Transcript excerpt from a YouTube interview (Mark Simpson with Dino Tartaglia) about managing guest expectations and handling negative reviews in hospitality. Discusses practical measures (pre-warnings, signage/instructions), an anecdote about a boiler/water issue, and introduces the "value equation" (value = benefit / cost) as a framework for setting expectations and improving reviews.
Chapters
Go on to our reviews on TripAdvisor. We do very well because of our location, because of who we attract. It's very family friendly. We get a lot of really nice reviews. And I think that our problem was is that we took our eye off the ball. We sort of just masked that water problem. So when it came along and we got a one star review and we had really upset guests, we didn't really know how to react. Now I'd like to think that we've got things in place now that we do pre warn people staying in these rooms about the water. But I'd be really interested. For all of your experience and what you've done over the years, how would you have sort of put that proposition to the guests before they booked or made it clear that they were getting.
Certainly my experience of there's two bits to this. Yeah, I think what I'm probably gonna do is talk about a concept that'll kind of open up the conversation a little bit at the back end of this. But a direct approach which is looking at the processes and setting expectations, which is kind of key because whilst people aren't sheep necessarily, they can be directed and you can set expectations, but also understand where the expectation needs to be set so that it kind of matches. So I was staying in Gdansk in the north of Poland a while back and I hired a through booking.com, i had a short stay for five days cracking little place, a little two bed just off the center of the town. And it wasn't exactly the same, but there was an issue with the boiler charging up the water and getting it hot for the shower. So in Polish and in English on the shower and on the doors I came in and on the instructions which I never read when I check in at short stay was a little notice saying, listen, if you get in the shower, here's what's going to happen. And because I knew that I was absolutely fine with it, maybe somebody else wouldn't have been. But in terms of my expectations, I was all right to follow that direction because I've been told had I stumbled across that. Yeah. I might be leaving a one star review as well. Yeah. So what this leads nicely into is what we call the value equation. So for the mathematically minded amongst the listeners, what that is is value equals benefit over cost. Yeah. And if you look at the the mathematical relationship between benefit divided by cost, the lower the cost is, the bigger the benefit is and therefore the bigger the value is.
In an industry like no other, we hundred percent rely on those reviews. We rely on reviews for algorithms. We rely on reviews for social proof. We rely on reviews to get more guests and customers coming through our doors. And if you can do that, then you're more likely to experience getting those really good reviews. That is then going to help you move forward in the business. Now, Dana, there are so many.
