By Doug Baarman
In the past few months, I have experienced communication challenges with hotels regarding two of the groups we manage. My takeaway is:
Communicate as soon as you uncover a challenge. It is important to get it out into the open immediately so everyone involved can begin to provide acceptable solutions.
It is not my intent to dive into politics or sensitive topics, but you can think of many public instances where if the truth had been told immediately – it may not have been as big of an issue or certainly could have been resolved with less time and energy spent:
- Watergate
- Baseball players using steroids
- Whitewater
- Enron
In both of my instances, the hotels uncovered a challenge, tried to solve it internally, but waited too long to tell the group about the situation. Once it was determined that they could not solve the issue themselves, they reached out…but it was late in the process which only made the challenge worse:
- A recent example: The hotel knew of the situation for over two weeks, but notified the group only 72 hours prior to arrival. We learned that 20% of our group was going to be walked (this was the only option offered). Since the entire group was senior executives of a major corporation, it was unacceptable that any of these arrivals be walked (we did have the no walk clause in the agreement).
We were able to come up with alternative solutions to resolve the challenge, but it did create stress and additional work for all the meeting planners involved.
Do you have communication tips you can share that could help prevent these challenges?