Innovations in the hotel survey of guests questionnaire. Questioning and handling guest complaints. Handling special requests

Hotels or similar establishments typically require registration, which includes confirming guests' personal information and providing a signature. For this procedure, a questionnaire is drawn up for the person arriving at the hotel. The template document has a standard form; an example to fill out is given below.

Regulatory rules

Guests are required by law to sign a register (or registration card). Also provide identification documents such as a passport or driver's license, which the hotel can copy and keep for its records.

All guests in the room are registered. If a family moves in, only one person is included in the register. Sometimes a questionnaire of a person arriving at a hotel may be required to provide a document to a government agency, for example, members of the police. Additionally, it can be filled in.

Identity verification

Employees are required to politely ask:

First name, last name and patronymic of the guest first, politely asking the guest's name.
Photo identification, such as a driver's license or valid ID from a reputable organization where the guest works.
If guests are from another country, the staff asks them to show their passport. The employee is authorized to politely ask any credentialing questions.
Copies of passport or ID are made to verify the occupant and prepare a guest database.

Creating a Registration Entry

When guests arrive at the hotel, the front desk staff will hand over a hotel arrival form to fill out the information. In the case of a VIP, the staff enters the information on the card and obtains his signature.

Staff then create a guest registration record, sign names, attach real copies of passports or other identification, and enter into the guest history file. The record is created as a registration in the software system.

Late registration

Check-in times vary depending on venue rules and regulations. Late check-in can be arranged through the hotel as long as guests make reservations in advance and arrange all necessary details. Hotels usually indicate a time, after which they expect arrivals to check in.

If an incoming traveler wishes to occupy a hotel room before check-in time, some establishments will charge for an additional day or treat it as the previous day's stay. However, most hotels will allow a response time (usually 30-60 minutes) upon request by the guest without any additional fees if he wishes to pick up the room before check-in.

Some hotels also have latest check-in times, often between 6:00 pm and 8:00 pm. They may then assign the room to someone else if the room is not paid for in advance or the guest does not call to indicate their arrival time. Venues often have a deadline for registration because the reception may close for the night. For the most cost-effective use of rooms in hotel room, the guest should try to get there around the hotel check-in time, leave or rent out the room at the time of check-out from the hotel. But this may not always be practical because arrival and departure times for flights or road trips may not coincide with hotel check-in and check-out times and for other reasons.

Setting up a payment method

You can pay in advance or at check-out. Those who paid in advance are whitelisted.

There are various payment methods, of which the mode that the guest prefers is recorded during check-in:

Cash (including money transfer).
Valid credit/debit card).
Direct payment.
Special payment such as gift card and voucher.

You must select one of the payment options during registration.

The establishment may require guests to provide a guarantee credit card to cover possible expenses such as room service or express check-out at the end of your stay.

Purpose of housing

After the person arriving at the hotel has completed the questionnaire and completed the registration stage, the staff will provide the room key.

Familiarization with positive attributes:

a bell to take guest luggage;
issuing key numbers or access codes.

A common practice is not to say anything loudly about the room number or computerized key when giving it to a guest. An employee of the establishment helps the guest with luggage and explains the features of the accommodation.

Handling special requests

If the check-in person is not satisfied with the accommodation conditions for any reason, the employee can inform the reception staff about this. Additionally, if a guest has special requests, such as a disposable shaving kit, front office staff are required to comply with the request in a timely manner.

We compose and analyze the guest profile

Ksenia Korzun

The desire to improve the quality of service is one of the key ways to gain a competitive advantage for a hotel. In order to solve service problems and find out the opinions of guests, you can use a questionnaire. But a boring gray form with standard questions is unlikely to give you the answers you need. Make the questionnaire useful and spend time analyzing it - improvements will follow.

It is rare to find a hotel that has not yet introduced guest surveys. As a rule, this is a single or double sheet, which is available in each room, “calling on” the guest to answer standard questions by choosing one of the options - “Yes”, “No”, “Probably”, or giving points from 1 to 10. However, , even if someone looks at a few responses from guests, not everyone carries out a qualitative analysis based on them, extracting the maximum information useful for the establishment.

The thing is that too much attention is not paid to the presence of questionnaires; they are partly turned into a formality. But it is from the questionnaires that you can find out:
- where is the weak point in the hotel;
- why the guest will no longer visit your hotel;
- how many people already see the problem that top management does not notice under their noses.

What is so important that you can learn from the questionnaire?

Firstly, who, if not your guests, will tell you how well the service staff works.

Secondly, you can trace both the work of one department and a specific person. For example, the hotel operates special offer, and the administrator, waiters or other line staff are not aware of this promotion. In turn, the guest asked about the offer, the staff shrugged their shoulders - and now your client is already dissatisfied. You can find out about this from questionnaire items such as “Service” or “General comfort”. But to do this, they need to leave an open question with the ability to add personal comments.

