shonamac

Earlier this month an IHG hotel in Europe offered me free breakfast (where none was included in the rate) if I agreed to give them a 10-point rating in a 'IHG Heartbeat' survey

I am sure I was not the only person offered such inducements for a high rating of the hotel and I cannot help wondering how widespreaf the practice is.

So how do you trust those hotel reviews that you see on IHG's site and even on third party sites, when some of them are the results of bribes?

cjd

So did you take the free breakfast? Never been offered that for an excellent review. I tend to not trust hotel reviews, especially on tripadvisor.

miles4all

Great offer! Always take and do the 10 score. If you the feel your karma doesnt allow you to, balance it of with a lower score you do yourself after you finish your brekky!

Enjoy!

shonamac

Nope
This blatant attempt at bribery disgusted me so much that I opted for the Hilton (similarly priced), which gave me a complimentary breakfast due to my Diamond status there.

StevensFirstPrints

Umm... They shouldn't be able to buy your 10 vote. They should be reported for that.

KMPete

That is really horrible that they'd try to bribe for good reviews. I too think you should write an email to customer service and report that behaviour. I applaud you, ksen22, for not going along with it.

Dazedwards

So long as it was not an HIX

On a serious note, some reviews that have appeared on the IHG main site have been a little suspect. The HI Birmingham had a load of in depth factual 1 and 2 star reviews from Gold/Spires and then a couple of 4/5 star reviews from base members appeared.. Not saying that they are not actual reviews but maybe they were offering incentives..

Shocking that a property would risk a policy of trying to buy reviews. Was this a rougue employee or the establishment.

A brief note to IHG direct may get you a few goodwill points in thanks for pointing out the approach of the property.

shonamac

Reported to whom? 'Customer Service' will no doubt land at a desk in Manila armed with an arsenal of template respnses and the issue will stop there, not reaching anybody with an iota of sense.


It was offered, in writing (e-mail) by a Reservations Supervisor!

Jon Maiman

<BeginRant> Not excusing the behavior of the property. Trying to buy ratings is indeed unethical and wrong. Now the rant.... Part of the problem is brought on by the fact that even though ratings are on a 1 to 10 scale, anything less than a 10 is considered a failure. So this effectively degenerates down to a pass/fail rating system. So there is no room for differentiation to recognize outstanding versus good performance. IHG is not the only culprit. I believe Marriott's rating system is similar though leaves some room for differentiation (e.g. 8 to 10 are passing grades). My car dealership is the same way, The Service Adviser's pay is tied into if they get all 10's on their customer satisfaction surveys. This is ridiculous and puts the consumer in a bad position (e.g. either rate everything as perfect, don't provide feedback at all, or provide honest feedback but wind up hurting employees and/or franchises that shouldn't be hurt (e.g. a 9 is interrupted as terrible and someone gets a bad performance review or becomes ineligible for bonus pay, etc.). <EndRant>.

--Jon

serpens

Complete agreement. Actually, it's exactly the same observation I made several times several years ago. I hope your rant is more effective than mine was.

htb

When we were bought by an international company they also introduced customer satisfaction questionnaires with scores from 1-10 on various aspects of customer service. And it was the same: anything under 8 points was considered a negative response and weighed as such.

I think it's just unrealistic: some people may give out something in the middle (5-6) for "normal" service and more only if something was completely outstanding.

On surveys I usually give out 8 or 9 when I'm satisfied, but for a 10 there must have been something unusual (usually an incident) where they could prove that their service is outstanding.

One time with a Marriott stay I was given a note when checking out asking me to give 8 points or more if I was satisfied. I understood immediately that they were using the same system.

HTB.

chrism20

Yes for some strange reason a lot of marketing people seem to think the NPS is everything and anything less than a ten is a failure.

At the same time any company with a bit of sense really should be asking themselves why the score is so high. Even the best if the best have blips.