Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Why charge extra when you can give it FREE?

Recently I was on a short holiday in Penang with my family. We stayed at a reputable 5 star hotel. It has a tradition which dates back to the British colonial days.

As always, when I travel, I lug my notebook along and always pay for wifi services at the hotel. They usually charge between 50 and 60 bucks per 24 hour usage. While you may think that based on the title of this post, I am about to suggest that they provide broadband or wifi services free of charge, that is not the case.

Although from experience, some hotels do offer such services free. However, you usually have to book into their more expensive rooms like say, a suite or premier floor/executive floor etc.

In any case, at this hotel, I did purchase their 24 hour block for wifi service even though I was already in one of their premier suites. If you got to pay, you got to pay.

However, I was shocked that when my son, who also brought his laptop with him wanted to connect to the internet just could not do so. Apparently the purchase was for just one laptop. If you wish to use a second laptop, you would need to cough up another 50 bucks. And if you have a third laptop, another extra 50 bucks and so on. Which means 50 bucks per laptop.

Shocked at such a policy, I summoned to see the General Manager and reported to him that this is not exactly a good policy. He admitted and agreed with me but said such is their company policy. And as a gesture of goodwill, issued me a free password for the 2nd laptop.

Question: Why charge extra for additional laptop access in the first place? After all it's not gonna cost the hotel any extra costs if they allow 10 laptops to access with one password.

Trivial as this may be, I suggest that all hotels should only charge for one access password/code and allow multiple laptops to access.

Or better still give it to your guests FREE!

The hotel has nothing to lose but everything to gain!

This is how you go one up in providing excellent service to your customers.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Quite rare to find great service like the one you experienced here. Especially from a govt agency.

I have had some rather shabby service from most govt departments. It appears that there is nothing to motivate them.

allen c.