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I've seen very well-run hotels - ranging from economy to full service - draw a high number of guest complaints. I've seen some very sloppily run hotels - properties with obvious housekeeping, maintenance, or service problems - that drew almost none at all. Some of my colleagues have also noticed the phenomenon, so we sat down one time, asked why, and actually drew a graph. (X axis=frequency and occurrence of guest complaints on a scale of 1 to 10, Y axis=condition of property and quality of staff, service, etc. - 'is this a good hotel?' - on a scale of 1 to 10) and included every property in which any of us had ever worked.What set the 'high-guest-complaint' hotels apart from where the guests were more content? Managers and staff buy into the complaints when they occur. Yes, you want to keep the guests happy; yes, you don't argue with an unhappy guest and yes, of course, you want to be sensitive to their needs and fix the problem. But the flipside of that is, you don't swing the other way. You don't get emotionally invested in the guest or the complaint, you don't over-respond... effectively, you don't "reward" the guest for having a complaint. You apologize, fix the complaint - and stop when the problem's been solved and the guest is happy and willing to come back, and leave it at that. Added 'delight' on the part of the guest following a problem or complaint gives you a nice, warm, fuzzy feeling inside, but over time it works against you.(Yes, I want the guest to be 'delighted' too, to experience a higher level of satisfaction than he or she expected. But I want it to happen in response to what we do well, 99.5% of the time, not as a result of a one-out-of-two-hundred complaint. Doing good is the norm for what we do. Problems are the exception.)If you do get invested in your problems and complaints, you'll get more complaints, no matter how well you run the hotel. If you don't, most guests keep their demands and expectations within what you can reasonably provide for what they're paying, so long as you're indeed delivering value. The relation between your hotel, your staff, and your guests needs to be kept cooperative, interdependent, and mutually supportive - and if something goes wrong, it needs to be restored to that state. It must never be allowed - and certainly not encouraged - to be counterdependent and adversarial. This is completely unacceptable. Let it get to be counterdependent and adversarial, and it can be difficult, if not impossible, to bring it back to a cooperative, interdependent, and mutually supportive state.Getting invested in complaints actually happens. I've even heard people talk to guests and 'fish' for complaints. You can use them - if you want to drop sandbags on the head of a co-worker you dislike, if a manager wants to get rid of someone and replace him or her with 'their own' people, if a small group owner wants to get rid of a manager... Everyone's human and will draw a complaint from time to time, and 'one is too many'. The hotels we graphed had one common thread that ran through most of the 'high-complaint' properties: a management or ownership change, a period of high turnover, something else that generated a high 'political' environment... They don't care about the guests. The guest is only the guy caught in the middle, used as a 'heavy'Guests themselves, often well-trained by hotel chains offering '100% satisfaction guarantees', get invested in complaints. Recently, a night auditor here got one: the lady in one room called to complain that her air conditioner wasn't working - after already having once been moved because of a complaint about the TV set. The night auditor offered to move her to yet another room. But she didn't want another room, she told him, she just wanted a discount on her next stay. He told her she'd have to check with a manager in the morning. I got the note, but never heard from her again after that stay. She lived here in town and, after the TV and air conditioner were checked and worked fine; her indignation, disappointment and dissatisfaction with our property's maintenance and physical condition was rewarded, not with a comp or discounted room on a future stay, but with a spot on our 'Do not rent' naughty list. Not the most desirable of guests to begin with, but what made her typical was that sometimes, even not-so-undesirable (maybe) guests show up with a complaint . . . but don't want the problem solved so much (or nearly as much) as they want to leverage it.When such an situation is not in place, there is usually an identifiable reason for the high-complaint phenomenon in an individual hotel . . . bad communication within the hotel, salespeople who promise more than the hotel or its staff can deliver, an inexperienced manager who buys into the complaints as I've noted.Something I won't put up with in any hotel that I run is any marketing or customer relations approach that plays the guest against the hotel, that plays the guest against the staff, that plays the guest against any member of the staff, that plays the staff against one another, or that plays the staff against management or management against staff. I'm not a nice guy about such