A low service rating may also indicate that the guest's expectations are not met. Director of the restaurant and hotel complex "Hetman's Fort" Alexander Vilkhovoy claims that it was the questionnaire that gave him the opportunity to understand why guests were dissatisfied with the standard of rooms. “The fact is that on the highway at the entrance to the hotel there was a billboard inviting people to come visit us. It showed our best number luxury, and also contained the phrase: “Rooms from 400 UAH.” However, guests were very often unhappy with the hotel, and I did not know what was wrong. Our rooms have had forms with the questionnaire for a long time. And so one of the guests left several of his wishes in the questionnaire: he wrote that the simplest rooms, which cost 400 UAH, and the luxury room depicted on the billboard, are “heaven and earth.” And he also noted that he was counting on a luxurious room for little money, but he received a very simple room,” says Alexander Vilkhovoy. Thus, from the survey it was possible to conclude that the expectations of guests due to incorrect advertising are inflated and do not coincide with reality. After this incident, it was decided to change the design of outdoor advertising. Photos of several rooms were added to the outdoor advertising and the price range was indicated.
“It is very important to pay attention to studying not only the basic needs that are included in the idea of normal service: a low level of mandatory services leads to customer dissatisfaction, and a high level does not guarantee the formation of a positive attitude. Therefore, special attention should be paid to those service characteristics that affect the hotel’s image, from the responsiveness and attention of staff to pleasant surprises for clients,” advises Alexander Krasnovsky, head of marketing research at the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.

When and what to ask
There is no general opinion regarding the time convenient for the guest to fill out the questionnaire. The only thing that can be said with confidence: the questionnaire should be offered at a time when the guest is in no hurry, has already lived for some time and figured out what he likes and what he doesn’t. “If the hotel provides free WiFi and requires a special code to be entered for activation, then at the time of activation you can offer to fill out an online form. If you look from the point of view of optimizing the collection of information, then the electronic version of the questionnaire has more advantages. Among them are the following: there are no costs for printing questionnaires and processing data; the electronic version of the questionnaire allows the use of a wide range of demonstration materials, such as photographs, maps or videos; The electronic form can be filled out at any time convenient for the client,” says Alexander Krasnovsky.

The questionnaire is different. It largely depends on how well the questions are formulated whether the establishment will receive the expected information or simply waste a ream of paper on printing out questionnaires. At the same time, the most common mistake is that the hotel employee responsible for working with guests, in order not to complicate his life, simply copies a sample from the first website he comes across. As a result, the guest will waste his time on answers that either the hotel does not need or will not reflect a particular problem area.

Let's imagine such a situation. A significant part of the hotel's guests are corporate business clients who spend time at business meetings, negotiations and conferences. The standard questionnaire includes questions about household comfort, quality of work of line personnel and general impression about rest. By analyzing the data, the hotelier will not receive key information for the target group, namely: the comfort and availability of audiovisual equipment in the conference room, WiFi connection and speed in rooms and public areas, calling a taxi, availability of information on train and flight schedules, etc.

Director of the Center for Marketing Analysis and Consumer Research “Run!” Marianna Olgina notes that for greater value in subsequent analysis of the questionnaire, you need to pay attention to:
- structure of the questionnaire;
- blocks of questions;
- methods for assessing and testing the questionnaire in a small focus group.
But you shouldn’t use your own staff as a “researcher”:
- firstly, hired employees will not always tell the truth about the shortcomings of the establishment (they can be fired for criticism);
- secondly, why add more work to yourself, because ultimately it will be the staff who will have to solve the problems discovered.

Note that ideally, a focus group could consist of 10-15 uninterested people who will spend a couple of days at the hotel and honestly express their opinion about all the identified advantages and weaknesses.

In other words, if you want to get really important and valuable information from a survey, pay attention to its preparation.
In addition, experts advise that you definitely think through the first part of the questionnaire - the appeal. For example, how do you address your guests? The most classic options are “Dear Guest” or “Dear Guest”.

According to the rules of business etiquette, an appeal should begin with words of gratitude for choosing your hotel and a request to answer the questions in the questionnaire in order to improve the quality of service. It should further be stated that the opinion of each guest is for the hotel important information. For example, some transnational networks publish a photo of the director in the profile and write an appeal on his behalf. This is done in order to emphasize the status of the profile and the status of the guest. But if the questionnaire is being developed by a small roadside hotel, Marianna Olgina advises not to do this. After all, guests rarely stay in such establishments for more than one night, and they simply will not fill out a 50-item questionnaire. The expert also advises chain and large hotels to moderate their curiosity and include only relevant questions in the questionnaire, so as not to take away the guest’s time to fill out a five-page manual. It is most practical to vary the questions by asking the guest about those areas of the hotel that seem problematic or that guests complain about most. For example, if complaints about service in a restaurant have become more frequent, the questionnaire includes questions about the quality of food, the work of waiters and the hall administrator.
The introductory part should convince the guest to take part in the survey and encourage him to answer the questions sincerely. It not only explains the purpose of the survey, but also shows how the respondent will benefit by taking part. It is better to place the introduction on a separate side of the questionnaire (if the questionnaire is submitted in booklet form). But you shouldn’t make the introductory part too long, because it can scare away the guest. And if possible, do not use phrases like “will help solve our problems”, “improve the work of staff”, etc. in the questionnaire.

