The hotel experience

A friend once told me that a hotel is only for convenience and does not make a travel experience. I beg to differ.

Hotels, nowadays, are being built and primed to be destinations by themselves, and there are even stand-alone resorts that can even make up for a so-so destination. They add up to an attraction by having amenities and unique features that improve the overall experience like a waterpark. a mall, or a Michelin-star restaurant.

What do I look for in a hotel experience? Firstly, it is the service. To mention that service is a luxury speaks true to itself even when luxury brands or homegrown brands fail to provide; but, there are also times that middle echelon brands rise up to the occasion by giving that momentous unexpected fulfillment of your needs and then you suddenly feel important.

To feel important — now isn’t that a key element in a vacation that you are looking for? Short of saying that every staff member should have ESP to be able to serve you without taking too much time or effort on your part, a caring attitude should suffice. How many times have I waited on a room service request in a luxury hotel? How many times have I been greeted with a stiff greeting like you are not a guest but an intruder?

One of our latest experiences involved a leakage in the air-con vents of a luxury hotel. To make it short, the engineering’s solution was to put towels on the floor to address the situation. No one in the front office suggested a kinder offer of changing rooms and since we were so tired and sleepy, we let that go.

Another situation involved an air conditioning malfunction (again). That time, the 2 maintenance people took the chance of discussing office matters while doing their job, within earshot. As it took an hour to finish, we had updates of the private lives of their co-workers.

On the other hand, there was this waiter in a hotel in Vietnam who approached me while I was having the breakfast buffet. As he probably noticed the maintenance meds I have lined up on the bread and butter plate, he approached me and asked, “Sir, would you want some water for taking your medicine?”

In a restaurant outlet in one hotel in Clark, I noticed a lady staff who always made it a point to see if my glass was filled with water as she noticed that I was enjoying my spicy “laksa”.

We cannot just rely on the old playbook of standard solutions and stopgap measures just to let the day go by. Employees should be empowered to act like how they would do it as if they are in their own households. Hotels must be ready to gain market share, enter new markets, offer new products and provide from-the-heart solutions should be top of mind to get that cutting edge.

Buddy G. Recio

Alden Joshua Cedo

Pinky Forte Kelly Austria

Dolly Dy Zulueta Carlo Suerte Felipe

Stanley Ong