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In a city with so many hotels, it’s naturally important for hoteliers in Canberra to do whatever they can to make sure their customer service is as good as it can possibly be. But what are some of the most important customer services a hotel needs in order to stand out? At a time when the internet and other developments are changing the way Canberra hotels do business, has customer service changed, too?

Consistency

In a way, customer service has changed somewhat in recent years. The growth of the online environment and the fact that so many Canberra hotels now have websites means that customer service now needs to be delivered on more platforms than ever before. However, the core of customer service will always be the same. Emil Kovacic, General Manager of Hotel Realm, says that service is ‘everything’ and that hospitality is ‘all about service’.

No matter what innovations might crop up to revolutionise the hotel industry in the next few years, one thing will always stay the same: good service is good service, so making sure to get the basics right before anything else has got to be paramount.

Go beyond expectation

As well as making sure customer service is consistently good, providing you with a solid baseline to work from, going beyond expectation can also help Canberra hoteliers make their guests’ stay even better. As Kovacic says, ‘wherever possible, do better than they expected.’

For example, if a guest wants to check in earlier than normal or check in a few minutes later than usual, it’s always a good idea to accommodate this if you can. They’re likely to remember your help, which could make all the difference in gaining their repeat business – something that is important for Canberra hotels, many of which rely on government and business guests rather than tourism. As these are people who are likely to stay in the same hotel if they enjoy their experience, it’s worth doing what you can to accommodate them.

Listen and reflect

Of course, while customer service will always be about making sure you meet the needs of your guests, it’s worth remembering that the needs of guests can change over time. A representative from the local hotel industry says that listening to guests is vital when it comes to offering a good service and providing innovations that enhance the quality of their stay.

Staff morale also plays a part in this: if your staff is happy and motivated, the service they provide will inevitably be better. The local hotel industry representative says that the most important thing is that both guests and staff are happy, which suggests you can probably tell a lot about the success of your customer service policy by how many people in the hotel are in a good mood.

No matter how many innovations you make in customer service, though, some things will always stay the same. As Kovacic says: ‘if the staff are smiling, that probably goes a little further than most people would imagine.’

I’ve been doing some interviews with cafe and hotel owners’ just recently. I’m curious to know what their experience is and how they see customer service. Today I was blown away by the philosophy that Alan from Lonsdale St Roasters brings to the table.

His bustling little cafe is just down the road from where I work, and while it’s only been there eight months it is always packed out. How does he do this?

“It’s about creating a space where people feel comfortable” he tells me. Ok, now I’m sure that this is nothing new to any of our readers. But which people? For Alan this begins with staff feeling comfortable. His staff is just as important as his customers and they must feel relaxed and able to be themselves. This then just naturally gives permission for customers to be themselves.

The evidence shows. When you first see the cafe from the outside it looks hip and happening and you might suspect that from a distance its one of the places where only the hipsters with their iphones get their morning brew. But once inside, the range of people that love to soak up this atmosphere is truly a testament to Alan’s philosophy. There is a new mother with her sleeping baby, a gaggle of students with various iGagdets, a grandmother enjoying her brew, a cyclist in his training skins chatting with a girl in business clothes, the list goes on.

One thing that is always a challenge when lining up interviews like this is gatekeepers, you know, the people at the front counter who, if they are working in any kind of bureaucracy, feel that they should be protecting their supervisor from unwanted interruption. The type that will deal with you cooly if you ask to chat with the manager. But there was none of that, I am greeted as a friend and it was no trouble at all that my request to have a chat with Alan wasn’t the usual order for a soy flat white.

Its a strong part of Alan’s Philosophy that we have a wider responsibility to our community, that it’s our responsibility to support the happiness and health of those around us. “I make eye contact with 500 people everyday, you can tell if they are happy or sad” he says. “This reflects the heath of your community.” He tells me how a little while ago they were robbed - a grand sum of $48. The fact that there are people in the community that need to take such desperate measures tells Alan that the community is not as healthy as it could be, and he sees community as a key responsibility. And one that all of us share.

When you see other people’s happiness as your responsibility, not because they are your customers and staff, but because looking after them means looking after the health of your community, then powerful things happen. May the Lonsdale St Roaster community thrive-on.

At greatvenue we've been looking into how people with disability and the wider public enjoy and book their holidays. As accessible travel is an important part of getting australia up to a more inclusive standard. So what has been affecting tourism recently: online booking!

Research has shown that roughly four out of five people now make the internet their first port of call when researching businesses. This has a huge knock-on effect for businesses, such as the hotel industry in Canberra, as it suggests there is a growing need to innovate in order to make sure a hotel’s message gets across to its target market.