Against his will, the guest may suspect that the hotel is not worried about better times, and management does not quite understand how to solve existing problems. Instead of the mentioned phrases, it is better to use the following phrases:
- “we take care of every guest”;
- “your opinion will allow us to always remain on top,” etc.

First block of questions. It is optimal to place questions about the guest. Analyzing common questions will allow you to understand who your target audience is. For example, it may turn out that the main guests are people who come on a business trip, or families with children. Based on such data, it will be much easier for the hotel to build an advertising campaign and conduct training for staff. “It would be useful to provide a so-called guest passport containing minimal data about him. Subsequently, you will be able to distribute all respondents into groups based on social, age, and professional characteristics,” advises Marianna Olgina.
For example, the expert says that the agency developed a questionnaire for the Parusnik Hotel in Nikolaev and subsequently analyzed about 1,000 guest profiles. As a result, it turned out that 76% of hotel guests are engineers who come to the shipyard and shipbuilding institute. After providing analytics on the questionnaires, the hotel revised a number of its services, introduced little things pleasant for guests and changed the advertising campaign. Director of the Parusnik Hotel Maxim Kopetsky confirmed the information from the marketer. “We have added in each issue landline telephone numbers for all scientific institutes, shipyards, and factories related to shipbuilding. They enhanced the “marine design” and also added a transfer around the city at prices lower than taxi services. In addition, we agreed on discounts with several enterprises to which our guests were sent,” says the hotel director.

So, the block of questions about the guest should contain the following data:
- Full name of the guest and his age;
- length of stay of the guest at the hotel;
- room number (in order to determine in the future, if necessary, who was servicing the room at that time);
- contacts: email address, phone number, etc.

In the same block of questions you can clarify the following:
- where the guest got the information and how he booked the room (on his own or through a travel agency);
- for what purpose the guest visited the city (in connection with vacation, on work issues, attending a conference, etc.).
Please note that next to each question in the questionnaire you must leave an empty space so that the guest can indicate his own answer. After all, very often it is impossible to provide for all possible answers; accordingly, the question will not provide the necessary informational benefit for the institution.

Second block of questions. Next, we recommend placing a block of questions about room comfort and technical parameters hotel. It would be useful to ask the guest, for example:
- is the room comfortable?
- do you like the conference room?
- whether the guest visited the fitness center and restaurant.

In the same block of questions, you can ask a question, for example, what, in the guest’s opinion, is missing in the hotel. To achieve maximum response efficiency, it is better to formulate some questions “semi-closed”, that is, with an empty line for the guest’s own answer.

Third block of questions. In addition, you can provide a separate block of questions about the quality of food in the restaurant. But general questions on this topic are unlikely to be effective. You can ask questions about whether the guest had breakfast, lunch or dinner at the restaurant, and invite you to evaluate the taste of the dishes, the variety of the menu and the atmosphere of the restaurant as a whole. We also recommend adding in the questionnaire a question about which local establishments the guest was able to visit and what he liked most. Subsequently, when analyzing based on this point, we can conclude in what ways the hotel restaurant loses to other local establishments.

The fourth block of questions is the most important. And finally, one of the most important blocks is about the quality of service and service personnel. Such questions should be divided into blocks according to departments and qualities being assessed. Ratings can be given on a five-point scale. HR Manager of the Utes boarding house Galina Uspenskaya claims that for them, the point in which the guest has the opportunity to highlight one of the hotel employees turned out to be very effective. Another important point is for general wishes and additional comments regarding your stay at the hotel. “Sometimes you can learn something that cannot be said within the framework of standard answers. For example, one guest wrote that the maid drank soda from his refrigerator. We did not pay attention to this point because it seemed absurd to us. But then another guest wrote the same thing, and from the number we determined that in both the first and second cases the room was serviced by the same woman. Naturally, we made appropriate personnel decisions,” Galina Uspenskaya shares her experience.

Evaluating the effectiveness of questionnaires
SWOT analysis expert, Candidate of Economic Sciences, consultant Pavel Prinko says that any profile should be created with the goal of extracting maximum benefit from it. So, first of all, you need to determine the purpose of the survey. For example, if the main objective- find out how efficiently the staff works, this block should be the most extensive, and the block on room comfort can be skipped altogether. After all, no one will fill out a questionnaire that is too long. Once the general structure of the questionnaire has been formed, each question must be clearly formulated. “Play with the sentences. Which sounds better? What motivates you to answer, and what question sounds unclear or ambiguous?” - the expert recommends. Whether you get an answer depends largely on how simple and clear the question is. In order to evaluate the quality of the developed questionnaire, put yourself in the shoes of the guest. Would you answer this question?

In chain hotels, questionnaires are unified; they are developed by in-house marketers or specialized agencies to order. However, an individual approach has many advantages.

For example, for hotels in Bukovel, points about the availability of apres-ski (rest after skiing) and the quality of the warehouse for storing skis, the convenience of leaving (checking in) on the slope, etc. are important. And for hotels in Crimea - location, convenience of hiking to the beach. It is best to test the questionnaire on 10–50 guests before ordering a large print run. Analyze which questions will remain unanswered - these are the ones that will need to be refined or removed.

