It was at the Park Hyatt Dubai (left) when the IT manager came to fix my problem with the Internet – I didn’t have an Ethernet adaptor for my MacAir – by providing me with my own wireless router in my room.

He understood my problem and took his intiative to fix it.

It was a “wow” moment and I wanted to share it instantly. I immediately wrote a post about that, posted it on this website and tweeted it.

But imagine how much “wower” it would have been if someone from the hotel or group had picked up on my comment in the social media space and done something about it while I was inhouse.

I was there, after all, for five nights, plenty of time for someone to have made an approach, if only to say, “We read your comment, and we thank you for it.”

So for me, that was a missed opportunity to close the loop on a customer experience – to turn good into great.

It also made me think of the time that I stayed at the (ironically) Grand Hyatt Melbourne and I blogged, tweeted and put on Facebook my unhappiness at being charged for Internet access.

Imagine if someone had been monitoring the social media space as well and picked up on my comment and done something about it while I was inhouse.

That would have been a golden opportunity to turn an unhappy customer into a happy one with some form of gesture.

I am sure there must be some form of alert system available for hotels to pick up on customer comments that are made while the guest is inhouse, and not just after they leave the hotel.

And it just seems to me that hoteliers are missing out on this golden opportunity being offered by social media to offer “instant satisfaction” and “instant gratification” to their customers while they are inhouse.

Customers today have the power to share instantly anything they wish to, and make it public. In the old days, someone might make a complaint or compliment to you personally. Today, they tell everyone in their network.

Depending how you look at it, this is either an opportunity to deliver instant customer satisfaction or a “OMG, what are we going to do about it” moment.

And given that instant sharing is not going to go away anytime soon, seems to me hoteliers should be more tuned to the social media listening post.

After all, wouldn’t you rather people talk about you in front of you than behind your backs?