1. The document discusses different types of guest complaints in hotels, including attitudinal complaints about staff attitude or service-related complaints about the quality of service. 2. Attitudinal complaints occur when guests feel unwelcome or unimportant due to staff attitude. Service-related complaints focus on issues with the hotel services. 3. It is important for staff to be trained to identify hints of guest dissatisfaction early to resolve issues before they escalate into formal complaints. Properly handling complaints can help turn unhappy customers into loyal ones.

1. 1Guest Complaint
Content
Introduction ……………………………………………………………………..3
Customer and Customer service…………………………………………………3
Guest Complaint…………………………………………………………………3
Categories of Guest Complaint……………………………………………….....4
Attitudinal Complaint……………………………………………………………4
Service Related complaint………………………………………………………..5
Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………….5
References……………………………………………………………………..…6

2. 2Guest Complaint
Guest Complaint
Introduction
The main purpose of this project is to stimulate the consciousness of the need to be effective in
our effort to enhance the delivery of unparallel customer service. As we strive to identify and
explain the elements associated with the topic we observe what others have to say about it. This
is what (Mr. John Russel, President, Harly Davidson) says “the more you engage with customers
the clearer things become and the easier it is to determine their needs. (Mr. Bill Gates, Founder,
Micro Soft Corporation) also think that “our greatest source of learning should be from our most
unhappy customers. Which means make every complaint a lesson? Our own chairman (Mr.
Gordon Butch Stewart’s) philosophy is to give the guest more than he or she expects. Thus,
explain the fact that every successful business has a standard that serves as their foundation on
which their customer service and problem solving technique is built.
Customer and Customer service
According to Reizenstein (2004)”customer is the recipient of a good, service, product, or idea,
obtained from a seller, vendor or supplier for a monetary or other valuable consideration”. The
term customer service is defined as “anything to do for the customer that enhances the customer
experience” (Harris, 2000).
Guest Complaint
Customer has his needs (such as to feel welcomed, important, understood, recognized, to receive
assistant) and rights (such as to be wrong, to be informed, to receive fair treatment, to expect a
resolution to complaints) to be served by the service provider. Which when is not met leads to
dissatisfaction of the customer. Displaying of this dissatisfaction can be termed as guest
complaint

3. 3Guest Complaint
Categories of Guest Complaint
1. Attitudinal complain:- occurs when guest feel unwelcomed, unimportant by the attitude
of the hotel staff. For ex- “The waiter was rude”, “Front office agent was not
welcoming”, “Operator was unfriendly”etc.
2. Service Related Complaints:- These complains targets the service of the hotel. For Ex-
“Food is blunt”, “Server missed my order of side of French fries”,” Operator is not
answering my phone”
3. Mechanical Complaints: These complaints deals with equipment malfunction. For Ex-
“My ac is not working”, “There is no hot water in bathtub”, “No signal in TV”.
4. Product Related Complaints:- these are associated with tangible aspect of the hotel. For
Ex- “These furniture looks worn out”, “There aren’t enough umbrellas at the beach”,
“Snorkeling gears run out very quickly at the dive shop”.
Attitudinal Complaint
According to Bittner and Smith (2000) attitudinal complaints arises when a guest observes rude
behavior or feels ignored by the hotel staff for ex- “The Front Desk staff is rude” or “Waiter is
not accommodating”. As a frontline staff whose task is to deal directly with the guest on a daily
basis, it is critical to understand that the sole purpose of him being there is to serve each guest
with courtesy and a smile. Hence, a situation that should be considered as norm is often
misinterpreted as a scenario that ultimately leads to a complaint about the attitude of an
employee from time to time. A prime example of such a situation is, a guest showing up for a
meal on closing time at a restaurant. The attitude of the host/hostess can make this situation as a
big complaint or a lifelong memory for the guest. If he is dealt with in a warm and friendly
service manner and explained about timing afterwards, and being provided with something by
making an exception he will always remember the service of the hotel staff and praise it, on the
other hand if the guest is turned away without even being provided with an alternative he would
not only remember it, but also share his unpleasant experience with more people than in the case
of a good experience. Guest complaints are important non-transactional events, because they
represent critical turning points in the hotel’s relationship with its guests (Blattberg, Kim and
Neslin 2008). They are an everyday reality of business in virtually any and every industry and
are typically recorded and stored in different formats based on company to company, making
them easily accessible to managers and everyone involve in strategy making process. How
complaints are handled (i.e., the recovery) marks the “acid test of a company’s customer
orientation” (Homburg and Fürst 2005) and may have far-reaching positive or negative
consequences for the hotel’s relationship with its customers. An extraordinary recovery may turn
complaining customers into loyal ones and generate more goodwill than if the failure had not
occurred in the first place (Hart, Heskett and Sasser 1990); an ineffective recovery can leave
customers feeling even worse about the company and drive them to leave (Bitner, Booms and
Tetreault 1990).

4. 4Guest Complaint
Service Related Complaints
Complaint can be defined as a social confrontation that has been initiated to adjust perception
and the outcomes, either in short term or in long term (Sturman et al, 2011). Service related
complaints are the guests’ dissatisfaction over the hotel service or customer service. For ex-“The
service is slow”, “The food is cold”. So, when the service failure occurs guests are forced to
chose two options, either communicating the complaint to influence the service delivery or to
leave the service exchange without having their expectation met. For instance, a guest
approaches the bar and ordered cocktail and request a specific spirit, the bartender just served the
last bit from that bottle and realizes that he needs to get another bottle, without communicating to
the guest. He just left; meanwhile the guest is waiting and become edgy because he is waiting for
the drink that should have been served within few minutes of ordering it, causing him to be
dissatisfied with service.
With Service related complaints, the key dissatisfying elements leads to visible initial acts that
can be identified, if trained well and can be resolved before it leads to complaint. Sturman et al
(2011) suggests that these hints can be categories into five segments of hinting (body language),
Seeking confirmation (asking questions), blaming and accusing (confrontation) emotional
display (anger, sarcasm) emotional statement (showing intense anger or disappointment).
The staff should be provided with training to identify these elements of service so that they can
handle guest dissatisfaction before it escalates to another level. The guests should also be
encouraged to complain if he/ she are not satisfied as it is the direct feedback and recovery can
be done instantly to turn their experience around.
Conclusion
In customer service understanding the customer comes first hand when dealing with a
dissatisfied customer. Secondly, categorizing the complaints is an effective way not only to
handle the situation but also in a long run to formulate the plan of improving and putting
procedures in place to enhance guest experience. Identifying the guest complaints has helped us
to realize that customer service is an awareness of customer’s needs, satisfaction and most
importantly customer retention.
“It is not enough just to make a sale instead we should aim to make customers that will make
customers and this is done by not just performing well but so well that the customer not only
come back but will bring a friend on their way back”. Donald Trump

5. 5Guest Complaint
References
Blattberg, Robert C., Byung-Do Kim and Scott A. Neslin (2008), Database Marketing:
Analyzing and Managing Customers, Springer
Bittner, Robert and Smith, Jennifer (2000), Lodging Management Program, American Hoteland Motel
Association.
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April
2015
Harris, E. K. (2000), Customer Service -A PracticalApproach, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall,
2nd Ed., p. 2.
{ http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1934385} Accessed 3rd
April 2015
Hart, Christoffer W. L., James L. Heskett and W. Earl Sasser (1990), “The Profitable Art of
Service Recovery”, Harvard Business Review, (July-August), 148-156.
Homburg, Christian and Andreas Fürst (2005), “How Organizational Complaint Handling Drives
Customer Loyalty: An Analysis of the Mechanistic and the Organic Approach”, Journal of
Marketing, 69 (July), 95-114.
Reizenstein, Richard C.(2204).” Customer”. In Stahl. Michael J. Encyclopedia of health care
management. Sage eRefrence,SAGE ISBN 978076192654-0
Sturman,C.Michael, Corgel,B.Jack, Verma,Rohit(2011), The Cornell School of Hotel Administration on
Hospiatality:Cutting Edge thinking and practice, John Wiley and sons
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Sturman, Michael, Ford Robert, Heaton, Cherill (2011), Managing quality service in hospitality: How
organizations have achieved excellence in the guest experience. Cengage Learning
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