4 Tips On How To Deal With Difficult Hotel Guests

In this quick guide you will learn how to deal with difficult hotel guests efficiently and quickly.

Be extra vigilant to ensure that you don’t mix up the toast and the fried bread!

Quite simply, good attention to detail from you and your staff will make sure you never mix up the normal and decaf tea ever again.

Make sure the guests’ rooms, as well as the communal areas, are all clean, comfy and cosy – you want them to feel relaxed at all times.

Also, when you advertise your boutique hotel online, make sure that any images you use are a realistic representation of your guest house.

Use a good photographer to capture all of your hotels best sides but be honest – don’t grab a view of southern Italy and claim it’s the view from your rooms, you’re just going to give your guests something to complain about.

Despite your best efforts, some guests will undoubtedly find something that’s not what they expected and they may want to take it up with you in person. This means that you’ll have to be well-versed in the art of customer service and come ready to negotiate.

Be sure to know your hotel and its workings inside out.

You want to be ready for almost any question that your guests could possibly think up.

You should also decide what your stance will be when a customer confronts you, what your policy is on compensation and how you will validate a complaint.

If guests do seem set on leaving you a bad review, get your free review response examples and reputation management downloadable guides.

When difficult guests decide to make a complaint, it’s important to think about your tone of voice, staying polite at all times and choosing your words carefully – especially if the complaining guest is quite animated.

The golden rule to remember is to stay calm, even if they’re not.

One small secret tip is that you don’t necessarily have to agree with everything that the complaining customer is saying – especially if you feel that some or all of what they’re saying is unfair.

A better way to diffuse the tension is to:

1) acknowledge what the customer is complaining about,

2) Try to shift the conversation on to the resolution.

You’ll hopefully have prepared an outcome for as many complaints as you could think of, so try to bring the topic on to this, so as not to draw out the length of the discussion.

It might seem like a bad thing to receive a complaint, but if you handle it with grace, you can flip their negative experience into a positive one.

Whenever you receive a complaint, this gives you a good chance to test out and improve your customer service skills.

Be sure to also take the nature of the complaint on board and look to improve whatever it is that went wrong for the guest. If they didn’t have a great sleep for example, you could look into buying a better mattress or a bigger bed.

Whilst receiving a complaint may seem like a daunting thing, you can see it as an opportunity to hone your customer service skills, taking on board the criticism and using it to give your guests better experiences every time they come and stay with you.

We understand that dealing with difficult guests can be time-consuming, which is why we developed our award-winning software.

eviivo Suite™ and especially the Guest Manager feature is specifically designed to help hotel, B&B, guesthouse and vacation rental owners, saving you time and money so you can focus on winning over those tricky guests. to find out how eviivo suite can give help you manage your business.

Book a demo to find out how eviivo Suite™ can help you manage your business.