Hotel Welcome Letter via Email
I enjoy staying in hotels, but I don’t necessarily like arriving in them. Throughout my decades of hotel experiences, showing up for a stay can still be a hectic process. A property often delivers a sheet describing services and amenities at check-in, which I appreciate overall. But I like to be more prepared for arrival. And The Alexandrian, another property in Marriott’s Autograph Collection grab bag, provided a helpful version of a hotel welcome letter via email. (Incidentally, The Alexandrian, previously a Kimpton property, has quite a history.) Today, I’m describing my recent experience and ponder why more hotels don’t bother with this method.
The Alexandrian’s Hotel Welcome Letter
Just over 24 hours before our stay, I received an email from The Alexandrian Hotel. Sent from the Director of Housekeeping, the welcome letter covered the main areas where I, and imagine most other guests, focus – housekeeping, parking, the fitness center, and dining.
But this email went the extra mile with its specifics. The hotel confirmed daily housekeeping is standard and doesn’t require any special request. The property stepped through the tricky self-parking process, involving a garage with a different address located directly under the hotel, low clearance dimensions, and the ticketing/validation procedure. The fitness stepped through the fitness center and dining locations, hours, and linked to menus.
A Step Above Ordinary…
…meant plenty to my family. We could more easily plan our stay thanks to the advance welcome letter. Armed with the above information, I didn’t need to unnecessarily bother the front desk with a variety of logistical questions.
Could I have acquired this info elsewhere? Perhaps, but I don’t have the same confidence for updated, specific information when I navigate a hotel’s website. Other properties have sent empty emails in advance, often from the concierge, blandly advising something along the lines of, “let us know if we can do anything to make your stay special.” What consistently makes our stays special is conveniently having accurate hotel amenity and service information. Maybe I have a low bar. I shouldn’t need to ask anyone for this – it should be readily available. The Alexandrian ensured that was the case.
Why Don’t More Properties Do This?
What I received from The Alexandrian doesn’t happen often, in my experience. By doing so, The Alexandria let me know that they care. Why wouldn’t other properties want to start off on the right foot with customers by building goodwill early? I have my guesses. Here are just a few; multiple are probably true:
- They’re oblivious.
- They’re not oblivious, they clearly just don’t care.
- Cost, in terms of employees’ time to compose/send an email (even though it’s probably boilerplate).
- Cost, in terms of a guest being more informed. A more enlightened customer will probably not erroneously (read: excessively) spend due to ignorance of a hotel’s amenity and service policies.
Conclusion
It’s important to note that our stay at The Alexandrian was merely mediocre otherwise. The hotel location’s solid, but most everything else it offered was nothing special. But their efforts with that simple hotel welcome letter leave me with a higher opinion of the property. I bemoan how so many hotels fail to go the extra mile (or ten feet) to improve the guest experience. It’s nice to know that The Alexandrian cares about us having a satisfactory arrival as much as we do.
What has a hotel done to enhance your arrival experience?
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Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
