I am working a temp job and I managed to get the controller and GM into a good discussion and thought I’d ask your opinon.
Normally when a guest at the hotel has a bad experience, the hotel will adjust one night room and tax off the bill.
This is fine for most people. Let’s say you stay 3 days at $100.00/night. So at the end of your stay you only pay for $200.00. This works out for most.
BUT…
Suppose you are staying at the hotel for business and you have a bad stay. Now using the above example the guest stays 3 days at $100.00/night. If the hotel gives this guy one night off his bill, so what? His company is saving $100.00 but he ain’t getting anything for his inconvenience, since he doesn’t pay for the room
So this is where the discussion came in. The controller said “that’s tough, that’s the way we do it.” The GM said “No, we should go ahead and bill the company for three nights, and give the guest a gift certificate for a future free night stay.”
So what do you think, I would tend to agree with the GM, but I can see how the controller would think as he does, as they usually don’t like to have things floating around that they’ll later have to make good on.
Hmm. On the one hand, the company is your paying customer. They are paying, in a sense, to have the employee well-rested and competent the next day. If they do not reliably receive that benefit from your company, they may take their business elswhere.
On the other hand, the company on the whole is unlikely to know about the occasional bad experience. The individual, like all customers, can be expected to tell about 10 other people about the bad experience unless properly consoled.
I think the GM is right in terms of most-bang-for-the-buck. There is also the fact that a lot of certificates never get used, so why give up a free night for sure now when, with the certificate, you’re only giving up the possibility of a free night.
The company could require such rewards to be used for future business travel if it were so inclined. This might be especially likely for a government employee traveling on business. A company that is a large purchaser of hotel time might also negotiate how refunds are to be handled into its contract for preferred travel vendors. In these cases it might be smart to see if there is a de minimis gift that could be given to the traveler.
Looking at it as a theoretical issue, I’d say the company should be re-imbursed. They’re the ones who paid the money. Why should the guest get money back that he never paid?
But from a practical point, I can see problems with this. From a financial standpoint, the company would be better off intentionally sending its employees to sub-standard hotels in the hopes that some of them will be eligible for re-imbursments and thereby lowering the company’s expenses.
But the company got what it paid for, in the sense that the employee had a room. The employee experienced the reduction in value and so should get the redress. Think of it this way: If the hotel maid had damaged the employee’s clothes while cleaning the room, surely the hotel should compensate the employee, and not the company, right?
The employee presumedly paid for his own clothes so that’s a different issue.
Consider this issue. Suppose you hire a clown for your five-year-old kid’s birthday party. The clown gets caught in traffic and doesn’t show up. Does the company reimburse you or your kid?
You paid for the service even if you intended it to be used by another person, so you get the reimbursement. Same thing with the hotel: the company paid for decent hotel accomodations for their employee so they get the refund if the hotel didn’t provide the promised service.
If it was my hotel I’d give the benefit to the employee. It is the employee who was affected by the poor experience, and it is the employee who will be reporting back to the company “I’m not staying in that shit-hole again.” It is the employee who needs to be placated. It really has nothing to do with who paid for the service, but who was affected by the experience. You are not refunding money, you are compensating for a bad experience, the company did not have a bad experience, the employee did.
The company paid for lodging. The employee experienced the lodging. As noted above, the employee is the one who will spread the word about how the hotel treated him. So, give the employee a certificate for a future night’s stay, or a future discount, or a future upgrade.
I can see the controller’s point, but I think that the GM is ultimately correct.
It’s perfectly reasonable to expect to work a hell of a lot of hours while on a business trip, but it’s also reasonable to expect that the business will pay for meals, decent accommodations, etc., so that person can be effective while on the trip. If the employee’s trip is made that much harder by the bad hotel experience, then he’s the one who has had to pay the “cost,” in terms of trying to get things done while sleep-deprived, etc. Giving him the money doesn’t really fix that, but offering some sort of compensation goes a long way.
The company should put the money in a trust to be used for the years of therapy the kid’s gong to need because he grew up with parents who thought it was a good idea to have a creepy, scary clown at his birthday party.
Think about it from the perspective of whose time was wasted. If the employee was bumped from a flight to his destination, who should get the compensation? Does it differ if it was during business hours or on the employee’s personal time (Sunday night, for example)? If he’s bumped on the way home after a long trip, does it differ? Pretty much all circumstances indicate that the person whose experience was impacted should get the compensation, IMHO.
What about the case when the guest pays and then gets reimbursed? Over 3/4 of my “expenses paid” trips have worked like that.
I think in this case it’s clear that the person who gets the compensation is the one who had a bad experience. In the case postulated by the OP, I’d like to know what kind of “bad experience” are we talking about, that “one night off” is appropiate compensation.
carpet that hasn’t been cleaned since it was installed? I’d rather see it shampooed…
a neighbor who keeps his radio on all night? That’s not quite the hotel’s fault.
ordering the same meal from room service three times in two weeks and getting different things each time, including three different concepts of “a soda” (one glass with more ice than soda, one warm bottle which had been opened in the kitchen and lost the gas by the time it reached the room, one cold can)? I’d like to know what the multicolored blazes I’m going to get when I order, thank you.
I think most companies would treat this like airline miles - they paid for the room, so any benefits belong to the company. So even if you gave something to the employee, he or she might be required to turn it over to the company anyway. And usually the employee doesn’t get to pick the hotel so future loss of business may not be such a concern. Although a particularly nasty stay may get the whole company to use a different hotel chain. Better to comp the guest a nice dinner in the hotel resturant or spa treatments- something the guest can use, right now.
When I travel on company time at company expense I get the airline miles.
I stay at a lot of hotels and my work colleagues and I have a some say over what hotels we stay at. There have been several times that the company has stopped using a particular hotel because of complaints from the employees. We can’t just demand a better hotel because we want more upmarket accommodation, but any pattern of poor service or uncleanliness can cause a change in hotels.
The other thing to consider is that the employee isn’t just a person who stays at hotels when the company pays, they may also be a person who goes on holidays at their own expense. It is in the hotel’s best interests to keep the employee happy.
It really makes no sense at all to comp the company. The company probably doesn’t care and I doubt they’d even notice they’d been under charged for the stay, so in that sense it is a wasted gesture from the hotel. Also, it would probably cost the hotel a lot less to compensate the employee. A free meal or some drink vouchers would cost a fifth of the price of a nights accommodation, but would probably do a lot more toward placating the employee. If they give the benefit to the company, not only would the company not care, but it does nothing to prevent the employee from spreading the word about his experience.
At first my thought was that the company should be reimbursed, since it was something they paid for so that the employee could to their job. But if this happened to me back when I did business travel, then I would have no qualms about suggesting for a bonus night for myself – and I’d tell my manager the story the next day because I’d be confident this would be okay where I worked.
So if the question is about what the guest should ask for? Then I’d say they should go off what their feel is of company policy on travel. If it’s the type of company that keeps all the miles and points and doesn’t let you go outside the negotiated-discount hotels, then the employee should ask for a credit. If it’s the type of company where they just want you to stay within reason but lets you pick your favorite hotel and airline (ie, the one where you have all your points), then you’re fine suggesting a personal freebie.
If the question is “what should the hotel offer?” then it would almost certainly be a free night for the guest to enjoy, since the guest is the one left with a personal impression and probably gets to pick where they stay on business. It’s not the hotel’s job to enforce some other company’s policy.
I’ve argued this w/ my wife. To those of you who think the company should benefit, I have a question. What about frequent flyer miles? Since the company is sending you on business, it always made sense to me that the company should get the benefit from frequent flyer miles.