Well folks, we're in Austin, let the festivities begin! After a long drive, and an even longer check in to the hotel, we are all settled in.  

We got in around 11:00am and I dropped Audrey off at work.  After unpacking all of her work stuff I headed to the hotel, the Hawthorne Suites, to be exact.  I arrived at around 12:00-12:20.  When I tried to check in they explained to me that check-in wasn't until 3:00pm.  Inconvenient, but not a problem, I went ahead and checked in, and got my credit card run through, and told them I would be back later to get assigned a room.  Hey, they have rules and I can deal with them.

So, I took the dogs to Common Ford North Park and let em run around for a good hour or so.  The park was completely empty (except for one guy fishing) and they got to run off their leashes and swim in the lake.  It was awesome since it was mid-day and nobody was there.   They got to swim in the lake and run around and work off some nervous energy which will make this trip much easier.  I hung out and chased them around and then headed back to the hotel.  Checked in to my room and started unpacking.  As I was pulling the last item from the car the lady at the desk came out and explained to me that they had given me the wrong room, and I would have to move.  Now normally I wouldn't really mind, but I had just waited about 3 hours for my room,  had been traveling since 8:00am and had two cranky dogs who were on edge since they were in a new location and had been cooped up all day.  The room wasn't that far away, but was in a separate building than the one I was in at the time.  It was an inconvenience.  Worst, it was an inconvenience caused by their mistake.  They gave me a $10 room credit, but at the time that didn't seem like a justified reward.  Especially since I wouldn't see that until check out time.  Now, I'm not one to complain about mistakes usually, since most often they are caused by simple human error and not by malice, but I was a little miffed by this one.

This got me thinking about service and all the myriad ways it interacts to create a customer experience.  The person at the desk was aware that I had already been by earlier and a room wasn't available.  If she had been customer-focused she would have realized that I probably had been a little inconvenienced already by having to come back and check in over two visits to the front desk.  Once she realized her mistake in making the wrong room assignment I think she should have gone a little out of her way to make sure that everything went smoothly.  A $10 credit makes little headway in this regard.  A more satisfactory response might have been to offer to have someone take my bags to my new room while I transferred the dogs.  Or to call after I had settled in, make sure everything was okay, and see if there was anything else we needed.

I guess the point of this is that I understand mistakes happen.  But I hate feeling like I'm just a customer to people.  I work hard for my money (and so does my wife), I want to feel like people appreciate it when I spend it on them.  In the case of the hotel, I want to feel like they appreciate my business.  This isn't the kind of incident that will keep me from staying at a Hawthorn Suites, but it is something that I will file away.  Given enough of these incidents and it won't be hard for another hotel to earn my loyalty.

The dogs are settled in and now they are sacked out on the floor of the hotel sleeping.  It's times like these that I am stunned by how calm they've become over the years.  They are completely different animals, no pun intended.  Ok, maybe a slight pun intended.  Tonight, it's happy hour at the Marriott followed by Trudy's for stuffed avocadoes and beer.   Then, it's party time, possible 6th Street action.  The big problem with Austin is that we have lots of friends to see and so little time to do it.