What would motivate a guest to take the time to do this work for you? First - free time. But the hotelier cannot influence this factor in any way - the guest either has it or doesn’t. The second factor is prizes and gifts, lottery drawings. This option works almost flawlessly. This is how human psychology works - a nice little thing as a gift always makes you want to receive it.

As a rule, guest forms are placed in the rooms. But it is necessary to think through a system for motivating guests to fill out forms in advance. A small financial incentive - drawing prizes among guests (for example, free accommodation or dinner in a restaurant) gives good results. You can give each person who fills out the form a mini-souvenir, which will also serve as an advertising reminder about your hotel.

You should also ensure that staff access to already completed guest forms is limited. It is better if the maid does not collect the completed questionnaires (she will not let negative information about her work and the work of her colleagues pass above, and such questionnaires will not reach management). An alternative is to install a special box for questionnaires in the central hall of a hotel or restaurant, about which guests will be informed using signs and the questionnaires themselves.
Another option is to send the questionnaire to the guest by e-mail after his stay at the hotel. This way, you provide the opportunity to choose a time convenient for the person to fill out, and you receive all the data in already digitized form. However, the likelihood that a guest will fill out the form after some time is small. Still, you have a better chance of getting an answer from the questionnaire in the room. In addition, in the era of spam, a profile may be perceived negatively and immediately deleted.

Analysis of questionnaires
Analysis of completed questionnaires is what everything was started for. In order to convert guests’ responses into analytics (graphs, tables) and display statistics, you need to take into account several rules at the stage of developing questionnaires.
So, “closed” questions are considered the most convenient (answering which the respondent chooses one of the pre-prepared answers).
You can pre-code questions if you plan to prepare a quantitative study. Coding will translate the responses into a form that makes them easier to count and analyze.

But open-ended questions (the respondent is given the opportunity to write the answer himself), although the most informative, are difficult to analyze. These are rather emotional details, but they are not suitable for statistical analysis.

It is better to place simple questions at the beginning, and sensitive ones at the end of the questionnaire. Start the questionnaire with simple and understandable questions. After you “captivate” the guest, you can ask him more complex questions.

As already noted, a large number of questions and complicated wording can frighten a person. Gold volume - no more than two sheets.
Before creating a questionnaire, ask yourself again what you want to find out with the questionnaire, whether your questions are clear, whether the structure of the questionnaire is convenient, and whether you encourage your guests to fill out this questionnaire.

When a certain volume of questionnaires has been collected, you can begin to analyze the questionnaires for each block. It is more convenient for clarity to collect all the data and display general statistics. For example, if out of 100 guests 70 came with children, you should call your hotel a family hotel and think about additional services for children.
From the column on working with personnel, you can determine who should be fined and who should be rewarded. The questionnaire can act as a source for stimulating line staff (for example, the best maids can receive bonuses). If there are a lot of negative assessments in the questionnaires, but there are no specifics (answers to open-ended questions), it would be useful to initiate an internal investigation. Perhaps the whole team needs cleaning and shaking up.

Questioning allows you to pay attention to those aspects of the service sector that are visible only to guests:
- impartial assessment of the quality of services, including the level of service provided by accommodation services;
- room comfort;
- restaurant services, business lounges.

Only analysis of guest profiles allows us to identify special cases low level service, and also to find a trend in reducing the level of service for certain departments and for specific people.

A high-quality analysis of questionnaires will help predict the vector of staff work and plan the necessary trainings and courses.
For greater efficiency, it is better to conduct both quantitative and qualitative analysis of questionnaires. For clarity, you can build graphic images, for example, diagrams, graphs. But it is also not worth unifying all questionnaires. You should not select only numerical information. Pay attention to comments and answers to open questions. A certain amount of individual approach to the analysis of negative guest reviews should be present. It is better to respond to each specific complaint. Imagine how many such cases actually happen, because on average only one out of five guests fills out the questionnaire. But it’s also not worth spewing thunder and lightning at the maids for not spinning swans out of towels. Remember that every guest is different, and not all ratings are objective.

The result of the analysis of the questionnaires can be a comprehensive conclusion about the level of work of the hotel and a list of recommendations. For example, the boarding house “Utes” ordered an analysis of questionnaires from a marketing agency, which, based on the results, issued a whole list of recommendations. It turned out that the best channel for advertising is the Internet and radio, but printed publications for this boarding house did not “bring” a single client. The furnishings of the rooms satisfied the guests, but the renovation of the bathrooms caused complaints. Guests also complained that the parking lot was too small and high prices in a restaurant. Guests also asked to extend the restaurant's opening hours. Based on these recommendations, the Utes boarding house entered into an agreement with the neighboring paid parking, increased the restaurant's opening hours by 3 hours and renovated the bathrooms. He also redistributed the advertising budget. Galina Uspenskaya says that questionnaires are analyzed once a month (in high season) and once every six months in low season. At the same time, based on the results of this analysis, the necessary adjustments are constantly applied.

It cannot be said that questionnaires are an ideal method of evaluating work. Its disadvantages include:
- low response rate;
- frequent subjectivity of answers.

No one guarantees that a guest whose mood has been spoiled at work or during an excursion will not want to “come off” at the hotel, expressing his indignation for no reason on the part of the hotel.

