Aa recent study done by the Hawaii Tourism Authority concludes that visitor satisfaction seems to be slipping from the mainland and Japan. The study echoes some of the findings in a similar state survey and also seem to indicate that the trend may continue especially in the Japanese market.
Providing good customer service is essential in any business but for a travel agency located in Hawaii it's even more important. There's nothing more upsetting to us then to have a customer unhappy with their vacation experience. We take it very seriously. Since we're in Hawaii, the last call we want to get is from somebody who's getting poor customer service whether it be from airline, hotel, car rental service or activity.
In my personal experience, I have not seen any increase in customer service problems or dis-satisfaction but that doesn't mean it's not happening. It's been pretty much the same in the last five years. Since everything we do has a person behind it we get very few complaints, on the contrary, we have had an excellent record of customer service and our perfect record with the Better Business Bureau and customer testimonials reflects our excellent customer service. A perfect example of what this study is talking about just came up today. A customer contacted me and explained he had to wait six hours for room change at the property they were staying at in Maui. Even with all of our resources and abilities to troubleshoot problems, we were unable to get him moved in a timely manner. Understandably this is not our fault however, we take it very seriously and go to every length we can to make sure customers needs are met. Sometimes us travel agents who are not even responsible for the problem just get stuck in the middle.
In this gentleman's case solving the problem and then getting them upgraded went a long way to compensating him for his lost time. He also recognized in this process how having a travel agent and somebody as his advocate helped him tremendously and now appreciates everything that we have done.