A Closer Look At Guest Expectations

Recently, one of our hotel clients' guests posted the following comment as part of their guest satisfaction survey:

"We come yearly and I have never been disappointed."
In response to the survey question whether their experience exceeded, met, or did not meet expectation, the guest ticked "met". Finally, our scoring algorithm computed 94 (max = 100) for this guest's overall evaluation of their stay.

The point of bringing this up is because it is a real world illustration of a position we put out a few years ago on the idea of expectations. We recently republished the complete text on our blog, but the main idea is that managing expectations can be complicated. On first blush, one might think that if you are not consistently exceeding expectations you are doing something wrong. Think about this though- if your customers expect you to always exceed their expectations, how can you? At the end of the day, our position is that meeting expectations is ok (and our scoring algorithm accounts for this), but understanding what drives those expectations is more important.