If you receive too few surveys, consider increasing incentives (prizes, incentives or a bonus system for the guest) or reduce the number of surveys to a minimum. “Be specific about what you want to know. Find the middle ground between “asking too little” and “asking too much.” Why collect information that is not needed? But you shouldn’t cut off what you need. Skipping a key question can deprive you of the opportunity to find out something important,” advises Marianna Olgina.

First of all, you need to understand that a questionnaire is far from an ideal way to collect information. More precisely, for one type of information this is a very good tool, but for another it is better not to use a questionnaire - because... You will only harm the quality of information. Why is that? First of all, the questionnaire does not provide any meaningful sample; at best, 1% of guests fill it out. Moreover, it has long been known that guests who filled out questionnaires were either very upset by the quality of service or were delighted with it. That. we can say that in most cases, the questionnaires are filled out by emotionally affected guests, and everyone else leaves the questionnaires without attention.

It follows that it is possible to build statistics on questionnaires only with the caveat that only a few percent of emotionally affected guests will be included in the sample, and they do not reflect the opinions of even half of the clients. Conversely, if we understand that the guest is so motivated that he takes a pen and starts writing, then let's ask him to write more than just checking off the closed questions. And let him share his emotions, which we will treat in this way, and will not enter them into tables and display percentages. And in order to get a unique, non-standardized opinion of guests, questionnaires are an excellent medium.

Before drawing up a questionnaire, you should formulate the tasks that you want to solve with its help, and also write down all the questions that you want to get answers to. This is very important because... Your tasks and questions will definitely be unique, not similar to other hotels. There is nothing sadder than seeing the same questionnaires with typical questions in completely different hotels. Marketers simply copy questionnaires from competitors and mindlessly place them in their own home, not understanding why their hotel needs answers to these questions. Examples of unique questions and tasks:

- Is the hotel sign visible?
— is it clear to guests that there is food on the top floor? night club,
— whether the benefits of the loyalty program card are valuable for its owners,
— is the hotel website convenient for booking,
— find out the attitude towards the recently introduced practice of floating tariffs...

- give the guest the opportunity to express their complaints through a questionnaire while still within the hotel walls and not take them with them or post them online,
- give the guest the opportunity to leave their review and hope that management will read it,
- obtain contact details of negative guests in order to contact them,
- give the personal telephone number of the person responsible for relations with guests,
— get an assessment of the service in digital terms, which is difficult to do in other ways...

Once you have compiled a list of questions and tasks, you should review them to see if information can be obtained from other sources. The questionnaire should not be overloaded, therefore, when compiling it, there is always a struggle to reduce the number of questions. Therefore, if among the questions you listed there are those that can be answered from other sources, then these questions should be excluded. For example, there is no point in asking how a guest found you if your room management software has long implemented techniques to track the source of the booking. There is also no point in asking what country or city the guest came to us from, if this information is also available from the program.

After the questions have been selected, you can try to compose a questionnaire from them. At this point, you should list several rules for compiling a questionnaire for hotels:

1. There should not be many questions, otherwise the guest will not fill out the form. It is recommended to ask no more than 10 questions, but this is a relative number,
2. Personal questions, for example, the name or contact details of the guest should be at the end of the questionnaire, so that the guest does not have time to psychologically “close down” and refuse to fill out at the very beginning,
3. Questions should not be duplicated or contradict each other,
4. Hotel forms, in addition to the guest’s full name, must contain information about the room number and the date of completion. This will allow you to track the evolution of answers, make it easier to find the guest or the “guilty” shift in the hotel,
5. Hotel forms must be bilingual: Russian (or Ukrainian) and English. Moreover, I do not recommend making two different questionnaires - it is better to make one universal one with translation,
6. If the questionnaire is printed on two sides, be sure to draw the guest’s attention to this, because people often forget to turn the sheet over,
7. I recommend using one questionnaire to solve two fundamental tasks - evaluating the service and collecting missing marketing information. Therefore, you can do this - one side of the questionnaire is dedicated to service, the other to marketing,
8. Because a questionnaire is an opportunity to get unique feedback from a guest, I believe that every closed question (one in which answer options are given and you just need to choose the appropriate one) should be continued open: “why? _________.” This will allow the guest to express their unique opinion on a given topic.
9. To all closed questions, you should also add an answer option: “Other______________.” Thus, you will give the guest the opportunity to increase the number of answer options, because you might have forgotten or not known about something.
10. If you are using scoring options, explain somewhere on the form what you consider a good score and what you consider a bad score.

Following these rules, coupled with the spelling rules, you should receive two documents: a service evaluation questionnaire and a marketing questionnaire. The service questionnaire should include closed-ended questions with multiple-choice answers in the form of points. Such answers are then easily collected into tables, analyzed and compared. I propose a five-point system, because... it is understandable to all solvent ages in the post-Soviet space. At the end of such a question, I always ask the question: “why?____” to give the guest the opportunity to explain the low or high score.

1. How do you evaluate the quality of the reservation department? / How do you grade efficiency of our reservation department?
x1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5
Why / Why ________________________________________________________________________________

As for the marketing questionnaire, there is no single standard for answer options to closed questions, because options may be different. But here you should also leave the opportunity to expand the list of answers.

