case before a coordinated response to the guest is sent, including why the incident occurred, how the team responded, and what remains to be done.
4. Once the information is added, the case is automatically escalated to the ‘Guest Response’ workgroup who refer to the notes when responding to the guest. This group has a maximum of 24 hours to respond. All detractors and passives must be responded to.
5. If the guest is not responded to within 24 hours, the case is automatically escalated to the GM.
6. Guest survey responses are filtered using PMS data. This means that the company can pinpoint complaints coming from specific room types, room numbers, or guest types (such as company or nationality) to make longer-term operational and service improvements.
7. Minor Hotels brands also have a TripAdvisor collection program in place in order to increase freshness and volume of reviews and boost TripAdvisor rankings.

“ReviewPro is a great tool for senior management who have limited time. With ACM’s escalation rules each active user receives exactly what they need to know.“

-Marcus Christiansen, Director of Operational Excellence, Minor Hotels

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