behavior: indeed, I can be viciously, inhumanly intolerant of it. I'm a little touchy about it, and freely admit that, with no apologies and no regrets. It's a personal pet peeve of mine, but it's one well grounded in observation and experience. I have seen the working environment, the ambiance, and the guest environment that needs to be in place and maintained in any good hotel absolutely trashed by such behavior on the part of one or two individuals (usually ambitious salespeople or wanna-be middle management). I've seen it happen in hotels that had previously had a uniquely, remarkably positive guest ambiance and working environment by contrast to any nearby hotel - all completely destroyed in a matter of weeks.It's been a learning experience over the times I've seen it occur. If you work for me, and you tear up one of my computers or vacuum cleaners, or lose some cash; you'll irritate me, and I'll growl at you and maybe write you up; but I'll rent a few more rooms to make up the money, or I'll get onto Amazon or head over to Costco and replace the equipment. After a relatively short time I'll get over it; and with any extenuating circumstances at all (if you stayed out of my way for a few days until I calm down), you'll probably even still have a job.My hotel's guest ambiance? That's my stock in trade: the hotel is just a building. My working environment in which my staff has to show up and perform well? That will directly affect the guest ambiance. Either way, it's just as much an asset as material property and cash - but in either case, you cannot easily put a price on it, and it's not so easily repaired or replaced if it becomes damaged or goes missing.I don't like firing people. I will if I have to; but I've always found to be more respectable, and prided myself upon being (or at least aspired for myself to be), the kind of manager that could give an errant employee a little extra attention and coaching and straighten him or her out; and on the flipside, I regard 'fire-crazy' managers (and even worse, wannabe managers) as particularly contemptible. But I will quickly and mercilessly fire any salesperson who messes with my guest ambiance or working environment through such behavior no matter how much revenue they're bringing in, and I will fire any customer service person who does that no matter what kind of glowing reviews he or she's generating from whoever or wherever; and if I'm not careful to watch myself (Michael Forrest Jones's answer to What's the best way to fire an employee? ), I'll even enjoy doing it. The momentarily increased revenue, or improvement in the reviews, that come back as a result of such tactics - if it occurs at all - is irrelevant because it's unsustainable; over time, the cost to your hotel will be greater than this month's increase or improvement. Playing guests against the hotel, or the staff against each other, etc., is very bad behavior, and is to be taken and dealt with every bit as seriously as dishonesty, on-the-job alcohol or drug use, harassment or workplace violence: anyone who does it is unfit and unworthy to have a job (well, at least they're easy for me to hate :-) ). It is not possible to achieve teamwork by playing staff or management against each other, and it is not possible to achieve customer loyalty (or even the loaded carnival game of 'customer satisfaction') by playing guests against staff, or customers against the hotel.Needless to say, I'm no fan of Hampton Inn and its "100% Satisfaction Guarantee". It puts pressure on competing, mid-market and even economy hotels: if the clerk was 'not exactly rude, but I don't feel I was greeted quite like I should have been', (and yes, I actually did get a complaint like that about a clerk, years ago . . .) then the guest feels that he or she rates a comp room by way of expiation. It effectively rewards the guest for complaining, while giving managers and salespeople a 'problem to solve' and a chance to make themselves look good. But it doesn't benefit Hampton Inn. You'd think that with a guarantee like that, Hampton Inn would rate the highest of all mid-market hotels in customer satisfaction. They don't. Holiday Inn Express does. It amounts to nothing but destructive competition, achieved by playing guests against the hotel (indeed the very Hampton Inn for which it's supposed to work so well) or its staff.When you have that kind of situation in place, yes, you're going to have unhappy guests. Indeed, unhappy guests are necessary for the functioning of such a hotel, with this caliber of management or staff. That management style depends upon having the relationship between the hotel and the guest be counterdependent and adversarial.Even the best of us will make a mistake from time to time and make a guest unhappy. But even when someone on the staff makes just such a mistake, we should put it right - but in a way that supports reconciliation and the restoration of the cooperative, interdependent and mutually supportive relationship. It is of the utmost importance that the relationship between the hotel and the guests, and that between each person on the staff and any guest, at all times be cooperative, interdependent, and mutually supportive - never adversarial.

