The Importance of Celebrating Service Incidents

USAToday blogs on the launch of Hilton's behospitable.com web site, which uses rich media as a way to tell stories about people who have gone above and beyond the call of duty to resolve traveler crises. The site's content was modelled after founder Conrad Hilton, author of Be My Guest.

The site makes it simple for anyone to record an act of kindness they've done, seen or received. The site celebrates generous acts from fellow travelers and hotel employees.

Satisfaction with resolution is one of the most important drivers of overall guest satisfaction and intent to return. However, it is difficult to train employees to solve for the real problems, as opposed to dealing with the symptoms of the problem.

Sites like this provide hotels with a platform to reward employee initiative with additional ego rewards. Look for these sites to evolve into wikis, enabling employees scattered across geographies to be able to share information with similar hotel types, using data mining techniques to extinguish service "brush fires" before they have a chance to become major problems.