After this, you should fill out the questionnaire and do trial completions yourself and with the help of colleagues. At the registration stage, you will encounter difficulties and may decide to reformulate some questions to simplify the registration. When filling out a sample, you may find typos or ambiguity in understanding.

After you have tested and double-checked your questionnaire, it should be printed in quantities sufficient for one layout, no more! That is, if you plan to distribute it only in numbers and you have 100 numbers, print exactly 100 questionnaires and distribute them. At this stage, you should not order a large print run from the printing house, because... After the first completed questionnaires are returned to you, and you try to analyze and systematize their results, you will definitely find errors in the form or come up with additional questions. It’s one thing for you and your colleagues to check the questionnaire, and another for guests who understood a question in two ways and answered not what you expected from them. For example, when asking how guests would react to the inclusion of breakfast in the room rate, you forgot to clarify that this entails an increase in rates, and the guests, naturally, suspiciously approved of the initiative. Or the guests decided that the questions were duplicated, although you meant, as it seems to you, different things: in one question they wanted to find out an opinion regarding the work of the medical center as a whole, and in the other, to find out the attitude towards the work of the medical staff, because you have a template task - to evaluate all services. So do not rush to take the order for printing questionnaires to the printing house, but rather test it on guests.

After that, do not forget to collect them and analyze them. Never scold the maids who deliver questionnaires from your rooms because they have poor performance indicators on the questionnaires, otherwise the indicators will improve dramatically :). If allowed technical means, make an electronic questionnaire that will be sent to the guest’s email address a few days after his check-out. This is generally a very effective method that has many advantages: the guest has time to cool down and gives more objective answers, analytics can be automated, and the risk of losing the questionnaire or hiding it by hotel staff is eliminated. Don’t forget to contact the authors of negative surveys and pay special attention to those in which guests answered “no” when asked whether they would return to us again or whether they would recommend us to their friends.

And most importantly, the questionnaire is a unique way to get a written answer to any non-standard question. So don't be afraid to experiment.

Questionnaire

If observation is used for exploratory research, then survey is more suitable for conducting descriptive research to identify customer preferences. Questionnaires or survey-interviews are quite labor-intensive methods of collecting information.

First, you need to clearly define the purpose for which the survey is being conducted. What exactly do you want to know? Based on this goal, questions are thought through. There should not be too many of them - after all, the client, unlike a focus group, does not receive compensation for his participation in the survey, and therefore agrees to help out of his own free will, which should not be abused.

The questions included in the questionnaire can be closed-ended, with a pre-given list of answers, or open-ended, where the consumer describes the sensations in his own words. The first type of questions is easier to process, but the second provides more food for thought. It is recommended to place easy questions at the beginning, more difficult ones at the end of the questionnaire. And in any case, you should not ask something that the guest does not know or that he will not want to answer. This may reduce the value of such a survey. This research method can also be used for “self-criticism.” In this case, the questionnaires are filled out by service personnel.

And while some experts believe that self-criticism is not the best way to evaluate the quality of services, others are of the opinion that if the corporate culture encourages the expression of honest opinions about shortcomings and ways to eliminate them, this will work, since people are often afraid that expressing a negative assessment may make them worse position and therefore remain silent. If the fear of criticism of the system goes away, the company can receive a powerful resource for its development. The main thing is that the corporate culture prevailing at a particular enterprise encourages constructive proposals.

Complaints with guests.

Unforeseen situations often arise in life, which can subsequently develop into conflict. Working in the hotel business requires the ability to resolve any situation without leading to conflict. Despite the fact that it is not always possible to prepare a hotel employee for emergency situations, he must clearly understand how to behave in order to satisfy the client’s complaint and not spoil the image of the hotel or the guest’s impression of the city. Whether it is a large hotel or a mini-hotel, complaints should be handled in the same way.

Guest complaints can be divided into 4 types: complaints about equipment or furniture (air conditioning, lighting, water supply, elevator, etc.), about the attitude of hotel staff, about service, about unforeseen circumstances. Any of them can be solved in 4 steps.

Step 1. First of all, you need to listen carefully to the guest, find out about all his complaints and the reason for his dissatisfaction. Each problem must be approached with all seriousness and in no case should it be said that the problem is insignificant (even if it is such). Under no circumstances should you take complaints personally, because the guest is not reproaching you, but informing him that there is something he is not happy with at the hotel. Never argue with a guest and try to keep your face as friendly as possible. It happens that guests who have complaints speak too emotionally. As a hotel employee, you need to remain calm and clearly identify the problem. If you are unable to solve the problem yourself, you must inform the manager about the incident, and then report to the guest about the progress of the solution. Remember, in this case you are personally responsible, and the outcome of the event depends on your behavior.

Step 2: The guest must be informed of the actions being taken at every step of the way. If you cannot contact your manager, you must also report this: “Dear ***, I will report the current situation to the manager/supervisor and we will solve the problem within 10 minutes.” It is advisable to inform the manager in the presence of the guest.

