Hospitality Case Study the Most

Hospitality Case Study The most memorable hospitality experience that I have had actually started out as a very negative situation. We checked into our hotel on a very hot evening and we were pleased to walk into a room that was nice and cool because the hotel had turned the air conditioner on prior to our arrival. However, we noticed almost immediately that the air conditioner was extremely loud.

It was more than just the normal sound of the unit blowing air; it was a rattling noise because something inside the air conditioner was obviously scraping against something else. Initially, we were hoping that it was something that could be "fixed" by simply giving it a sharp tap on the side with a hand but that didn't work at all.

We tried to turn it off and turn it back on to see if that might work, but it didn't and the noise continued as soon as we turned it back on. We called the front desk and told the person who answered the phone that our air conditioner worked but it was much too loud. She apologized and explained that the hotel was planning to upgrade to a centralized air-conditioning system that would be quieter.

I had to explain to the girl that I am familiar with traditional single-unit air conditioners, that I was not talking about the ordinary noise from a typical air conditioner working properly, and that there was no way we would be able to sleep with the air conditioner running. I took the phone closer to the window and I held the receiver next to the air conditioner so that she could hear the scraping and (now) the loud squeaking for herself.

She immediately apologized and said that she would send someone from maintenance to our room to fix it. When the maintenance person was unable to fix it for us, the front desk supervisor apologized and informed us that we were being upgraded to a suite at no charge and the rest of our stay was perfect after that change. The experience started out negatively and could have become a very negative experience for us.

For example, the hotel could have apologized but informed us that they had no other rooms available. They might have offered us coupons for a subsequent stay or for free meals but that would not have been a satisfactory solution and would have resulted in a much different outcome, particularly with regard to the five dimensions of service.

Because the hotel handled the situation in a way that genuinely resolved the problem satisfactorily and provided us with the hospitality experience we had paid for and expected, we provided positive word-of-mouth feedback to others. For example, we left a detailed comment on the website where we had booked out stay explaining that we were impressed with the way that hotel management responded to and resolved our problem.

Just as we felt motivated to reciprocate for the good customer service with public positive feedback, we would probably have felt the exact opposite if they had failed to do so. The moment of truth was when the front desk people realized that the problem we reported was not just a minor complaint or just an example of customers being too picky or demanding. It was fairly clear that the hotel personnel immediately empathized with our situation and that they felt obligated to rectify the problem for us.

The wrong response would have been to tell us that we should just try to live with the noise for one night until another room like the one we booked became available or to turn off the air conditioner when we wanted to go to sleep and then turn it back on in the morning. In addition to being insulting (because nobody needs to be told that they can do either of those two things), that type of response would have conflicted with any demonstration of reliability, assurance, or responsiveness.

There were both tangible and intangible elements to this issue: the obvious tangible element was the discomfort of having to (either) sleep without air conditioning or try to sleep with the horrible noise; the intangible element was the impression given by the hotel staff about how seriously they took our complaint. The hotel was responsive from the start, such as by sending a maintenance person to our room within a few minutes after we called about the problem.

When the front desk supervisor called back to change our room, she told us that they had no other rooms like the room we booked but they were going to upgrade us to a suite because they had one available. That demonstrated both assurance and reliability because it indicated that.