Social media in travel: Avis vs. Starwood

I think there’s a strong argument to the idea that organizations with a strong customer service culture are going to be more plugged in to social media than those without.  And to prove this point, I have my own, highly unscientific, recent experiences with Avis and Starwood.

Avis at LAX is a giant fail.  I’ve been a fan and customer of Avis for many years, and rent from them on an almost exclusive basis when traveling domestically.  On the whole they have good service, make few mistakes and often upgrade me.  I like.  But the branch at LAX has been a disaster each of the many times I’ve rented there.  From infrequent shuttles to understaffed counters, that place throws off my travel mojo worse than a July thunderstorm at ORD.

The icing on the cake was two recent rentals where I had specifically reserved “Cool Cars”, a Pontiac Solstice convertible and a Cadillac SRX sport utility, for special occasions.  Each time I was told that the LAX location didn’t carry the vehicle I had reserved.  Fed up with the lies of the Avis website and LAX staff, I hastily tweeted my dissatisfaction into cyberspace.  Avis never bothered to respond or apologize.

By contrast, Starwood has been on the cutting edge of the social media world since before the term was invented.  The “Starwood Lurker” on the Flyertalk.com forums has been providing assistance and interacting with customers for about a decade.  This was such a hit with Flyertalkers that other chains have followed suit, assigning people to help customers well before the first tweet or status update took place.

So when I was recently locked out of my room, drunk, at 2:30 in the morning at the Ritz-Carlton Battery Park, my hate tweets to the Ritz were as follows:

Drunk hate tweet #1: HELLO RITZ CARLTON: it is 3am, I’m drunk and want in my room. MAKE THE FUCKING DOOR WORK NOW. kthamks. #TBEX

And #2: I should never have strayed from #Starwood. Miss you W Union Squae. F- you and your defective door at 3am Ritz Carlton

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I’m a peach when I’m wasted and want to crash.  Clearly.  I woke up the next morning to a ridiculous hangover, near deadly dehydration, and this tweet at me from @StarwoodBuzz:

@savvytravelblog Saw your post from early this morning. Looking forward to to seeing you back at one of our properties soon!

Now that’s what I call a proactive use of social media.