 |
|
|
Poor hotel service
Write: To Mr Sunny Sri Ram Dear Sir, Sub:- Lack of Good Service With reference to the above, I would like to make some comments on the service of your hotel during our stay from 9th April – 15th April. We, Mr Raman and I, Surise Rao, flew down from Kuala Lumpur and occupied Room No. 608 during our business trip to Bombay. The reservations were made by our business partners, Mr Manav Khanna and Mr Anuj Khanna from Seclore Technologies Pte. Ltd . At the time of booking, Mr Manav requested for a corporate rate as we were planning to fly down to Bombay often and would like to consider your hotel as our panel hotel. This request was made via telephone conversation with your sales representative, who subsequently agreed on the corporate rate. However, the letter of offer was only received on the 11/04/03. When I requested for the entire bill on the 15th April, I found to my utmost disappointment that we were not given the corporate rate. I questioned your front office staff on why was that so. All he could answer was, ‘no one informed him’. I demanded to speak to your front office manager, Mr Daniel. I was once again shocked by his reply that no one had informed him. Finally, we showed the letter from your sales department and after much argument, he decided to charge us the corporate rate, but only from the date of the letter. I seriously do not understand why is it managerial staff frequently give excuses such as “we were not informed”. Does this reflect the level of ignorance among your staff or is it company policy? If you are unable to execute the information properly to your peers and subordinate, I would consider you have a serious problem, especially as you are in the hospitality industry. This is not our problem, yet incidents like this make us wonder if you are covering up mistakes at the expense of your guests and will definitely discourage valuable customers from patronizing your hotel. In order to avoid this I strongly recommend that the management should send the staffs for service and business communication skills training. Secondly, on the 10th April morning, we told your front office staff that we have meetings everyday until late night, as such we will not be able to have our meals except for breakfast. Therefore, we requested for a reduction in the room rates. “No problem sir” was the prompt reply. But to my horror the bill showed no such thing. We were billed for the usual meals. Why was there nothing done? Is this another case of communication breakdown, “I don’t know, no one informed me!!!!!”. Thirdly, since we made the booking for a week on the 9th of April together with the request for a corporate rate, we strongly feel the rate given should be effective throughout our stay and not as your front office manager, Mr. Daniel’s explanation that the rates are only effective from the date of the letter, any earlier date he will be responsible for auditors inquiry. By the way, the letter does not indicate the effective date but it is referred as “reference to our telecom conversation”. On the 13th April 2003 at 3.10 am we went to your coffee house “Parabola” for a meal. Since it was already late, I decided to order for two fried eggs and my friend opted for the buffet. Fifteen minutes I waited for fried egg which never arrived, out of hunger, I took a wedge of potato from my friend’s plate. Your captain immediately approached our table and told us that we were sharing the buffet and so he will charge us for two buffets. He was nasty and demanding. I informed him that this was due to the long wait for the fried eggs which still hasn’t arrived. I just took a spoon of potato. He replied “No, you are sharing I will charge for two buffet. I demanded to speak to the manager on duty but unfortunately no one was available as such I refused to pay for my egg, which I never saw and my friend's buffet which he never finished. My question is what has happened to basic hospitality and courtesy? It looks like even your managers and supervisors are lacking in this area. Why is your management so greedy of charging every single cent regardless of quality service. What happened to the policy, “The Customer is Always Right”. Is the Hospitality industry in India minting tonnes of money that such policies just got thrown out of the window? On the 14th April we went to your reception and requested for a cab to go to “Lonavla”. The manager told us the cab will be here in half an hour. We waited from 2.30pm up to 4.00pm but the cab never arrived. We wasted 1 1/2 hours of our precious time which we could have put to better use. We were not angry but disappointed to know that the cab was actually coming all the way from down town Bombay. What was the manager thinking when he told us that the cab will be here in half an hour’s time. Even a small kid can tell you how long it will take to reach the hotel from down town Bombay or was the manager taking us for fools. We are business people, to us every minute wasted is money down the drain. We finally had to cancel the trip. Hotel business is service based industry, thus hospitality is the path. In Rodas hospitality is missing which turns away a lot of good customers. We believe that big businesses are made successful by building a good relationship. It is not merely selling rooms and food. Something beyond that such as tender, warm and hospitable care, that is what you need to become a good hotelier. But in India hoteliers seems to be arrogant, we think the reason behind this might be your occupancy rate which is always more then 70%. The higher occupancy rate does not reflect that you are good hotelier neither your service, it is just the availability of ready market in your country. If you were to take the challenges of globalization, I would positively suggest that you need to bring about “change” in you management. Thank You, Surise Rao & Raman
Flights to Coimbatore Sir, I live in Melbourne and like thousands of other travellers from all over the globe, I wish Coimbatore will have more international flights soon - at least to Singapore and Dubai. I have been reading several news items that Coimbatore airport runway is being expanded. I shall be much grateful if you could let me know what stage is this expansion in and how soon are we going to see more international flights to the city. Thanking You, -Warren
Ezekiel.
Air India VRS 'Discriminatory' Sir, The general understanding when a company announces a VRS package to its staff is that the company has a genuine intention of reducing excess staff to make its operation more cost effective and competitive. The question to our respected senior management at Air India is whether our current VRS-2003 is genuinely intended to do so? If it is, then the VRS-2003 package should have also been extended to its non-essential, non-technical, ticket-office counter, administration and all clerical level staff who are currently on 'leave without pay' since several staff under this category may avail of this offer and help the management to reduce staff numbers. We, a small group of permanent and confirmed clerical-level staff of Air India on Indian pay scales, having already completed between 10 and 25 years of continuous service and who were encouraged by the corporation to avail of 2-year leave without pay/allowance/PLI extendable up to 5 years now find we have been discriminated against and cheated by the senior management. We, the clerical staff of Air India who have availed of your offer to take 'leave without pay' appeal to your (Chairman & MD, AI) sense of fair-play, justice and reasoning and request you to please amend and delete Sub-clause iv) under Point No. II of VRS-2003 regarding "Applicability" so as to make VRS-2003 package also eligible to employees on 'leave without pay' so that Air India meets its objective of staff reductions and is fair and just to all staff without discrimination. -'Group of AI Employees
on Leave Without Pay' |