Does anyone ever listen to customer feedback?

I’ve just returned from a beautiful holiday in Kerala, India. Kerala is now overtaking Goa on ‘Indian destinations for a leisure beach break’ and Kerala Tourism’s presence at World Travel Market 2010 was quite prominent within the Asia pacific division. Bearing this in mind, you would have thought Kerala Tourism would have briefed the popular hotels and tourist attractions in Kerala on providing immaculate service, especially the ones mentioned in its hotel guide which was handed to me at WTM.

I clutched this hotel guide protectively with me whilst on my travels as 3 of the hotels we were staying in were detailed in it. I was proudly showing it off to my parents and telling them all about the hotel before we arrived to each. Being promoted by Kerala Tourism I was expecting bliss with 5* service and facilities. As a travel PR, the one thing I felt I wouldn’t need to do on this occasion is to check Trip Advisor and as our itinerary had been booked by a top end travel agent I trusted them completely. How. Wrong. Was. I. After the second hotel that missed our 5am wake up call, along with other mishaps, I decided that i needed to seek comfort and unity from TripAdvisor to see if other’s had written the same.

TripAdvisor users confirmed our observations but there was nothing we could do now. I wanted answers instead. Challenging the hotel staff was something they weren’t used to and offered measly excuses as to why they missed our wake up call. One excuse used was, ‘we tried to call but your phone was broken’. Gobsmacked! If they knew it was broken then why did they not run to our room and knock on the door (it was only a 35 room resort, not really the London style 750 bedroom hotel!).

A few hotels later we stayed at one which took over an hour to serve us 3 dishes of food. No one came to check on us or let us know the food was on its way. When we asked, the staff said 10 more minutes – it turned out to be 20 more. When the bill came we were ready to kick up a fuss again. The experience of being in a luxury holiday resort just wasn’t as tip-top as we had expected it to be. When quibbling the bill the waitress stood there with a moody look on her face – maybe she wasn’t used to confrontation by tourists? We asked to see a manager which took another 10 minutes. The manager looked like a waiter (at this point I had no clue what kind of circus act we were part of), who shockingly stood there and shrugged his shoulders, showed no authority and said that we must pay as the bill has gone through the system and that he could offer us a discount the next day! I was more than happy to act out my reasons for not paying in full and after much hard work reasoning, we were allowed to bypass the drinks bill.

Upon checking out of the hotel I wrote notes in their proud guest book and whilst waiting for the driver, I had a peek at previous comments.  Comment after comment mentioned various versions of the poor service in the restaurant. Shouldn’t comments like this be a kick to the management to get their staff fixed up and providing the 5* service their guests pay for? Reams of TripAdvisor feedback said exactly the same. This was poor. Very poor.

So in light of this experience – I want to know, how many travellers take in the feedback from TripAdvisor when booking and how many hotels actually look at the feedback they are being given and act upon it and make changes.

Also, maybe Kerala Tourism needs to reassess the hotels it promotes or have stern words with them.  Kerala was a beautiful country and I will highly recommend it as a destination but I offer 3 pieces of advice when travelling to India:
1. Research on TripAdvisor as it will probably be the truest insight you will receive
2. Travel companies have ‘favourites’ and there is a fair bit of ‘back hander’ business being carried out for comission, so challenge the hotels they pick for you
3. Always wear a seat belt in India – driving around is like one big bumper car race!

Shivani