The Broken Customer Experience of the Hotel Type Accommodation
— You need to fill this form Sir, he said
— Certainly, I replied with zero enthusiasm but compliant, as I was writing “Sagrada Familia” as my home address in a two-paged form with more than fifteen fields. I guess I wasn’t really in the mood to start an argument at 1 AM in the morning after a late arrival caused by a delayed flight.
I had my fair share of hotel stays in 2017 (mostly across Europe and US). This made me realize how non-user centric they operate their business and design their systems (even some of the biggest hotel chains in the world).
Most of the times hotel management seems to think good Customer Experience is just about having a bigger TV in your room or more pillows on the top of your bed, rather than focusing on the entire guest journey.
I’m highlighting below some of the pain-points (analog or digital) experienced across the customer journey*. I’m not a pretentious guy, a clean room and a place to sleep will do, that’s why my rant here is not related to a number of stars, the TV size, the products in the mini-bar or the density of the pillows.
1. Check-in: Personal Data Gathering
Asking your customers to fill a huge form manually when they check-in, is a shitty experience. Firstly, check-in should be as fast and smooth as possible. When you arrive at your hotel late at night the last thing you want to do is spend unnecessary time at check-in. Heck, even if you don’t arrive late at night, the last thing you want to do is spend unnecessary time. Secondly, if you want to gather personal data at least follow the GDPR recommended practices (like purpose limitation) and explain to me what the hell are you planning to do with my home address? During 2017, I filled as a home address on these forms places like Sagrada Familia or La Pedrera (what can I say, I’m a man with architectural taste).
Apart from the form, another thing I observed is that many times the check-in process is lengthy not because there’s a big guest queue but because the reception staff themselves need to go through a lot of complicated steps in their systems until they can provide you the key.
2. Check-in: Payment
When trips are booked by the company or a travel agency there can be all sorts of little annoyances. The form sent by the travel agency to the hotel can have some missing data (e.g. the company card details) which could mean you need to pay yourself for the accommodation and expense it later. Not the end of the world and not entirely the hotel’s fault, but another area where things can be improved.
— Please swipe your card for incidentals.
Heard this countless times. You have my company’s card details on record why you want to block $200–$300 on my personal card just in case I smoke in the room or I destroy something. This amount can take up to 2 weeks to be released back on my debit card after I check out. You are blocking huge amounts of money daily on cards from all customers “just in case” something happens, while in reality, the number of incidents must be really small. I get it, you want to cover your back, but there must be a better way.
3. Finding your room
Most of the times at check-in, the staff places your key card in a little paper where they manually write your room number. If you stay in the same hotel for 2 weeks, that might work as you only need to remember one number, and eventually, you will memorize it. When you do 10+ hotels in 2 weeks, that’s more than ten, 3–4 digit numbers you need to remember, a new one almost every day. After a while, all these numbers will mix in your head. Multiple times my reply to “what is your room number Sir?” was “Sorry, I don’t remember”. That’s when you need to provide your surname so they can check you up in the system. The solutions for this can be multiple and as simple as attaching somehow your room number to your key card.
A great CX is much more than having a website or an app that works well. It can be about things like how easy to understand is your signage and way-finding in your elevators or corridors.
Pro Tip: Take a photo with your phone of your room number as soon as you check-in.
4. Your room — one size fits all
Most of the hotels don’t have any type of room personalization.
All blankets are tucked in, which for a 190cm tall individual (like myself), is annoying. The first things I do when I enter a hotel room, I untuck my blankets and get rid of all the pillows. Every single time. George & Lupe would understand.
And 8 pillows on my bed is excessive. Usually, I don’t sleep with an entire football team in my room.
If you want to use data somehow, do it for personalization and to enhance the experience — but be transparent about it, give me the choice, don’t opt me in by default — not for sending me shitty spam.
5. Connecting to Wi-Fi
Sometimes I use hotels close to airports as I need to go in an out as quickly as possible. As these are usually in the middle of nowhere, it happened multiple times not to have network coverage on my phone. That’s no calls, no texts, no emails, nothing. That’s when free wi-fi is not included and they charge like 15 pounds for 24 hours of slow wi-fi, because they know you’re out of options. Now, connecting to wi-fi is an entirely different story with all the landing pages and infinite forms. Let’s gather even more data which we have no clue how to use.
Some do get it.
I did have good experiences in a few hotels though. I remember one particular hotel in Boston where at reception they have a big collection of vinyls you can choose from and bring up to your room which is equipped with a record player and Marshall speakers. Apart from the cool vibe, it seems like they pay attention to details.
Your keycard is placed in backstage-pass-like necklace that you can put around your neck and have it with you (room number is placed there as well, so you don’t have to memorise it!).
Conclusion
The disjointed Customer Journey in the hotel industry — similar to other complex industries like health, transportation, etc. where the user is taken through multiple touch-points both digital and analog — is symptomatic of different departments being in charge of different things with little or no communication between them.
What to do
- Involve a cross-department team in your design process.
- Analyse the customer journey —Think from a system design perspective, identify the steps in the journey and understand where the customer is being underserved, where the pain-points and frustrations arise.
- Understand your customers (develop personas) — try to map their goals behaviours and motivations.
- Ideate — it’s very unlikely that a unique solution will fix all your problems, so be generative. Try to resist thinking exclusively digital, sometimes simple analog solutions solve problems well.
- Prioritise — map ideas on an opportunity map and look at dimensions like business value, user value or technical feasibility to understand which are the quick wins, which are strategic initiatives and what should be de-prioritised.
- Prototype & Test — find the appropriate form of prototyping depending on what the solution is. If the solution takes the user through multiple touch points, a storyboard or a prototyping environment work better, while for an app or a digital solution an InVision prototype is more appropriate.
*This isn’t meant to be in any way an exhaustive customer journey mapping exercise. I’m just highlighting some of the main pain points experienced from a single point of view. Also, my experience with hotels starts usually at check-in so this piece doesn’t cover any steps in the customer journey (like awareness or consideration) prior to check-in.
