Crucial services a hotel must be able to provide for its customers.

Hotels used to be a commercial business venture that just provided feeding and lodging to travelers, but it has today turned into a multi-million business venture that provides hospitality services that are tailored to meet the business needs of its customers. Hotels have gone beyond the limit of only providing feeding and lodging to providing custom-made business solutions and facilities that cater to the immediate and future business needs of their customers. In fact, about 90 percent of hotel customers are businessmen and career people who are taking up hotel reservations with a view to promoting or realizing some business ideals. A hotel must therefore be able to provide some basic and luxury services that are targeted at meeting the needs of these and other customers.

a. Car hire and pickup services:  Hotels must be able to provide car pick-up services where customers are arriving their hotels straight from the airports. Customers don’t want to be stranded at airports in an unfamiliar city or state, and they sure don’t want to take airport shuttles because of the security risk factor where their booked hotel could arrange for their transportation. A standard hotel must be able to provide a chauffeured-vehicle to convey visiting customers from the airport or seaport to their hotel and back again to the airport when they are leaving the city or state. If it is very necessary, a hotel should be able to arrange for car hire services if a booked customer would need a personal car for the duration of his business within the city at an affordable cost and rate.

b. Free and secured parking space:  A hotel must be able to provide customers with a free and secured car parking space. It is not good business when a customer is booked into a hotel but has to park his car about a kilometer away at an available paid car park. A hotel management must be able to provide customers with secured parking spaces that are managed by competent security staff, and even if the customer has to pay for the service the hotel management must be able to handle it. Business customers don’t mind paying for anything so long it has to do with their security and convenience, and available car parking space that is secured is one of them.

c. Multi-media conference halls:  Most businessmen that are booked into hotels are in town because they have a business seminar or conference to host or attend in the city, and a hotel management could as well provide a suitable conference hall that is well-equipped with multi-media facilities to cater to these needs. Functional conference halls are a good investment for hotels because they serve as conference centres for business meetings, seminars, book launches, wedding receptions, and other social engagements. Most hotel customers would be pleased to find out that their meetings are going to hold within the conference halls of their own hotels and they won’t need to rent cars or travel to another part of town to conduct the business they are in town for.