‘TIMES’ HATCHET JOB ON SWAZI HOTEL

What has the Times of Swaziland newspaper got against the Royal Swazi Sun Hotel?

I ask because the newspaper did an extraordinary hatchet job on the hotel in its edition on Monday (16 June 2008).

The newspaper used a whole page to report, ‘Almost half of the guests who stayed at the prestigious Royal Swazi Sun hotel in May declared they were not happy with the attitude of the staff at these hotels.’

The report went on to say that of 57 guests who gave opinions about staff attitudes at breakfast time, 30 said they were dissatisfied. At dinner, 30 guests were not happy with the staff and 21 were.

What concerns me is that the newspaper also reproduced the full data from the customer survey and on reading this you can see an entirely different picture of customer satisfaction. When asked about their attitudes to a variety of personal services (reception, telephone operators, porters etc) a total of 89 percent had positive responses. A total of 86 percent were positive about the guest rooms and 84 percent were pleased with the overall breakfast facilities.

When asked ‘how do you rate Royal Swazi Sun Valley’, total of 100 percent were positive.

So I ask the question again: why did the Times do a hatchet job on the hotel?

There may be a number of reasons. The first that comes to mind is this is a typical example of ‘attack journalism’ - that is when you attack someone or something for the sake of it, because you have a grudge against them, or because it just makes a good story. I don’t know what the Royal Swazi Sun has done to upset the newspaper. Did the reporter have a bad experience in the bar one night?

Another reason might be that someone led the reporter by the nose to write the story. As well as giving the statistics the reporter also writes about how dissatisfied some of the staff who work at the hotel are and how they feel underpaid.

Did the reporter allow himself to be carried away a bit by the workers so as to write a favourable story for them?

I don’t know the answers, but what is clear is that even a cursory look at the full customer satisfaction data would tell you that the hotel is actually serving its guests rather well, although there is some room for improvement.

I think by distorting the figures so obviously the Times has cheated its readers.

By the way, I am not employed by the hotel to write good things about it. In fact, I have never stayed at the hotel. But should the Royal Swazi Sun feel that they would like to reward me for my support by offering a complimentary ‘run of hotel’ stay, I am free in early July.