I will share my perspectives on both men!I don't know much about the religiously inclined tyrant King Hassan but I have followed up on the other gifted liberal dictator the Shah of Iran.Shah never showed off his religious credentials but King Hassan did!So, that puts an end to the first part of this question.SHAH was a liberal right of the center politically minded person. He hated Marxists but at the same time detested the religious far right.King Hassan was religiously inclined and referred to as the defender of the faith.Shah Reza Pahlavi was a visionary in my opinion. He single-handedly changed Iranian Urban Classes under his rule, but also made many mistakes!Shah Reza when came into power with the help of CIA and the American Overlords was a puppet playing to his Western Masters. He did what the Americans wanted him to do during the early part of the Cold War.Kept Commercial ties with Israel, provided some steady support to Turkey and Iraq(under King Faisal) and immensely helped Pakistan (all three were American Allies) during the Cold War.Supported the Oman Sultan in fighting the Marxists as he himself was strongly anti-communist.He provided Oil to the Western Alliance at affordable rates and did not mess up the supply lines during the two Arab -Israeli Wars.Shah who initiated the White revolution during the 60s gave land to the farmers, equal rights to women, invested in education, invested in the oil industry, invested in public infrastructure, public transportation schemes such as public buses and trains, beefed up his nation’s security, kept a tight lid on the Mullahs, snatched land from the religious clergy, and Westernized the urban classes across all major cities of his country.Will never forget how modern the Iranian Green Double-decker buses were in the 1970s when other countries were still peddling along on the streets with the assistance of bullock carts and donkey carts.Iranian Passport was highly well regarded the world over and the Iranians who were living overseas or travelling as students or tourists were given utmost respect.The world knew the Royal Family of Iran better than the Iranians living in the villages and rural areas.Iran’s King the SHAH was like a Hollywood Star on the International Stage. There was no other Moslem Leader who had so many admirers and followers like the Shah did during his time.The Shah slowly changed his style of governance in the 1970s and later with King Faisal increased the price of oil!This was his single biggest mistake in my opinion.It turned the Western powers against him and later conspired to remove both him and the Late King Faisal of KSA.Oil to him should not be sold cheap and therefore Iran made windfall gains during the 1970s. Iranian Economy boomed between 1973 and 1977. If I am not mistaken the Iranian Growth rates were probably at their highest in the late 70s.Expats came from all over the world to work in Iran!Iran was the superpower of the Persian Gulf region, thanks to Shah’s vision and the amount of money he had invested in the Iranian Defence. Iranian Imperial Airforce was probably the best in the region and second to none in the entire Moslem world.Where did the Shah go wrong?He misunderstood that Shia by nature is religiously more conservative compared to the Sunni’s.He misunderstood the religious right in his country and allowed Khomeini to leave the country.He gave Americans unprecedented freedom in his own country. Iranian Police were not allowed to charge or arrest an American National.Iranian Economic Growth and Urban Middle Class were Westernized but the Rural Masses were not brought within the mainstream. This radicalized the rural classes which later fell prey to the revolution.Associating himself with the Western Values and ignoring local customs and Iranian Values. This brought the Shah and family world fame but at what price? Iranians became deeply suspicious of the Shah after the coronation ceremony and big party that shook his country’s finances.Egoistic and paranoid! Shah had a strong ego and he was also paranoid.Shah ‘s Secret Service the SAVAK did a lot of damage to the monarchy in Iran. Even shop keepers were working for the secret police and the intelligence in Tehran and nobody was given a second chance to prove their innocence once caught defaming the royal family.Excessive reliance on the Americans! Uncle Sam was the father, son and the Holy Spirit of the Iranian State. Shah’s support to the USA during the Cold War not only made the religious right go bonkers but also infuriated the USSR. Hence, Shah lost the support of both the hard wing rightists and leftists over time.Investing in luxurious properties overseas and buying foreign assets. This didn't go down well with the people. Iranian Revolutionary government tried to get money back from his UBS bank accounts but failed. It was believed that after the Shah left Iran, he took billions away with him, Only in his one Swiss Bank Account, there was rumoured to be around USD$ 4–5 Bio dollars. He also had lavish properties in Switzerland where he invited world leaders for a meeting. All this opulence damaged the Shah in the eyes of those who were backward and poor.Not allowing a constitutional democracy to take roots! He never allowed democracy to take roots in Iran. Shah was all in one figure. This didn't help as he was not able to transfer blame like most of the Monarchs may do so when the going gets tough.King Hassan, on the contrary, was running a very different country which was not SHIA, ethnically divided, to begin with, and had a reasonably large landmass to accommodate its few people.He had a bad temper like