As you notice with hotels, especially mine the more things you offer to guests, more problems can occur. At my hotel we have many amenities available to guests: vending machines, ATM machine, business center equipped with printers & computers, and computers, fax machines, key machines, etc we use for employees. These are man-made and will break from time to time. We have them serviced whenever they are out-of-order, which is a common thing.
The problem is, if you are busy and guests are relying on a ATM machine because they need money, they are dissapointed. Or, if they need to print a document and business center computer is not working properly. We provided options like cashing a check, or printing it for them, but it creates more work. Vending machines often times take money or disperse wrong item, and we end up giving them money or simply apologizing. Or, sometimes the item guest is looking for is not in the vending machine, so we refer them to nearest store. People like convenience, they want to be able to go to hotel and have everything there, if it is a full service hotel. It looks bad if things are not working or services are not provided. If you have a system that tracks guest issues, that is not working, this is hard to follow-up if there guest issues, that you want to fix.
We do rely so much on technology nowadays, and that is part of the problem. When you promise so much, lot can potentially go wrong. Keep things simple and you will not have these problems.
