The Case of the Missing Reservation
Mark, Donna, and their children, along with another family, traditionally attended Easter
brunch at a large downtown hotel. This year, as in the past, Donna called and made a
reservation about three weeks prior to Easter. Because half the party consisted of small
children, they arrived 20 minutes prior to the 11:30 reservation to ensure being seated
early. When they arrived, however, the hostess said that they did not have a reservation.
She explained that guests sometimes failed to show and that she would probably have a
table available for them before long. Mark and Donna were quite upset and insisted that
The next day, Mark wrote a letter to the hotel manager explaining the entire
incident. Mark was in the MBA program at the local university and taking a course on
quality management. In the class, they had just studied issues of customer focus and some
of the approaches used at The Ritz-Carlton Hotel, a 1992 and 1999 Baldrige Award
winner. Mark concluded his letter with the statement, “I doubt that we would have
experienced this situation at a hotel that truly believes in quality.” About a week later, he
received the following letter:
We enjoy hearing from our valued guests, but wish you had experienced the level
of service and accommodations that we strive to achieve here at our hotel. Our
Thank you once again for sharing your thoughts with us. We believe in a
philosophy of “continuous improvement,” and it is through feedback such as
yours that we can continue to improve the service to our guests.
Discussion Questions
1. Were the hostess’s actions consistent with a customer-focused quality philosophy?
What might she have done differently?