Common Sense Would Be Really Nice

Introduction

Businesses are embracing personalization and even micro-personalization. Examples include implementing concierge service to help guests plan their trips, customizing marketing messages, and availing the guest’s favored type of coffee in the room.

Technology is hailed as a differentiating, competitive tool to facilitate such efforts to make service touchpoints unique and positive. While I enjoy the benefits of technology, I do wonder whether more common sense could be re-visited, please?

Because if services are planned with genuine concern and sensible judgment for practical things, the stay experiences could be correspondingly enhanced.

My Travel Experiences

I have not traveled to all the countries in the world. I have visited only 57 of them, and hundreds of cities in those countries. Throughout the decades of exploring the world, my mother had accompanied me for 25 of those years, even when she was in a wheelchair for her last eight years of travels.

Common Sense Is Appreciated

Among the multitude of hotel stays, there were a few aspects in even five-star properties that were inconvenient and non-pleasurable.

Air-con control panel

While it is desirable to incorporate technology, a desired digital experience ought to be one that is intuitive and easy to navigate.

At a particular property where I stayed twice at, the air-con control panel actually requires a notification to outline the several steps involved. However, as the content is too complicated, staff had to come to the room to provide on-the-spot demonstrations.

According to the staff, it is a daily task because guests continually require help. Consider all the non-positive service moments and the productivity loss on a day-to-day basis. The solution is straightforward: simply provide an easy-to-use gadget.

Bath towels

Thick and soft bath towels are luxurious, if and only if the guests are not overwhelmed by the sheer dimensions.

The average height of American women is reportedly 5’ 4” (1.6m). Consider the physique of their Asian counterparts. Guests with smaller build are likely to be dwarfed by big and heavy towels.

Hair dryer

The issue of heavy amenities extends to hairdryers. Hair dryers come in various dimensions, ranging from the light-weight to the heavy-duty ones that may weigh more than 700g (1.5 Ibs). Imagine holding it using one hand and in mid-air for 15 minutes to blow dry shoulder-length hair.

It is all the more unpleasant when the hairdryer is heavy plus noisy. Even at 85 decibels, the volume may be equivalent to what is produced by a blender or a power lawn mower.

Housekeeping procedure

I wish that housekeepers could leave my things alone, or at least put them back in the same arrangement.

It is not ideal to return to the room to discover that the bed throw and all the spare cushions (that were moved aside) have found their way back to the bed. In addition, toiletries are no longer placed in sequential order of use.

These may be small things but they are enough to cause annoyance.

Accessibility

Traveling with my mother in her wheelchair revealed aspects that warrant more thought in the design of accessible rooms.

• Beds are often too high. It requires herculean effort to hoist a person from a wheelchair onto the bed. When the rollaway is used, it then becomes too low. Imagine the challenge of lifting a person from a lower position onto a wheelchair. Perhaps hotel management staff can try to transfer a person (with nil ability to even stand) between a wheelchair and a bed. The difficulty of that physical feat will become a lot more evident.
• Space between bed and wall is too small to accommodate wheelchair, even if the dimensions of the equipment are not the largest. In such a scenario, there is extended distance to physically carry the person to the bed … before attempting the hoisting action.
• Sliding bathroom door has no stopper feature. It can only be locked when fully closed. Hence, it requires the caregiver to perform an acrobatic act, i.e., push a wheelchair while struggling to keep the door open throughout the entry and exit.
• It is also not easy to come across shower chairs that look adequately safe to use – one that has four sturdy legs, with back-rest and arm-rests for proper support. Sometimes, only ordinary plastic chairs are provided despite prior requests being made for a guest with disabilities.

Concluding Remark

Service enhancements come in all forms and levels of sophistication. However, in a high-tech era, basic common sense is still important to rationally examine all the little but highly practical things that matter to guests.

Lee Keng Ng
Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT)