Who put the pool pump into reverse ?

Accidents happen, we all know that, but in a service industry it is the way that the incident is handled that counts. All too often, a property will try and do the minimum possible to resolve the issue and this was once again evidenced in a popular capital city hotel in SE Asia.

Time and time again we see issues with swimming pools where hotel management take very little responsibility for the impact it has on the Guest experience. What we saw at this property was frightening....

Electricians had been working around the pool for a few days with floodlights flashing on and off to give that all important daytime disco feel round the pool when all you wanted to do was relax.

With electrical boxes open and being worked on within a metre of the pool, what looked like effluent started to be pumped, at high speed, into the pool and what was a crystal clear pool fast became a brown swamp. At this time Guests were swimming in the pool until such point they thought better of it and made a decision to leave. This was at 12.01pm.

Whilst accidents do happen the following 90 minutes around the pool were unbelievable. After a few calls on the radio and after 10 minutes there were no less than nine suited staff members and three engineer uniformed staff staring at the pool.

One hour and five minutes later at 1.06pm, the twelve staff members round the pool decided it would a good idea to filter the pool, which they proceeded to wheel out a totally inadequate pump on a trolley to start the filter and vacuum process. We have a saying that most businesses perform 'style over substance' and this instance was no exception as for the next five minutes team members took it in turns to randomly push a vacuum pole around the pool to suck sediment from the pool floor, until that it the pump broke, couldn't be fixed and they gave in.

Now, the astonishing fact is this:

Not one member of the hotel team went round the pool apologising or explaining what was going on, requested Guests leave the pool or in fact shut the pool down.

Instead, they carried on working around Guests until such at point at 1.14pm, all Guests had left the pool deck with their possible memory being 'the hotel that pumps effluent into the pool'.