fb175091

About a month ago, I stayed at Novotel Toulouse Aeroport. I do not remember much about the stay: it was very brief (late arrival during the night, early meeting in the morning). I remember that the breakfast was not great and that I thought that the hotel was far enough away from the airport that I could have easily taken a taxi to a city centre hotel instead. So, I was not particularly negative about the hotel, but thought that I would book a different one the next time. I was contacted to submit my opinion to the hotel, and, as far as I remember, I gave a lukewarm report.

A month later, I received the following e-mail from someone at the hotel (identified by name, but not by position):

This e-mail does not refer to any concrete "problem" and is one of the vaguest examples of template message I have seen from hotels. Given that I do not remember any concrete "problem", I suspect that this was just triggered by a satisfaction score that was lower than they hoped for.

However: don't they understand that sending such a vague message is actually making the situation worse? After getting this template message, my opinion of the hotel dropped considerably more than if I had never received any reply.

Doc Savage

Sounds like a vague response to your vague dissatisfactions.

Obviously a form reply. I'd just ignore it.

fb175091

Sure, that's what I had planned to do.

The reason that I posted this was just that I realized that the vague response did the opposite of what its intention was: I had completely forgotten about the stay, and this response reminded me of the stay, and created a negative disposition towards the hotel because of the form reply.

brocklee9000

This is exactly like the canned responses you'll see on websites like TripAdvisor. I see them a lot in hotel reviews, especially the negative ones. There's the standard "I'm sorry this was not up to your expectations" followed by the "and this reflects on me as a manager" and sometimes even the "I'll be sure to tell the staff about this in our next meeting!"

One hotel I looked at recently seemed to have multiple canned responses from the general manager, all mentioning "we are a blah blah blah hotel striving for excellence and blah blah blah superior to those around us blah blah blah" and "I am sorry you didn't feel our location was in the best part of town. Our hotel is in one of the best spots in town and offers convenient access to many restaurants and other venues." Of course it's humorous to see the personal jabs at the reviewer, such as "I'm sorry that you are upset that we didn't use to charge parking fees but now we do; well, this is in line with other hotels in the area, so we do it to" (obviously paraphrased here). Or the very direct "While it reflects poorly on me as manager that you feel our staff was not hospitable or helpful, the fact stands that you were verbally abusive and overly demanding" and other details.

MojaveFlyer

Here's another way for the hotel to spin it. After a lukewarm tripadvisor review of Hotel Nikko in SF, they said (I think this was in the responses, it may have been through anonymized email) they wanted to contact me. The upshot was that they apologized and sent this cute little amenities bag. That non-vague response really changed my attitude about the hotel

Transpacificflyer

If it is any consolation, the apologies I receive are just as insincere and meaningless. I stay at the BKK Airport Novotel a few times a year. Over the past two years, my stays have offered Novotel extra comfort features like an obviously broken toilet, malfunctioning A/C equipment (the banging noise and mold odor were the tip off), noisy staff outside my door, rooms that were not cleaned and chaos at the check-in desk. etc.

When I am asked how my stay is, I send in a recap of events. A couple days later, I get a canned response from the manager. Always the same type of answer: "We apologize" and that's it. When I return, Not much has changed, especially the refusal of the hotel to respect the intent of the club Accor line at check in. In all the years I have been staying at the hotel, I have never ever been greeted with a welcome back or it's nice to have you back despite the fact that we ruined your stay last time.

It's my fault for returning. I do avoid the Novotel chain wherever possible, but sometimes I have to stay at the airport. Not much else one can do expect pick another hotel.

Zana711

I have received quite a few of the "one size fits all" apology emails from Accor hotels post-stay over the years - here's another fairly vague one, sent after on their request for a review on TripAdvisor, I posted a 3-star review:

"Thank you for taking the time to tell us about your experience at the Hotel Mondial Am Dom Cologne - MGallery Collection. I am sorry that not all your experience did meet your expectations; please allow me to express my sincerest apologies.

At MGallery, we strive to provide a superior service experience for every customer; therefore your feedback is very important to us. Please rest assured that we are taking the appropriate measures to address the problem and prevent future occurrence.

We appreciate your sharing your concerns, and it is our hope that you will give us the opportunity to better serve you in the near future.

Assistant Front Office Manager"

gilbertaue

A property that allows a (probably) non-empowered "Assistant FOM" to reply couldn't possibly know how to improve themselves anyway.

JTCz

You may be so ungrateful while the staff is sweating their backs off moving the hotel closer to the airport!

Seriously - I also find that the canned responses are just as bad as no response, and oftentimes hillariously inappropriate. If somebody takes the time to ascertain whether the review was positive or negative, it takes a moment to drop in a keyword or use a different boilerplate to suit the complaint.

Even automatic services could do that - Google analyzes reviews and tells you that based on what people wrote, breakfast does not seem to be great. I appreciate it a lot if the reply references my review, even if not much can be done at that point (e.g. hotel in a poor location or unfavourable building features). This makes me feel the management cares and I immediately warm up to the perspective of returning.