the Shah but expressed his anger in public on many occasions. One instance is when the King was invited by the British Queen to dinner on her royal boat and there he had arrived late and with most of his family members who shouldn't have been there with him, The guest list was violated and the Queen got very upset because the King came late in his arrogance. Reportedly during the dinner, the King exchanged spats with the British Foreign Minister and left annoyed.King Hassan ruled his country as an absolute monarch! No opposition was acceptable to him. He was all-in-one like the SHAH but lacked the glamour to make himself internationally popular and acceptable.Probably, he lagged behind the SHAH because the Americans did not give much importance to the Francophone world in the African Continent, unlike Iran which was sitting at the crossroads of the Persian Gulf.Yes, the King invested in Agriculture, Food security, and land all over Morocco. He was to some extent tolerant in dealing with the religious minorities and gave Jews protection. Morocco was probably one of the few Moslem Nations where the Jews were not prosecuted.Like the SHAH the King was a naturally gifted and eloquent speaker. On questions of Family, religion, social balance, inequality and maintaining ties to traditions, no one could speak better!The one area of similarity between the King and the SHAH was that they had bad relations with their strongest neighbour. For the Shah it was Iraq and for the King, It was Algeria and their proxy the Polisario Front in the Western Sahara region.Remarkably both Iraq and Algeria were strongly aligned with the Soviets during the Cold War.But its hard-to-draw comparisons between the SHAH and the King!Morocco was not gifted with oil whereas Iran was!Shah could have done a lot more for his people with the Oil aka petrodollars, but the King without oil tried to do at least a few things which gained better optics among the domestic audience.I guess comparing the two monarchs is not only difficult but also unfair because both enjoyed access to different kind of financial and natural resources and were living in different societies, that had different historical pieces of baggage, traditions, cultures and legacies.Iran was never colonized whereas Morocco was a French Colony!Hence, the SHAH became a victim at the hands of religious extremism and the King survived because he himself joined the religious extremists in his country to tame them later in the most subtle of ways!Let historians and history be the best judge of both.

Sitting at a traffic light, I’ve often felt superior to the little punk in the lowered 1998 Honda next to me, a ginormous spoiler, his subwoofer shaking every window at the intersection. You know the car.I’ve though about cranking up my Wagner, Waylon Jennings or Wilco to drown it out but it occurred to me that the guy in the Honda is feeling very superior about his taste too – that’s why he’s showing it off without a shred of guilt. I tend to think I am just as much an ass If I turn up my music to drown his out. His bass is bigger than mine anyway, I can live with that.My list of now uncool musicians that I love would include the likes of Slade, John Denver and Badfinger - they remind me of being a kid. See what I just did, I made an excuse for why I like them. Every time I mention how I was a big fan of Oasis in the 1990s (and still am) people screw up their faces and sneer over how awful they are and what a couple of arrogant sots the Gallagher brother are. From my perspective, it’s a shtick… at least on the part of Noel - I think they know they’re not really the greatest rock band ever, they say it to piss people off. I find it very entertaining to watch in a guilty pleasure sort of way. But hey, I get hours of enjoyment watching John Lydon interviews as he slags on other musicians and runs circles around interviewers.Despite my high opinion of my own taste, I long ago learned to live and let live when it comes to music because someone else will and does think what I like is total shite; beauty is in the eye of the beholder and there is value in almost everything. In art school, I had a professor, a very famous painter, who made the class watch Bob Ross videos to find techniques we could use. I developed a lot of respect for Bob Ross once I cut through my snobbish bullshit. So, I don’t like shaming when it comes to personal taste and having worked around wine and contemporary art, I’ve lost my appetite for it because so much of it is about name dropping and showing off what you know, that your taste is refined and superior. Dave Grohl famously said:If you f*cking like something, like it. That’s what’s wrong with our generation: that residual punk rock guilt, like, ‘You’re not supposed to like that. That’s not f*cking cool.’ Don’t f*cking think it’s not cool to like Britney Spears’ [song] Toxic. It is cool to like Britney Spears’ Toxic! Why the f*ck not?And then there is Nickelback.Around 2011, I was involved in a fundraising event that brought musicians to the Napa Valley to play at different venues in the area. As I was rushing about trying to get ready for a music set being hosted at a theater where I worked, my boss called me to his office with our Marketing Director and hurriedly asked me to shut the door. They said with the utmost urgency, fighting back smiles, that Chad Kroeger from Nickelback was coming.“Who’s that?” I asked.“ARE YOU SERIOUS? NICKELBACK!”I gave them a blank stare and shrugged my shoulders.”Oh c’mon, you know, they sing that hit How You Remind Me.Shrugging my shoulders again “Hmm, no, don’t know it.”