Step 3: The supervisor or manager should contact the guest and let them know that they have been informed of the situation. The supervisor/manager should apologize and offer an alternative solution or bonus from the hotel. Typically, as a bonus, guests are provided with relocation to a superior room with the same cost, a discount on accommodation, a free transfer, and free accommodation (if the problem is truly global). If the problem has not been resolved, you must report it to CEO.

Step 4. After reporting to the General Director, the hotel administrator should ask the guest whether the problem has been resolved, and then make an entry in the journal. Any situation should be resolved within 24 hours.

Unfortunately, these seemingly simple rules are not always followed. But it is they who would significantly increase the rating of hotels and hotel business in Russia as a whole.

Result: - our guests will be calm and confident that their problems, complaints or requests will be resolved and satisfied quickly, competently, reliably and sincerely

- you will be pleased and satisfied with your work and confirmation of your professionalism
- guests whose problems or complaints were quickly and competently resolved and satisfied can become regular guests of the hotel.

To confirm the second and test the third hypothesis (the most significant HRM practice in which cross-cultural factors should be taken into account for hotel workers who have direct contact with guests is staff training (and, above all, cross-cultural training)), it is necessary to go To results of a survey of hotel workers.

When conducting semi-structured interviews (which can only be considered pilot), it was not possible to get acquainted with the opinions of all hotel employees who have direct contact with foreign guests. As a result of the survey, it was possible to interview 89 employees, including 70 those who have direct contact with guests, which is 78% of all respondents. The composition of the interviewed respondents is presented in Table 4.

Table 4. Department

Of course, when assessing the representativeness of the sample, it is important to take into account the length of service of the hotel employee. In this case, the opinion of those who have been working at the hotel for more than a year and those who started working less than a month ago was taken into account. This approach in identifying respondents allows us to take into account the opinions of those employees who have been working at Novotel for a relatively long time and those who are still adapting to working in a hotel. As can be seen in Figure 1, most of the respondents have been working at the hotel for more than a year. Consequently, the majority of respondents can already objectively evaluate the HRM practices (adaptation, training, incentives, etc. of personnel) of the hotel.

Figure 1. Period of work at the hotel

Among all respondents, 4% of respondents occupy management positions, which also accounts for 67% of the total number of managers at the Novotel Moscow Center hotel (Figure 2). Therefore, in this case, the opinion of the majority of hotel managers is taken into account and the research sample is representative.

As already mentioned in the results of semi-structured interviews, when conducting interviews for HR specialists, knowledge of a foreign language is not the main selection criterion. Let's check at what level the respondents speak foreign languages (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Proficiency in foreign languages

As can be seen in Figure 3, 30% of respondents are fluent in English. 24% speak English at a conversational level (understand and speak well), 9% can explain themselves. The rest speak other foreign languages.

Front office employees interact with guests the most. It would be interesting to find out at what level, for example, do department administrators speak English? Of the 14 front desk administrators who responded, only 63% (5 people) are fluent in English, 28% (4 people) understand and speak well, and 1 person responded that they could communicate in English. I would like to note that in job description As a Front Desk Administrator, fluency in English is a mandatory requirement. However, only 63% of administrators speak English fluently.

Since Accor is a French hotel chain, it is interesting how many receptionists speak French. It turned out that 2 administrators understand and speak French well, and 1 administrator can explain himself. 1 administrator understands and speaks German well, and 1 administrator can communicate in German.

The survey results also revealed that the majority of respondents most often interact with guests from France (14%), Spain (13%) and the USA (11%) (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Frequent guests

At the same time, most often difficulties arise with guests from India (21%), China (17%), Spain (15%) and France (12%) (Figure 5). This confirms the need for hotel employees to speak more than just English.

Figure 4. Difficulties with guests

An interesting question to consider is what kind of difficulties hotel employees encounter when interacting with foreign guests (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Difficulties when working with foreigners

Despite the fact that the majority of respondents identified India as the country whose representatives most often encounter difficulties, the results of the answers to the next question differ from the previous ones. As a result, it turned out that 30% of respondents are faced with the fact that the guest can only speak his native (non-English) language, which the employee does not speak (for example, Spanish). 20% of respondents answered that it is difficult for them to understand English language a guest from non-English-speaking countries due to the presence of a specific (national) accent (for example, Japanese).

It is also interesting to study the question, which categories of foreign guests most often experience difficulties - group or individual tourists? For 42% of administrators, difficulties most often arise with groups of tourists; for 29% of administrators, difficulties arise with both groups and individual tourists. The remaining 29% of administrators noted that problems arise with both groups and individual tourists. Therefore, it makes sense to pay attention to the system of serving group tourists. You should find out exactly what problems arise with groups foreign tourists: language barrier or any cultural characteristics that are difficult to take into account without possessing certain skills. A continuation of the study of this problem could be to identify difficulties with each of the groups: what difficulties most often arise with groups of tourists from Spain, China, etc. Why India is the country with whose representatives problems most often arise, etc.

As has already been revealed, the language barrier is one of the main difficulties when serving foreign guests. Thanks to the survey, it was possible to find out which languages are most often needed when working with foreign guests, as well as which foreign languages employees would like to learn additionally for more successful work with foreign guests (Figure 6).

