Pearson New International Edition International pcl tp indd 1

MODERN FRONT OFFICE ISSUES AND TACTICS
How Well Do Hotel Companies Treat Their Guests Online?
The Customer Respect Group is an international research and consulting firm that studies
how companies treat their customers online. It assigns a customer respect index rating to each
company on a scale of 0 to 10 (10 = highest score). A representative sample of adult Internet
users are interviewed, and applicable Web sites are analyzed. Attributes used to judge the
online customer experience relate to simplicity (ease of navigation), responsiveness (quick
and thorough responses to inquiries), privacy, attitude (customer focus of the site), trans-
parency (open and honest policies), and principles (extent to which the company values
and respects customer data).
Hotel organizations receiving the company’s highest ratings in spring, 2004, were
Marriott International, Hyatt Hotels & Resorts, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, Radisson
Hotels & Resorts, and Caesar’s Entertainment.
More than 50 percent of users who abandoned Web sites in the three months previous
to the study cited a lack of simplicity as the main reason why they did so. Seventy percent
of respondents said they would go to a competitor if a Web site was difficult to use.
A hotel organization’s Web site is an ever-increasing source of information for poten-
tial guests who use the sites to make reservations. Some good advice: Make sure your Web