“Seriously? Yeah you do, Google it, you’ll recognize it! Like oh my God, it is a hit that was on the radio all the time five, ten years ago. Never mind, this is why we are tapping you to do the honors, you’re not starstruck. This is a big deal, we need to be prepared and we want you to show him around.”They were spot on, I don’t want to talk to someone because they’re famous, I want to converse because they are interesting and have something to say - that they’re not, as John Lydon says of a band who shall remain nameless - ‘a coat hanger with a studded leather jacket hanging on it.’ I’m not someone who is impressed by celebrity, and I’ve had lunch with plenty of them - most are gracious and engaging, many are so caught up in being who they are they are just not terribly interesting. I had a meal once with Tommy Lee Jones, I thought he was a bit of a jerk until he caught on I knew the difference between the man and the public figure and I realized he’s very cerebral and painfully shy - once we got through that, he was an amazing guy. When they told me he was coming, I thought it was the guitarist from Mötley Crüe, Tommy Lee. Robert Plant literally bumped into me back stage once and then we did that awkward side to side ‘oh no, after you’ dance - he looked panicked and was aloof, I get it, he’s a mega-celebrity and people want a piece of him but he still managed to be somewhat gracious and not blatantly rude. In interviews, Plant’s got tremendous depth.I respect that people find success and fame through their art but the way I look at it, ‘stars’ are just human beings with flaws like all the rest of us and eventually, most of them will be fallen stars. The true artists, the smart ones who put their creativity before the fame, recognize that and maintain some humility - often, those are the ones who shine the longest. They just want to be regarded and treated as regular people who do a bang up job and who appreciate that, without their fans, their fame is meaningless… well, most do.So, while guests began arriving at the event, this man with longish, highlighted and flat-ironed hair, a military-esque jacket and scruff on his chin walked in with a cute l blonde on his arm – Having done the Google search as my boss urged, I recognized him as Chad Kroger and the woman as his then girlfriend, Kristen Dewitt. I’d looked up the song How You Remind Me and recognized it because I found it irritating and would switch the dial every time it came on the radio. It was the kind of song you sort of like at first and then not long into it, it just gets under your skin and makes it crawl, then you realize an hour later, it’s an ear worm. I never knew whose song it was until that day I was told about it. Now, there I was looking at the growly-voiced singer. Even today, before writing this, I couldn’t name another Nickelback song – I had to look up that title to write about it here and it just struck me as coffee table rock it follows a formula that sells, is catchy but pretty one dimensional - just my opinion.Doing my job, I introduced myself to Chad, extending my hand, he couldn’t be bothered to do more than make a comment under his breath and not make eye contact then he turned his back on me. ‘Whatever,’ I thought, ‘I can’t waste my time on this chasing you about, kissing your stuck-up affected ass, trying to make you talk to me’ and I left him standing with his girlfriend in the middle of the room to figure it out on his own.Later, the corporate event organizer comes hurrying along with him to introduce him to me – Through his eye rolls and scowls, he still can’t be bothered engaging me in an interaction and I’m not going to force the issue. I do force a smile, welcome him again and saunter off. I wasn’t keen on his music but had been absolutely willing to give him a chance as a person but at this point, I had a really low opinion of him and was realizing why that song irritates me so much: It’s masquerading as art and it’s creator has confused celebrity with authenticity. I’m not a big fan of hating a band just because - I gave them a listen, not my bag. And I don’t need chad to like me or spend time talking to me, whatever, I just find rich or famous people who act like that really loathsome.About a half hour later, I am standing near the logoed backdrop they have set up for press photos as Kroeger and Dewitt saunter in front of it to have their photos taken. It was amazing to watch, the photographers gathered around as he expertly turned and glided from one pose to the next, perfectly angling his mug for the camera. “Wow,” I said as it was wrapping up. “I never realized how poised you have to be and play to the camera when you do these shoots.” As he flipped around to face me, he narrowed his eyes and asked “EXCUUUUSE ME?” “I’ve just never seen a photo shoot like that,” I replied flatly “I didn’t know you guys posed for them.” He stared at me, scowled, turned on his heel and then walked away.I thought to myself. Wow, what a self-important, stuck up effing tool - I’m sure the feeling was mutual.Addendum:I get in the car with my wife and because I had looked up a couple Nickelback songs in iTunes to refresh my memory, the car radio links to my phone and starts playing their song Rockstar. She stops talking abruptly and I can see her from the corner of my eye, looking at me. I turn to her, her face screwed up into an incredulous scowl. “Whhhhhy are you playing this? That guy Chad is a douche.” She says. “He cheated on his girlfriend with Avril Lavigne and says and does weird stuff.” So I looked him up, you know, give him another chance - yeah, I can see why people love to hate Nickelback.