Adding More Value

So, outside of the room itself, what other factors add value for a hotel guest? Well, I can’t speak for everyone, but for me it all begins with our old favorite, location. A hotel located miles from wherever my business takes me (or, on vacation, hours from anywhere I want to go) is not worth much to me, even if the room rate is fantastic. Location also impacts secondary issues like noise (is there a rail line or an Interstate just outside?), safety (are we in a bad neighborhood?) and habitability (is there a market, a convenience store, an office supply store, a coffee house, or a bar nearby? Or do I have to drive for an hour to get anything I might need in the field?), particularly on a long stay.

Then there’s food. I don’t need a good restaurant in the hotel if there’s one in walking distance – at least, not on a business trip. On vacation, room service is occasionally nice, and sometimes (e.g. in the morning before an early flight) it can be critical. But as you might guess from the title of this post, I’m the type who insists on value. I don’t mind paying a high price for good food and good service, but paying exorbitant rates for mediocre food and a 200% markup to have someone deliver it to my room, half an hour late and cold, will make me hit the ceiling. And if the food or service are bad enough, I’ll take all of my meals somewhere else – and probably my business, eventually.

On the other side of the coin, those complimentary breakfast rooms you sometimes see are a great value, especially for a business traveler. The ones that really stand out in my memory are the ones that add some form of protein to the usual toast, fruit and cereal. For a small increase in cost (for hard-boiled eggs, or even scrambled ones) the hotel has dramatically increased both how good the meal is for you and how much value it has for me (as I can’t eat a lot of fruit or sugary cereal). At one of the Hawthorn Suites we stayed at, in Texas, the complimentary breakfast included eggs, sausages, waffles, toast, cereal, fruit, various juices, milk and coffee. Of course, everyone knows that they take their breakfasts seriously in Texas, but for a service included in the price of the room, I felt this was really impressive. Their facility in Atlanta had a great breakfast bar, too.

Why does he tell us this? I hear some of you asking. Because none of the things I’ve been detailing in my last two posts are all that difficult, or all that expensive. These are value added measures in their purest form, and there is no real reason short of complete stupidity for any business to ignore measures this simple that can make this big a difference to their bottom line. You don’t even need a degree in hotel management to see how these issues could be the difference between success and failure. The odds are fairly good that if your business has any customer service or consumer service functions, that you have a similar opportunity to increase your profits by adding value – and the same basic chance to fail by ignoring that opportunity. In my next post we’ll take a look at the other side of the issue: measures intended to add value that don’t – or worse yet, remove it…