Figure 6. Languages required for work

As can be seen in Figure 7, the following languages are most often needed to carry out work: English (48% of respondents), French (22% of respondents) and Spanish (20%). This is because English, as mentioned earlier, is the international language of the hospitality industry. Since Novotel belongs to a French hotel chain, it is reasonable to assume that the most frequent visitors to the hotel are from France. Exactly because of this reason French in second place in terms of frequency of use in work after English. Moreover, for more successful work, respondents are ready to learn Spanish (30%), French (23%) and Italian (15%) (Table 5).

Table 5. Proficiency in different languages for more successful work

It is important to note that the majority of respondents consider it important to take into account their national characteristics when serving foreign guests (45%). Moreover, 43% of respondents are interested in culture, religious traditions, national cuisine and other characteristics of foreign guests (Figure 7).

Figure 7. Employees' attitudes towards cultural sensitivity

Thus, these results once again confirm the relevance of studying the problem of the influence of cross-cultural factors on HRM standards and practices in a hotel. Employees understand that it is important to consider cross-cultural factors when providing service, and in fact, they are interested in it. The conclusion about the need to take these factors into account and introduce them into HRM standards and practices allows us to draw the following results (Figure 8):

Figure 8. Impact of acquired knowledge about guest culture on service quality

Of those who answered this question negatively, 11 respondents (12% of all respondents) are those who have direct contact with guests, and 5 (6% of all respondents) more often interact with intermediaries (travel agencies, company representatives) (Table 6).

Table 6. Distribution of positions

Thanks to the survey results Hypothesis No. 1 is once again confirmed that cross-cultural factors influence the content of HRM practices, but are not declared in hotel standards. For example, when asked whether a knowledge question was asked when applying for a job at a hotel cultural traditions and national characteristics of people from different countries, 89% of respondents answered negatively (Figure 9)

Figure 9. Cross-cultural component at the selection stage

3% (3 respondents) answered positively. Among them: 1 bartender, 1 visa support agent and a business center assistant secretary. To clarify, the business center is a department that interacts with the corporate segment of the sales and marketing department, deals with the supply of equipment for conferences and various trainings; Often the assistants also provide assistance to the guests themselves: printing and scanning documents.

As has already turned out, employees are ready for changes in service practices because they believe that they can do their jobs better if they have knowledge about traditions and national characteristics guests from different countries. Let's check whether they are ready for changes in service without making changes to the incentive system, or are employees ready to take into account cross-cultural factors only with additional incentives? To find out this, respondents were asked the following question: “Do you think that employees who speak several foreign languages or have knowledge about the cultural characteristics of guests from different countries should receive additional remuneration?” (Figure 10).

Figure 10. Reward for additional knowledge

58% of respondents believe that employees should receive additional remuneration if they speak several foreign languages or have knowledge about the cultural characteristics of guests. In my opinion, this is explained by the fact that such employees use the languages they speak and the cultural characteristics of the guests, which increases their satisfaction. However, the remaining respondents did not believe that guests should be rewarded in any way for knowing and applying this cultural knowledge. In other words, if employees are willing to take cross-cultural factors into account at work, then they are willing to do so without additional remuneration. Or maybe it’s just that these workers have a worse command of a foreign language? That is why there is such a reaction to paying those who have it better.
70% of respondents are interested in the culture, religious traditions and other characteristics of foreign guests. Hotel workers receive information about such features from the stories of colleagues, acquaintances, and friends (25%), as well as by independently studying Internet resources (27%) (Figure 11).

Figure 11. Sources of information about different cultures

More than half of respondents believe that the HR department should help hotel employees obtain information about culture, national traditions and other characteristics of guests from different countries. The remaining half believe that such knowledge comes with work experience or that immediate department heads should help in acquiring knowledge (Figure 12).

Figure 12. Helping HR gain knowledge of guest cultures

Having analyzed most of the results, we should move on to testing the third hypothesis. As it turned out, the most significant HRM practice that should take into account cross-cultural factors for employees who have direct contact with guests is introductory training to study the traditions and cultural characteristics of those nationalities of guests who most often come to the hotel (34%) (Figure 13).

Figure 13. Top priority practices for workers

Moreover, the highest priority form of introductory training is “group training” (handouts + role-playing games), conducted by a hotel HR specialist outside working hours (33% of respondents) (Figure 14).

Figure 14. Priority form of training for employees

Thus, we can conclude that hypothesis No. 3 that the most significant HRM practice that should take into account cross-cultural factors for hotel employees who have direct contact with guests is staff training (and, above all, cross-cultural training), confirmed.

Thus, as a result of the research, the goal of the work was achieved by solving the assigned problems. In other words, the influence of cross-cultural factors on the content of HRM standards and practices at the Novotel Moscow Center hotel was revealed. The relevance of studying this problem in the hotel - the object of the study was confirmed by studying the content of Novotel standards, conducting semi-structured interviews with various categories of hotel workers, and also thanks to the results of a survey of hotel workers. 3 hypotheses were put forward, 2 of which were confirmed. The second hypothesis was partially confirmed, which is of additional interest for more in-depth testing.

Since the results of this study may have practical applications, it seems appropriate to develop recommendations for changing the content of standards and practices of the HRM system in a hotel.

It might be useful to read: