Again and again, guests’ impressions of hotels boil down to “How did they treat me there?”

Assuming the room was clean, the reservation handled smoothly and all other basics were taken care of, what are some ways you can, without spending lots of money, make your property stand out in a guest’s mind?

The key is to be personal.

Small, personal touches work much better than large, grand yet impersonal touches - ice sculptures in the lobby - for impressing guests enough to make them want to rebook later.

One thing to do is to really know local restaurants. Assume that every guest is not going to want to eat at the restaurant. Instead of making them feel like they’re disappointing you by wanting to try another restaurant, get to really know the local dining scene.

Actually go and eat at places more than once at different times - regularly. You must know if there’s a new chef, if things are improving or getting worse.

Keep a list of restaurants, coffee shops, bars or night spots you or your staff have actually visited with an eye to being able to recommend it or not. Let local eateries know that you’re keeping such a list, you’re looking for good places to send your guests to and chances are they might welcome you for a complimentary meal.

So when a guest asks about good local restaurants, instead of muttering something about how wonderful your hotel restaurant is and shoving a torn, crinkled list of names of restaurants in front of them, you can say “yes, we recommend this one for this reason and we don’t recommend that one for that reason”.

Guests like hearing the reasons. If you say you can’t recommend a local Thai restaurant because the food wasn’t spicy enough, it might be that low-key spice is what the guest (secretly) wants and she’ll be grateful for the information.