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Guests happier this summer but there's still work to do

Tourism Whistler working to understand and improve customer satisfaction

Visitor satisfaction was up in Whistler after a summer of sunshine and great deals but nearly one in three guests are still ambivalent about their time in Canada's top ski resort.

Tourism Whistler's figures from last summer's visitor surveys show satisfaction levels increasing seven percentage points over last year.

The Net Promoter Scores, the percentage of guests who would recommend Whistler, also went up six percentage points over last year.

But that's still not enough to put Whistler out of the "medium" category in terms of guests recommending the resort, and that is something that's on the mind of Tourism Whistler President Barrett Fisher, particularly in this day and age of social networking. Gone are the days of just telling a handful of family and friends about an experience, she said.

"Today, we know that at the push of a button... you can let hundreds of thousands of people know your pleasure or dissatisfaction with a destination," she said. "We really believe that this whole customer experience is that much more critical today than it ever has been because of the influence now held by every single customer."

It's so important that Tourism Whistler plans to spend more money on the research side to truly understand customer satisfaction.

"We're actually investing a little bit more in the research side on the customer experience this upcoming year," said Fisher.

"We would like to go deeper to really understand our customer motivations, as well as our customer triggers on satisfaction or dissatisfaction."

More than 2,200 in-resort surveys were done last summer, and 700 visitors completed the post-trip online survey.

Tourism Whistler's research manager Louise Walker explained that the Net Promoter Score essentially takes away the number of "promoters" (people who will promote the resort) from the number of "detractors" to end up with the number of "neutral" guests.

"We have a quite a lot of neutrals," said Walker.

Whistler has yet to get back to the scores of 2006, the first year of collecting data for the Net Promoter Scores and also its best year to date. Even then, however, Whistler was in the high end of medium in the 40 to 60 per cent range, with good in the 60 to 65 per cent range, and excellent 65 per cent and above.

While difficult to drill down to the data and determine what makes a guest a promoter, neutral or a detractor, Walker said value for money had the biggest impact on overall satisfaction last winter. The reduced rates and special offers during the summer months may have improved that value perception and may account for the increase in the scores, she summarized. That analysis, however, has yet to be done.

Some factors, such as weather, can impact the scores but are beyond the control of tourism partners. And then there are other more obvious problems, said Fisher.

In particular, Fisher pointed to the number of complaints they get when guests do not feel they have had a positive welcome upon arrival, be it a lack of a front desk, a roundabout key pick up, a voice recording for help rather than a live person.

"In some cases there are a lack of front desk service offerings that makes it a challenging service experience for the guests," said Fisher. "And so that has been coming out in our Net Promoter Scores as a potential negative that is not only something that creates negative experience for the guest upon arrival and during their vacation, but also carries that negativity to a new level when they leave."

It's a concern too for hotel operators like Roger Soane, general manager of the Fairmont Chateau Whistler, which strives as a company to achieve a Net Promoter Score of 95 per cent.

Even though his hotel has a front desk, and offers top-notch service, the goal is for all customers in Whistler to recommend the resort to their friends and family.

"If we are starting to see a slippage in people doing that, then that's a concern," said Soane.

When guests come to the Fairmont, they know, for the most part, what to expect during their stay. It's a five star hotel with five star service and the price point reflects that standard.

It's when the guest is expecting something other than what they get, that satisfaction begins to plummet.

"I think that anything that doesn't provide the guest with the minimal expectation is a concern," said Soane.

That's why Tourism Whistler has been doing a lot of work on the segmentation of Whistler's products, highlighting the product, the service and the price. It has re-rated its entire membership and looked at competitive rating systems.

And things have changed. There are far less five star properties in Whistler now.

"We were historically rating our five star properties based on the product. But now we've recognized the critical integral relationship with product and service," said Fisher.

"From Tourism Whistler's perspective, we feel that as long as the segmentation of product, service and price is crystal clear and the guest knows exactly what to expect, that the ultimate net promoter scores should be consistent with those expectations."

Despite communicating more clearly with the guest, there are still some missing pieces of the puzzle.

"We would like to see, no matter what the expectation is, some sort of a 24-hour service available that will in fact support the guest because you cannot always rely on everything falling into place 100 per cent of the time," said Fisher.

"When a challenge arises, ultimately the guest wants to speak to a live person to assist them, and is probably rarely understanding when they're not able to achieve that."