H&C News recent series of articles on Guest Experience has been examining this vital issue with the help of experienced hoteliers and the insights that they bring. How can hoteliers ensure that the overall guest experience at every touch point – and there are many – is not just of the standard your guests expect, but that it exceeds their expectations?
Superbly located and boasting views across the river to the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, Park Plaza Westminster Bridge London offers 1,019 design-led guest rooms and suites, including 54 suites and penthouses and over 500 studio rooms. And its extensive facilities provide the perfect location for large-scale conference, business and other events.
Here, Daniel Pedreschi, General Manager shares his experience with us, and reveals the time, effort and constant focus that is given to delivering high quality guest experience.
What do you consider constitutes ‘excellent’ guest experience in a hotel?
Excellent guest experience really hinges around creating memories and exceeding expectations. One of my greatest challenges is how we constantly need to challenge ourselves on what we do, how we do it, and how can we do it better.
For example, although we have always enjoyed incredibly successful New Year’s Eve’s, we set up a dedicated team last January to see how we could make 2012 even more successful. This year we introduced a children’s cinema on a 5m x 4m screen, with a play area, and a bar for the parents. We also introduced a Best of British buffet in the Ballroom for 300 guests, with a free band and DJ until the early hours. The guest feedback was incredible.
Are guest expectations changing in your hotel?
Most certainly. Not only do guests have higher expectations but thankfully they can now let us know almost instantly where we have to do better. Our greatest improvements in measured guest satisfaction have all come about as a result of a “root cause analysis” with action plans headed by the team members responsible in the appropriate departments, following specific shortfalls identified by our guests. Thankfully, we also find out where we do things really well, which allows us to shout about them to the market.
As a company, we provide regular team training to enhance guest service delivery – in particular, our unique Inspirational Service Programme looks at ways to surprise, make the guest feel welcome, and encourage a feeling of passion in all that we do.
Is your hotel experience in keeping with the home, business and lifestyle experience of your guests?
We are confident that the design and architecture of the hotel meets our guests expectations with its contemporary feel, designer Italian furniture, unlimited WiFi, and 37” flatscreen TV’s in every bedroom. Furthermore we pride ourselves as being one of the greenest hotels in the capital by implementing various energy and water saving measures throughout the building.
We have also been very pleased with the experiences our Food & Beverage outlets provide our guests, including illy Espressemente, which offers award winning illy coffee, pastries, breakfasts and sandwiches at high street prices.
Primo Bar and Lounge is open 24/7, and features live music every night and offers a full menu of snacks, canapés and sharing plates, as well as themed nights including Ladies Night and new after work drinks concept – Overtime.
Ichi Sushi with Chef Okamoto our sushi master has gone from strength to strength, and our monthly sushi master classes now run every two weeks due to popular demand.
Brasserie Joël (which was awarded 9/10 for service and food by critic Giles Coren), with Head Chef Walter Ishizuka, offers exceptional value classic French brasserie dishes.
And our room service menu features over 120 items in sections dedicated to authentic dishes amongst Italian and Indian favourites.
With over 30% of our guests dining with us on a nightly basis, we understand how important it is to create great experiences on every occasion.
Are technology expectations growing as fast as technology and communication are developing?
We had a clear objective when we opened: to provide a more sophisticated level of technology than the market was offering. In addition to having the UK’s largest capacity hotel broadband at 100 GB, we also choose to have no bandwidth limitations and also provide it free of charge in all areas for guests. Although our peak usage was approximately 35 GB in 2010, we are now seeing numbers nearer to 50 GB.
Tablets have revolutionised demand, and over a three week period in October and November we had three back to back conferences, all of which used iPads for simultaneous delegate voting for between 400 and 600 delegates. It was a real learning experience for us and also for the organisers as, whilst we had sufficient capacity, some individual access points became overloaded. We are currently drawing up plans for the installation of additional points.
How important is personal service, booking, checking in, room service, restaurant, concierge?
Ultimately, everything we do is about personal service. Our highlight in 2012 was the company wide roll out of the Inspirational Service Programme, which was designed by our own Learning & Development team.
It is designed specifically to allow team members to understand the elements which build a great experience, and also to develop the confidence to deliver it. Our guest satisfaction delivered an increase of 0.15 in 2012 from 8.50 to 8.65.
It is also clear from our open access reviews (tripadvisor, etc) that the greatest driver to positive and negative stays is service, rather than price, location or facilities.
What is the most important element of your hotel’s delivery of guest experience?
Without a doubt it is the individual team members and our contribution in ensuring that we recruit, train and retain the very best talent we possibly can.
Do you measure guest experience and if so how?
We use a number of different tools to measure guest experiences. For bedrooms we use the Carlson electronic guest feedback programme; Medallia, and our Meetings & Events experience is measured through Venue Verdict from BDRC (which importantly benchmarks us also against our company and also our competitor sets). For leisure guests, we also engage Reviewpro who provide us with consolidated TPI reviews and also benchmark against our leisure competitor set. All the segments have individual competitor sets to ensure we are measuring against the best in class.
When preparing the business strategy plan for the year, each department sets guest experience KPI’s and this also forms part of their monthly business review meetings.
Our six core values from the Inspirational Service Programme are also measured daily from the Medallia reviews, and the results are included on the daily flash and are reviewed at every morning meeting by all of the heads of department to ensure they are a key focus.
Do you anticipate guest expectations changing in the next 1-2 years?
It will be very interesting to watch the growth of select service hotels in central London, as they are doing so well and competing heavily against four star hotels.
We have been delighted to see a number of new select service hotels open on the South Bank, as this is helping to create a leisure cluster south of the river, which has seen 25 million visitors to the South Bank in 2012.
With three hotels and almost 2,000 rooms on the South Bank, we are forecasting strong growth as guests realise the attraction of the South Bank, and the “affordable luxury” of our hotels when compared to the strong rates of the select service hotels in the same location.
About Daniel Pedreschi
A graduate of the Dublin School of Hotel Management, Daniel began his career in hospitality over 20 years ago as a Management Trainee at the Copthorne Tara Hotel in Kensington. After honing his skills at a host of UK hotels and venues such as Grosvenor House, Le Meridien Piccadilly, Café Royal and Somerset House, Daniel joined Park Plaza Westminster Bridge as Hotel Manager in November 2009 for the hotel’s launch, and was promoted to General Manager in September 2011.
Daniel has a wealth of knowledge and experience in the hospitality industry, with particular expertise in providing outstanding service to large events and conference guests.
He also sits on the London Board of Hospitality Action, an industry charity which focuses specifically on assisting hospitality workers who have fallen on hard times. Daniel is also chair of the E1 General Managers committee whom he shall represent at the BHA London committee.
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