About

Majid Al Futtaim develops hotels connected or close to shopping malls, including the World famous Mall of the Emirates, that offer guests great value and a convenient experience. The group's 13 hotel properties offer a choice of 10 international hotel brands and host 1.6 million guests annually.

Within the local area, guests enjoy access to both incredible retail and tourist experiences, and the area’s commercial districts. Back at the hotels, they can relax and enjoy high service standards and upmarket facilities including restaurants, cafés, bars, 24-hour business centers, convenience shops open 24/7, fitness centres and pools.

Challenges

Capturing real-time feedback and getting more guest reviews were the main challenges for the Dubai hotel group before adopting Pulse.

The guest relations team was only getting feedback after check-out, so they were missing opportunities to fix potential issues, stated Omayma Mourai, Majid Al Futtaim Properties’ Manager for Marketing and Customer Experience, Hotels. “Not all guests are very vocal when they want to say something. Often, they simply don’t have time to talk or relay a comment on an issue or our services.”

“Not all guests are very vocal when they want to say something. Often, they simply don’t have time to talk or relay a comment on an issue or our services.”

Solution

Looking into options, Majid Al Futtaim decided on Pulse as the best solution to meet their challenges. The group trialed Pulse with five of their properties, and after confirming their success, rolled it out to the whole group. One Front Office Manager said “We believe that Pulse fills [the feedback] gap and enables us to collect feedback at the right time to quickly resolve any issues”.

Easily set up by sending a URL to their internet provider, the Pulse feedback screen now displays on guests’ computer or mobile devices as they log in to the hotel’s Wi-Fi, asking them to leave feedback on their experience by choosing between 1-5 emojis.  A low score creates a follow-up page asking for a comment and their room number.

Reactive time formerly spent replying to concerns or requests is more productively used to respond to Pulses and take action.  “Getting feedback while the guest is still in house gives us the opportunity to promptly act on resolving any comment or issue during the stay.” 

The group currently receives and handles about 400 Pulses each month per hotel, compared to 150 post-stay guest satisfaction surveys. To handle the feedback, the hotel has set up streamlined processes. The guest experience manager on the AM shift, followed respectively by the evening and night shift duty managers, take responsibility for regularly checking Pulses.

Each manager has Local Measure open on their desktops and iPads to monitor new Pulses, immediately action a low-score message and resolve any issue. Checking and responding to a Pulse takes about 3 minutes and issues are normally completely resolved within 15-40 minutes. Pulses rated 4 or 5 with no comments receive an auto-reply and are also quickly reviewed.

“We believe that Pulse fills [the feedback] gap and enables us to collect feedback at the right time to quickly resolve any issues”.

Achievements

Hyper-personalized guest service

“Pulse is a good tool to create great moments for our guests. A perfect example was a couple who commented on missing their kids. We know that most video calls are blocked in their country, but with our IT team’s help we were able to set up a video call so they could talk to their children. The parents were extremely happy and appreciative.”

Ms Mourai said it is also a great way to gather customer-provided information and personal preferences to help create unique guest experiences for future stays of regular guests.

Improved guest satisfaction scores

Pulse is definitely seen as a game-changer for this hotel and others within the group. “Taking action via Pulse to satisfy customers is reflecting positively in our guest satisfaction platform scores. We do not let any guest leave with a negative experience.”  One property increased its guest satisfaction scores from 86% to 87%, while others saw their score rise from 89.7% to 90.4%.

Ms Mourai concludes, “Pulse is definitely a game-changer when taking the guest journey to the next level on a larger extent. It is a transformative customer feedback platform that helps improve guest experience and minimize the occurrence of negative reviews.”

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This case study leverages technology from AWS including S3, EC2, Cloudfront and Lambda.
Local Measure is an APN Select Technology Partner. Find us on the AWS Marketplace here.