[Authored by Benjamin Morse, MBA Candidate] Imagine coming to Nashville and staying at a nice hotel, either at Opryland or perhaps the Loews Vanderbilt. In addition to the almost $200 per night for the room plus tax and any room service or extras you may purchase, you have to pay about $20 per night for parking, or $24 per night for valet parking (plus the expected tips!).
Enter TownePark, an independent hotel valet/service company that works for various hotel sites around the country. Basically, the hotels have outsourced their valet and parking services, and sometimes their bellman and doorman services, to TownePark, either under a temporary or permanent contract, depending on the individual hotel.
So why does TownePark charge so much for parking? And why would anybody pay the extra money to valet when parking is close? TownePark’s answer… the service.
When a car pulls up at one of the TownePark hotels, the guests are immediately greeted by a valet, with a welcome that includes the name of the hotel, the name of the valet, an inquiry of the guest’s name, and an inquiry of what sort of assistance they need. Valets must use the guest name a minimum of two times within the conversation, even if the encounter is only a minute in length. All doors are opened for the guests, the guests are assisted with their luggage without asking for the assistance, and when retrieving a guest’s vehicle, and any request made by a guest must be answered with a positive “can-do” attitude. When guests arrive by taxi, valets take luggage from the trunk while the driver is paying, look at the nametag on the luggage, and open the taxi door for the guest, immediately calling them by name and welcoming them to the hotel. Guests take notice of the extra service that they receive from these valets, and for that reason TownePark has become known as one of the top hotel service companies in the business, continuously expanding to new hotels that seek TownePark’s stance of “aggressive hospitality.”
With company slogans such as “Our customer is our most important asset” and “‘Good Enough’ never is,” it is always looking for new ways to take care of and pamper the guests of whichever hotel it serves. By completely exceeding the expectations of the guests, TownePark has created good customer satisfaction base which makes the returning hotel guests willing to pay the extra charge for not only the valet, but the high quality of service that comes with it.
Authored by Benjamin Morse, MBA Candidate