One impact of this has been the recent rapid growth of online booking sites, which many people now use not only to research hotels they want to stay in, but also book their stay before they travel. So what does this mean for hotels? How has it impacted Canberra’s hotel industry?

A representative from the local hotel industry suggests that around 75% of their activities are now moving online, further highlighting the growing demand for online services as more and more people gain access to the internet and it becomes an everyday part of their lives. It also suggests that hotels that don’t make use of popular online booking sites will be losing out when it comes to acquiring business.

This is confirmed by Emil Kovacic, General Manager for Hotel Realm, who says that in relation to his hotel, ‘you can’t open a hotel of this size and ignore the internet booking companies’ In other words, if you want to play with the big boys, you need to take note of the shift online. Kovacic also says that ‘they [the booking sites] changed the way people look at booking their hotel rooms.’ Interestingly, he also says that while in his experience many people use these sites to research the hotels that are available in Canberra, they then visit the hotel website direct to make their booking, often in the hope of being offered a better deal than the one displayed on the booking site.

This highlights two things. Firstly, hotels in Canberra definitely shouldn’t ignore online booking sites. When so many people are using them to compare the best deals and find out about the hotels in the area, it would be foolish to miss out on that potential business. Secondly, it also suggests that while booking sites are hugely important and are definitely a game-changer, hotel websites are still as important as ever.

A hotel with a good, high quality website full of relevant information about amenities and deals can be reassuring to potential customers. As many people still book their room through the hotel website direct, it also suggests that the ecommerce side of Canberra hotel websites needs to be better than ever, too, in order to compete with both the booking sites and other hotel sites.

Undoubtedly, this raises challenges for hotels in Canberra, but arguably it also poses opportunities. Online booking sites may have revolutionised how people find hotel rooms, but it is still essential to have top quality hotels to back up good online deals. Kovacic leaves us with a final thought on booking sites: ’10 years ago they didn’t exist. Now they’re invaluable.’

It will be interesting to see what the next 10 years will bring.

Huy will be a keynote speaker for the End The Cycle (of disability and poverty)  photo exhibition launch event in Canberra. The exhibition is part of a broader campaign to help end the vicious cycle of poverty and disability in developing countries. Sign up to add your voice to the strong community support for this campaign and to help make a difference in the lives of people with a disability living in developing countries! For more details check out http://endthecycle.org.au/

In mid-September Huy and Miriam will travel to the Nossal Institute for Global Health at the University of Melbourne to present a session on Disability Inclusive Development at an intensive course, “Disability in Developing Countries”, run by Alex Devine. During the session a group of more than 40 Masters and PhD students in Development Studies will consider “enabling environments” – that is, how to make development activities disability-inclusive and how to design disability-specific activities in country.

The students will be presented with case studies from Huy’s time in Timor Leste, including a learning model of an accessible toilet, developed by Huy whilst delivering on-ground training during January and February 2011. The learning objectives of the course focus on the social-environmental model of disability – wherein we recognise that a person’s physical and social environment ultimately enable inclusion or create barriers to inclusion for people with a disability. This ties in perfectly with a core goal of Greatvenue – to reduce these barriers by providing the information needed by people with a disability to make venues accessible to them.

Huy’s time in Timor Leste is also used as a case study for a report written for a group of International Development Organisations on the WAter, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) needs of People With a Disability. This report will be released in the near future, so watch this space!

Our Founder Huy Nguyen will once again be one of the judges for this year's ACT Chief Minister's Inclusion Awards. Keep an eye out on this event as it progresses on Greatvenue and nominate your business!

Hi there,

Warm regards to everyone around this season, hope you are enjoying these easter public holidays as much as we are. I for one have overdosed on good food from the family gathering!

As you have noticed we have updated Greatvenue and we are quite excited about it. I hope you like it too and if you have any suggestions just email me at feedback@greatvenue.info.

Huy
Founder

Hey everyone!

Thanks so much for the feedback so far with our prototype. There's plenty of exciting updates we're cooking up. For example, by the end of this month we will have our gorgeous new layout implemented for your usage pleasure.

For now, I just wanted to add a quick post about taking 'informative' photos for the reviews, the following are some key points to consider:

1. Quality and artistic photos aren't as important as the information it portrays. So try to take photos that will provide information about certain 'accessibility' features of the venue. For example, a good photo of the entrance will highlight width, type of door and handle style of the door. Or other methods of entering the venue.
2. Captioning of photos will enable us non artistic folks to read the photos better as well as it being more informative for people who use screen readers.
3. Our current system has yet to take into consideration size limits so keep this in mind. If whipped out your SLR please resize the photos so that it's under 1mb. I tend to find iPhones as good mediums to take photos as it's more discrete, but it will also produce photos over 1mb.

Thanks again and please keep providing us your feedback!

Huy Nguyen
Founder, greatvenue