From a travellers point of view, the smile or lack of from the Front Desk can either make or break a stay in a hotel, resort or motel.

Too often in New Zealand it seems as if the Front Office staff feel that those travellers either checking in or checking out of their hotel/resort are really quite a nuisance and if it wasn’t for the inconvenience of people wanting to stay in the hotel, annoying them asking silly questions about activities in the town , asking for directions etc, the front office job would be very pleasant.

Interestingly it seems to me that the higher price the establishment, the colder the reception.  Probably the best city in New Zealand for Customer Service in Hotels would be Christchurch…. Having stayed in many hotels in that city, I have always found friendly helpful welcomes both when on business or personal travel. Why is that!  The North Island is often a different thing altogether…why?

The hospitality industry in New Zealand needs to take a leaf out of Hawaii’s book…. that state knows how to treat travellers making them feel very special and that they are the only guest in the hotel.  In fact throughout the USA one cannot fault customer service (sometimes its even a little over the top but rather that than none at all)

Tourism is too important to New Zealand to be blighted by offhand and unfriendly service.

We all want to see the obvious, Rotorua and the Geysers, Queenstown in all her majesty, the Eiffel Tower, the Coliseum but what really makes a visit to a country great are those peeks of how a country actually lives day to day.  It’s really important to show country warts and all… the top streets and the tired streets.   Don’t always take the main roads, B roads can be a fantastic way to understand how people actually live and often an opportunity to actually meet the locals.

My best memory of Greece was getting a little bit lost and ending up in  a little village in the mountains… going to the one little bar/shop/restaurant in the town and spending an afternoon drinking very strong Greek coffee and having very stilted conversations with three old chaps who obviously spent their days, smoking, drinking coffee or whatever!  (While their wives were cleaning house and doing the little gardens around their houses) Every time I smell freshly brewed coffee I am back in that village on that hot hot day…. that what great memories and great trips are made of.

You know, New Zealand has so much more to offer than just beautiful scenery, I realise after a year travelling around Europe that we are really very very nice people.  On the whole we are friendly and very hospitable and we are pretty proud of our country.  There is nothing nicer, if you are on tour, than being taken off the main highway and being set free to walk along a beach and have the time to have a coffee at a cafe that is not a tourist shop.  We have lots of places we can share, Narrow Neck Beach, Takapuna Beach, on the way up North a detour to Manly Beach… the opportunities are endless.

Too often we see those coaches pulled up in front of large tourist -aimed shops  (excuse used that they have the best toilets!) selling often overpriced items that are made in some offshore country to enable a bit more money to be made out of the traveller via commissions.   If you are going to include shopping stops, there are plenty of out of the way authentic shops that can be used, selling good quality NZ made goods that we can be proud to send out of our country.

It won’t cost a tour operator much, if anything, to make these little deviations… maybe an extra half an hour added to the travelling day and a few dollars extra in gas…which will be recouped, I believe, by referral business, the best business you can get.

Too often on my travels I wished I had bought my own pillow with me.  There is nothing worse than hoping into bed after a day of exploring, putting your head on your pillow only to find a flat, hard brick like thing probably at least 10years old,  and you spend what seems to be half the night trying to get comfortable and half the next day trying to get rid of the crick in your neck.  Pillows need to be replaced very regularly, twice a year is good if the room is almost fully booked year round.  And they need to be double slipped.  Hygiene is good!

The hotels I loved the most were the ones with the great pillows.  Lets face it, the main reason you book a hotel is that it provides you (you hope) with a lovely comfy, snugglie bed to sleep in so pillows are really really important.  Some hotels and B & B’s even give you a choice of pillow type…super hard, super soft, medium, down filled, cotton filled, synthetic  the list can be endless…   Accommodation Providers don’t have to go to that extreme but there is no excuse for not having good quality pillows on the beds.

Nice to have well rested happy travellers at the check out desk in the morning.