Realize the power of recognition

We're individuals, not table-, room-, or reservation numbers.

When a hotel is so good you return year after year, you also invite your friends. What better place for our first meeting with Joe Jacobi, Olympic Gold Medallist in Whitewater Kayaking, than The River Inn!

“Wow, this is the 11th year in a row you’ve stayed with us! Thank you and welcome back!!”

The front desk agent that was so grateful to see us and enthusiastically welcomed us back to his hotel, was probably only about nine-years old the first time we checked in at The River Inn in Washington, DC. He didn’t even work at the hotel when we stayed there the previous year.

We can’t count the numbers of times we’ve booked a restaurant on Opentable, made a note that we were on a date night, celebrating a birthday, or some other special occasion, only to have the server start with Step 1 and Step 2 of the excruciatingly boring and robotic script we all hear so often:

“Is this your first time dining with us?” “Are you celebrating something special tonight?”

Restaurants pay hundreds of dollars per month in subscriptions, booking fees, and promotion to use reservation systems like Opentable, and when staff don’t use the information the system collects, hearing that same old script when we know they should know better means there’s little chance we’ll return.

Hotels aren’t any better.

During a recent staycation to spend some unused loyalty program points, we checked into a hotel less than 10 minutes walk from our home. We were met with:

“How was your trip? Did you travel far today?”

Again, the hotel is paying substantial fees to the brand owner. Fees to be part of the booking and marketing programs, fees to be part of the loyalty program which likely even discounts the rate hotels receive when program members redeem points for free stays like we did.

If you’re a hotel owner, why throw all that money away by disappointing the guest before they even see the room!

In some places, service has become so scripted, that employees are too bored to think. They cut corners. They don’t read the information the system provides them with. They take the easy way out.

We had a choice of hotels we could have stayed in during our annual trips to DC.

There’s a very simple reason why we stayed at The River Inn 11 years in a row.

The River Inn was our home in Foggy Bottom, Washington DC, for a week a year while I attended meetings at the US State Dept.

They recognised and remembered us, every single time we came to the hotel.

The reservations agents we emailed booking enquiries to back when that was a thing, always acknowledged us as regulars.

The doorman / concierge recognised us. He booked our airport return the first time we stayed there. On subsequent visits, after we’d arrived and settled in, he asked how long we’d be staying so he could book our transfers.

The bartender and server in the restaurant remembered our preferences, and housekeeping included a mention of our regular stays on notes they left in the room.

Great guest service isn’t difficult. Especially today, when technology provides information that allowed the front desk agent to recognise and remember us, even though he’d never seen us before and was in grade school the first time we checked in.

What’s holding other hotels and restaurants back?

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Stay safe, Always Care