How I improved my customer rating & review

My property is located in North Kerala, India - the land of “Theyyams”.
My guests love to be in my traditional Kerala home, experience our culture and traditions and get a snapshot of what was the life of Malayalis centuries back.

As part of maintaining guest centricity, we have a process of going through reviews and feedback of my guest. Initially, we were also happy about their feedback. We really felt that we are simply awesome when it comes to the guest experience. But later, we realised that there is a “wow” and enthusiasm missing in their review. But there are no bad remarks too. We were perplexed and decided to closely observe and study guest experience.

Later, we discovered that local exotic Kerala cuisines does matter when it comes to superior experience tourism. For us, that was a big roadblock and became a reason for constant worry. Even though I knew people with culinary skills and they were ready to deliver the food on the event of an order, still there were a lot of missing links. One of my major concerns was ,

Which channel is easy for guests to place an order? Order taking via calls take away the experience part, because of the language problem. Rather than simply placing orders, guests love to know more about the dish, ingredients and what more. Apart from these, placing orders via calls may lead to guest grievances like unanswered calls, not meeting the guest relationship standards etc.

So, to sort all this problems, we are convinced that a simple and reliable technology solution that can add to customer experience is the way out . This takes away the additional burden of dispute management , training of personnels and reduces the expense as well .
Before scouting for solutions , we finalized our approach to adoption . It would be that of evolution .
We started with a QR code menu . We listed down all my culinary partner dishes , details of the dish and generated a QR code .
We printed the QR code on a ethnic Kerala style stands and placed on all my rooms and other amenities where guest hang out .
This QR code menu was later developed to a webpage and then intgrated to communication platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram and We chat .
This helped guests to navigate through detail pages of dish , get an idea about dish , and place an order via whatsApp or Telegram . This was absolute delight as it was very simple and convenient for my guest and culinary partner as both parties already have a habit of checking their messaging application.

Finally, my guests are happy and giving us good ratings as they are getting a superior experience. I realise now that, guest experience cycle will be complete only if we include the rich taste of local cuisines. And the only way to do it even in our absence is to build a simple and reliable system, which can complement to the overall guest experience.

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Is now the time for me to ask how I can do that for my listing?

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Sounds good, and with one of the many free QR code generators out there, it’s so simple almost anyone can do it.

We use QR codes for WiFi, different language variations of our house manual and guides to local restaurants and bars.

Oh Brian, it’s so simple I’m fairly sure you’d get the hang of it quite quickly :wink:

JF

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Finding the chef for the Kerala cuisines is going to be the hard part.

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After all the continuing COVID cooking for myself, I’d love to have a Kerala chef handy. I’m sure that with their coastal cuisine they’d quickly add new twists to Alaskan seafood. :wink:

I’ve been thinking about making a quick list for guests of restaurants within walking distance, since Alaska’s best sushi bar is a 3 minute walk, and there are at least a dozen restaurants within a ten minute walk. Adding a QR code that links to their menu is a good idea, since everyone has delivery since COVID (DoorDash bombed here with late deliveries, but a local service works fine).

Yet another addition to the to-do list.

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That works really well. Our restaurant list is set-up by distance. There’s 6 sections. The first section being a quick walk, the second is a committed walk, on and on with the last section being a worthwhile long drive.

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We have (lucky us) dozens of restaurants, cafes, coffee shops and ice cream parlours within walking distance. If a guest asks me to recommend a restaurant it can be tricky. They might love Italian and hate Greek. They might adore seafood but not like French food. It might not be the cuisine ‘we’re looking for somewhere that’s quiet and romantic’ or ‘is there anywhere we can eat outdoors by the water?’

So it’s important for hosts to know the dining options in their area and keep up to date with closures and openings.

I never recommend a restaurant if I haven’t eaten there because if the guests hate it for some reason, it’s your fault. :roll_eyes:

But I like to add a personal touch to the recommendation - ‘this place first opened its doors in 1936, real history’ or ‘try the tarte tatin, I love it’ or ‘ask for Davide to serve you, he’ll recommend the day’s specials’.

All local restaurants are listed in our guide book but in-person recommendations are often mentioned in reviews and are more personal.

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I am old fashioned, or maybe just tech challenged, & have all local restaurant’s menus in their suite. I often give recommendations, but steer away from any negative comments.

I had a rack of menus, tour brochures, and maps in the hallway, but it became empty when Air recommended minimalizing having stuff around that guests could touch.

Yeah, except that was overkill and mainly hygiene theatre and based upon the modicum of knowledge available at the time. Even from the beginning of this pandemic, the science showed that the virus didn’t remain viable on porous materials like paper and cloth for more than 24 hours. To contract Covid from a brochure, the last person to touch it would have had to cough or sneeze on it and the next person rub the brochure around their mouth or nose, basically.

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I’ve made a list and have menus. Unfortunately their hours and offerings change a lot. It’s been very helpful that now most guests are very savvy about searching restaurant details including hours, reviews, and locations on their phones. I’ll probably be retired from Airbnb hosting before I master QR codes.

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I’ve removed the above URL as it directs to a non secure site.

JF

For some reason it was back. So I’ve re-deleted.

Is posting links are prohibited in the forum saw many people posting links in their post, just shared the link since many people enquired about the service.

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Commercial ones, yes. The site owner doesn’t object to links to news reports and so on but in general doesn’t want people to use this site for free advertising.

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This will probably get worse before it gets better.

Local dining Facebook group posting yesterday was a restaurant asking customers to be patient and not abuse staff because their prices had increased and they were using temporary menus with fewer items.

They were having trouble getting lobster, oysters & other seafood. Plus when they do get it, it is much more expensive than a few weeks ago. The lobster supplier was closed due to a Covid outbreak. Recent hurricanes had basically shut down getting oysters from the Gulf of Mexico.

Due to lack of staffing restaurants with late hours & open 7 days, are now open 5-6 days and stop serving at 8:30.

My favorite restaurant is closed for 2 weeks due to a Covid among staff.

This isn’t going to end any time soon. So wise to encourage guests to look online for hours & menus

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okay saw many amazon affiliate links in some post thats why asked.

The two owners of this site may have posted some of them to defer some of the costs of running this forum. They also have a specific thread where members can post items they recommend as useful to other hosts.,

okay understood, am new here so not clear with the rules :slightly_smiling_face:

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No problem - we were all new once. :slight_smile:

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