How much do guest complaints cost hotels?

In at least one case, exactly $100 each. Best Western's 2013 rules for its hotels allow a 100 room hotel only 4 complaints to corporate per year, in total, before the hotel starts getting charged per complaint. After 15 complaints in a year, each one costs the hotel $100. (see rule 500.35) BW considers a property to be in trouble if it gets more than .17 complaints per room per year (rule 500.34). BW Rewards has a similar rule regarding elite member recognition. The property gets a handful of free complaints, then they start costing money, topping quickly at $100 each.

BW may be an odd case, in part because it is (or appears to be) so hands-off compared to many other brands.

Anyone have similar datapoints for other brands?

 

Interesting ! I stayed in many former BW properties in Paris. And, stayed in one former one in Brazil. If I am not mistaken, Isn't BW a licencee-brand ? i.e all properties are owned by individuals entities ?

 

Yes, all BW hotels are independently owned. Technically it's a non-profit marketing cooperative, where the independently owned hotels are its members. Or at least that was the case ~30 years ago, when the North Dakota supreme court looked closely at their structure.

Something I should have included in the first post: for complaints passed back to the hotel (v. resolved by BW corporate), BW has a $75 fee for not acknowledging the complaint within two business days.

 

Interesting numbers. While we have not stayed at a BW hotel, in many years, we have had issues with at least three Hilton properties, and I have fired off letters of complaint, regarding those particular properties. OTOH, I have written four letters of commendation, for other properties - ones, which took great care of us, and especially being HHonors Diamond-level members.

I try to do the same with my airlines - write UP the good flights, and complain about the ones, where the ball was squarely dropped.

Thanks for that info.

 

Interesting, although I'd prefer the hotels fix the underlying source of the complaints rather than just paying for retractions.

 

Oh that's really interesting, i didn't know hotels got charged for complaints. I wonder what the figures are for other chains, and how much it ends up costing individual BW hotels!

 

I agree with TravelerMSY. If the Hotels don't want to pay the corporate fines, then they should fix the problems immediately. After all it is called the "Hospitality" Industry.

 

It is sad in a way, we have $5.00 an hour helper, and a few million invested in a business and yet the same people that complain think nothing of stealing from their work place.

I often chuck it up as a bad day, but things do happen, a bad waiter can make a top chief look bad.

Sometimes we have to look at the whole picture.