Time Magazine ran an article recently titled, “Why Is Everyone So Rude These Days.” It’s worth reading for a little perspective. The article points out that for about half of the people who roam the planet these days, the pandemic has made them especially rude and difficult to please. In other words, they are out there roaming around with a big chip on their shoulders. The other 50% may still be hopeful, so that’s the good news. And we certainly get our share of these happy people who are very thoughtful and appreciative. But we all have to realize, customer service these days has taken a big hit.
Before the pandemic, we received reviews from 85% to 90% of our guests–all very positive reviews. But once the pandemic started, the world has certainly changed. Our review rate has dropped way down and the amount of care we’ve put into our operation and the very nice additional (and often free) services we’ve provided have gone way up.
In my opinion, people just seem way distracted, busy, over stressed, etc. Leaving a review is likely at the bottom of a guest’s priority list. Any type of encouragement (or remainder) might be taken as a burden or hassle.
When the pandemic hit, obviously stress levels went way up. Once things freed up a little for travel, I would have thought that people who were able to travel would feel blessed and be very appreciative of what they were able to do and experience. But in reality, things have swung the other way.
Over the past year, many guests just have forgotten all kinds of manners and we’ve also certainly seen just about every bad behavior that one could imagine with some guests. Not leaving a review is an easy one to brush aside. We’ve experienced everything from full out domestic disputes, to complaints of “I’ve been cheated by a local driver”, to complaints of how expensive everything is, to huge physical messes to clean up, to broken furniture, stolen cell phones, every type of rude behavior imaginable, no tips for staff (we have full service staff at our villas), etc. And the list goes on and on. Little of this we experienced prior to the pandemic. So for us, the Times article is spot on and it’s nice to at least hear other top professional in the hospitality industry bring this up.
My thinking is that these days about the best you can is to provide a little encouragement for guests to write up a review after their stay. But anything else will likely be perceived as a nag. A little reminder now and then is good because people are very busy and extremely distracted.
We had a guest recently who forgot to pay the balance of their stay. It was due a few months before their stay but they just kept ignoring payment requests. They were sent reminder notice after notice but just keep ignoring everything. They also forgot to get their Covid test (this is required to travel to our country in the tropics) and they never got around to filing out their travel registration with our country. So, because they wouldn’t be able to travel and stay with us, we had to cancel their reservation a day or so before they were scheduled to stay with us. This was all brought on because of their negligence, even though they were reminded multiple times. Of course, because they were cancelled, it was all our fault.
Being a host these days is not easy.
