Next year as the World Travel Awards reach their silver anniversary maybe the organisers could remember the missing feature and the person on whom the travel industry relies for its very existence – the passenger, traveller and holidaymaker!
Visit England says, “The VisitEngland Awards for Excellence are different to other quality standards as they recognise and celebrate excellence across customer service and the quality of the experience.”
Those who fly with United will have a greater influence on how staff will be rewarded. Bad service and bad customer satisfaction ratings should mean lower pay cheques.
Over the years, by my reckoning, we have written 104 stories about customer service and satisfaction. When a story appears there is reader comment yet the industry seems to shy away from extolling their successes in delivering customer service and satisfaction.
The organisers of the dog sledding not only provided exemplorary customer service but went above and beyond making that holiday one really to remember.
Is customer service improving? You might not think so judging from the complaints that this watchdog received.
Any travel business that fails to listen to its customers or delivers a sub-standard service is liable to be taken out rapidly by a new competitor. That was the message to the European Tour Operators Association (ETOA) last week.
Customer service hasn’t soared at Ryanair, says Kaye Holland
Liverpool achieved the highest rankings with a calculated score of 8.38 points. I mention the precise score because the second placed city was Cardiff at 8.37 which is a sliver of a whisker behind.
It’s called customer service and it is something that is lacking in lots of customer-facing staff these days so when you come across someone that is adept at it, that approach sticks out a mile.
Visit England has announced the winners for the Awards for Excellence 2016. In order to have reached this stage, entrants had to win their local area awards as well
Slovenia is the latest country to announce that more Brits are visiting than ever before. For the first six months of this year, visiting Brits are up by almost a quarter. Now we are their fourth biggest market after Italy, Germany and Austria. So why are we going there? Numbers would have been inflated by the Slovenia vs England UEFA Qualifying football match in Ljubljana but having new flight connections between Southend and Maribor has helped make it easier for those in East Anglia to get there.
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You may well have heard that Ryanair has announced bumper profits of €867 million. What is the reason for this large increase? Customer care, the airline will tell you, is the reason
The success of Ryanair’s “Always Getting Better” customer programme is partly due to why they carried more passengers.
HolidayTravelWatch would have you believe that we don’t complain enough about issues that go wrong we are on holiday.
I have been called lots of things in my time but I won’t go into too much about that now. But being called “babe” during my advancing years
Last month the Cyprus Tourism Organisation (CTO) announced the introduction of a National Cyprus Tourism Quality scheme. But, for this coming summer, you will be unlikely to use it to select your hotel as it is still being trialled.
Tenerife urges its citizens to be nicer to visitors whilst Venetian officials embezzle money meant for saving the city. It’s Adrian’s summing up the other items in tourism this week.
After ten hours rail and coach travel yesterday, I went to my hastily arranged hotel room and got to thinking why I had chosen it. In my case, it was what was available at a reasonable price.
The British Travel Awards were handed out on Thursday night. Regular readers wil know that one of the interesting elements of these awards is that a number are awarded based on votes by us – the traveller. And this year the organisers say that 117,802 of us voted.
This morning a press release from Ryanair contained a classic phrase. In announcing changes to some of its charges and way of operating, it claimed that it had “unveiled a programme of enhancements to its industry leading customer service…”
Remember the Olympics? Remember the plaudits the world gave to our army of volunteers? Now Monarch Airlines has decided to roll-out Olympics-inspired customer service training.
Yesterday I decided to book a flight. Half way through I decided to alter my flight times. Within seconds, and I mean seconds, I had a phone call on my mobile from a bmi call centre.
UPDATE: 8th August 2011. It appears David Cameron went back; ordered more drinks and left almost a 100% Tip! Why? A photo opportunity? A mis-reporting of the service that he received from Miss Ariani?
It is often said that it is the little things that you remember. And tell others. Quite the worst customer service I’ve had in a long, long time made me quite embarrassed at how some overseas visitors saw what happened at the weekend.
In just under 5 hours the last ever service by the Wrexham & Shropshire railway will leave London’s Marylebone station on its final journey. Why get so concerned by a train service you might ask. After all, Virgin Trains run a direct service down to London even if it is only once a day.
The concern is because this little railway achieved so much in its short 3 year life. The satisfaction ratings given to it by passengers were better than anything ever seen since the ratings began. At 99% you can’t really get any better. And I doubt whether other train lines will. The service was good too. The staff would come through the train, address and treat you politely and then be there when you got off to thank you for travelling (at least on the few times I travelled with them.) And that’s part of the problem. I used them a few times; how often did others?
It’s one of those things that come to the fore when times are tougher. If there is little to differentiate one company from another when prices are similar then it is how the customer is treated that can make the difference. So the claim by Cityjet, which flies to regional and European destinations from London City, to give passengers free flights if they are not happy with the service provided by the airline is welcome news.
It is only for a trial period but it demonstrates that the management of the airline must be pretty confident about their treatment of passengers.
As this happened to me three times in the last three months, I have had to deal with the the consequences. I have been lucky. I haven’t been stranded without money. I haven’t had major problems or the need to traipse around hotels and then book at exorbitant rates. I haven’t had to look after or keep happy young, easily bored children. I am not even moaning about the fact that I have had to make unecessary trips to airports or pay for hotels I couldn’t use. If you travel a lot, life can bowl the odd googly at you. But out of it, I do have one thing I want changed.
One airline texted me to say my flight was cancelled, adding at the bottom, “apologies.” They gave me at least seven hours warning which, given that the situation was out of their control, seemed reasonable. The problem is in the rebooking. To do that I either need to get on a website or ring a telephone line. My moan, no that is too strong a word, my interest is the endless time spent hanging on or tryng to get onto a website that is being bombarded by other travellers in the same position. I appreciate the airline’s problem in having to rebook people but can’t help wondering if their isn’t an easier way.
