Playbook, hotel
The guest is upstairs and the duty manager is downstairs
A hotel complaint has a property that almost no other trade's does: the person complaining is usually still on the premises, and there is somebody on shift twenty yards away who can send an engineer up, knock on the door above, or move them to another room tonight. That changes what a good reply is. It is not an apology and a promise to look into it. It is the shortest route to the desk, before the night ends and the complaint becomes a review.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for complaints holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The complaint arrives while it is still fixable. A cold shower at ten at night is an engineer, a spare room and a solved evening. The same complaint at ten the following morning is a conversation about money.
- There is a duty manager on shift holding authority the assistant does not have and must not imitate: moving a room, sending housekeeping back up, taking a line off a bill. Naming that person and the route to them is most of the value of the reply.
- A noise complaint is a complaint about another guest, so the answer cannot describe what will be done about them and must never promise that anybody will be spoken to.
- These arrive with a review threat attached more often than in any other trade, and the reply has to read identically whether it does or not, because two guests comparing warmer and cooler answers is a second complaint with evidence.
How it arrives
- the room above us has been stamping about since midnight
- our room hasnt been made up today
- the shower is running cold can someone come up
- we asked for a quiet room and got put next to the lift
- i want to speak to the duty manager
- the room is nothing like the photos
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Who is on shift and how a guest in the building reaches them | The desk extension from the room phone, the duty manager, who covers overnight and from what hour, and what each of them can actually do. A guest with a problem tonight needs a person tonight, and a chat window is the slowest route inside the building. |
|---|---|
| What the front desk routinely puts right on the spot | Engineer callouts, a room move where something is free, housekeeping returning, a fan, an extra blanket, a replacement kettle. Written as what normally happens rather than as entitlements, so the assistant can say these things are routine without agreeing to any of them for a particular guest. |
| Housekeeping's actual servicing schedule | Which hours rooms are serviced, whether a stayover clean is daily or on request, what a do not disturb card stops, when linen and towels are changed on a longer stay. A high share of these messages are the published schedule working exactly as designed, and quoting it settles them. |
| The written complaints procedure for after departure | Who reads it, how long a reply takes, how a complaint is escalated beyond the duty manager, and what detail helps. Most hotels run this as a habit rather than a document, which is why a guest writing a fortnight later gets a different answer depending on who opens the inbox. |
The reply
That is worth getting fixed tonight rather than in the morning. The front desk is staffed and the quickest route is the extension on the room phone, or the number at the top of this page: the duty manager can send somebody up and look at what else is free [1]. I should be straight with you that I cannot send anyone, see your room, or speak to another guest on your behalf. If you would rather put it in writing, leave me your name, the email on the booking and your room number and it goes to the duty manager's inbox, but if you are in the room now the phone will be faster.
It puts the phone ahead of the form, because everything that makes a hotel complaint fixable is on shift and expires at breakfast. The limits are stated in one sentence rather than three, since a guest who has been awake since midnight will not read a paragraph of caveats. It never says what will be done about the room above, only that somebody with the authority will look.
Where it stops
The trigger. Any message from somebody currently in the building, any complaint naming another guest, and anything about a charge, a refund or a member of staff.
This needs the duty manager rather than me, and if you are in the room now the desk extension will be faster than anything I can do. Otherwise give me your name, the email on the booking, your room number and what has happened, and I will send it straight over.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never promise a room move, a free night, a refund or a charge taken off the bill, all of which belong to the duty manager and cost the hotel real money.
- Never say another guest will be spoken to or asked to be quiet, which is a statement about somebody else's stay that nobody here is able to make.
- Never tell a guest with no heat, no hot water or a door that will not lock to wait for a reply by email.
- Never answer more warmly because a review has been mentioned, since two guests comparing replies is exactly how that becomes a second complaint.
Questions
- Should it try to resolve a complaint at all?
- On anything published, yes. The housekeeping schedule alone settles a fair share of these, because the guest is describing the service working as intended and nobody ever told them what it was. On anything needing a decision about a room or a bill, no, and the reply should be short.
- Can it alert the duty manager?
- It emails a name, an email and a message to the address you nominate and stores it. That is an inbox, not a pager and not a radio call. For a guest in the building the phone number has to be in the reply itself or the handover has misread the situation.
- What about a complaint that arrives a fortnight after the stay?
- That is the one where the form is right. Ask for the dates and the room number in the wording, because a complaint without them has to be traced through a month of arrivals before anybody can even start on it.
Keep reading
- Everything for a hotelRate inclusions, check in times, parking and room accessibility answer well. Live availability and a named reservation do not.
- Handling complaints in generalThe job is to route, not to resolve. Acknowledge without conceding, name the escalation route, and get it to a person fast.
- You booked a room type, not a room numberCheck in from three, a room type booked rather than a room number, and early arrival as a request. Published answers shorten the desk queue.
- Changing the dates buys a new price, not the old oneA date change reprices at whatever the new night is selling at, an advance purchase rate usually cannot move, and an agent booking is not ours.
- Whoever took the payment is the only one who can send it backA prepaid agent booking is refunded by the agent, a released hold was never a charge, and a folio adjustment is not the same as money going back.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.