Business Communication

Group Proposal
Group 3: Aroma Resort: Handle the scandal with youtuber Khoa Pug

I. Situation 1: Miscommunication between Aroma’s staff and Khoa Pug

1. Description of the situation

Accordingly, on April 5 in the schedule he set out, he will visit Binh Thuan and rest at Aroma
resort after driving a car more than 200km from Saigon to Mui Ne. When he checked-in, he was
told by the receptionist that he did not accept a reservation through an intermediary and then
asked him to book a room directly with a constant price of 2.2 million VND.
After he paid by card, he was led by the staff to the suite that he personally identified as only
about 1.5 million VND. Khoa Pug also shared on the video: "I booked a room of 2.2 million
VND for the Bungalow room type, the receptionist had a challenging attitude to customers and
talked like a market me and asked to break my phone”
According to what happened in the video, Khoa Pug was treated badly by the resort, he was
not served or received carefully from the moment he entered. At the same time, he was also
expressed by the staff and had improper words with the standards of the service provider. In the
peak, in the video there is also the appearance of a security guard with words threatening Khoa,
making things worse. As soon as feeling the stress beyond their own expectations, Khoa Pug and
his friend decided to leave the resort with a suitcase and accept to lose VND 2.2 million.

2. Reason why we want to study this situation

a. This event is a reflection of how to handle the crisis for all businesses in Vietnam, all company
must get ready to catch a crisis at any time
b. How to respond to the media crisis
c. The need for sincerity is extremely necessary
d. Strong investment in communications immediately after the crisis is necessary

 Crisis handling needs speed: Businesses admit that the growth of social networks, the ability
of social media to viral news is extremely great. But along with that, businesses must also be
wary if there are bad rumors about the brand appearing on this.
 Khoa pug and Aroma incident quickly received attention from the online community,
attracting more than 11,000 likes and 1,600 shares on the personal page. Even now this
"denunciation" video of him has received more than 5 million views. In addition to many
comments that condemn the resort for misconduct, many people protect the resort, saying
that Khoa Pug is PR itself.
 What did Aroma Resort do when the media crisis struck? Many experts believe that, if not in
a hurry to handle the Aroma communication crisis. Surely this resort does not receive so
much public opinion axes. 
 As soon as there is bad news, this unit reacts in the most natural way: Disclaimer, blame
customers. As soon as the information spread, the Aroma Resort side said that. Faculty of
 Pug forged, spread false information about the resort. Specifically: Send mail to the client but
don't apologize. This makes many people see this as a provocation to customers instead of
acting apologetically. Moreover, the email content also confirmed that it will be officially
announced to the media. Aims to explain the work of the resort as well as to protect the
image of the Aroma Resort and the tourism area.

3. Reasons for this situation

Based on what we have learnt in the course, “Ethics in the workplace” in Chapter 1;
“Listening techniques” in Chapter 2 and “Communication and its barriers: Distractions” in
Chapter 4 can be used to analyze this problem.
 Ethics in the workplace: After asking Khoa Pug to cancel his booking on booking.com,
he booked the room (exactly the same as the room on booking.com) directly at Arome resort.
However, the staff gave him the room which was not equivalent with his payment. This
action of Aroma’s staff is supposed to cheat the customer, it trespassed ethics in the
workplace
 Listening techniques: When Khoa Pug came back to the reception to talk about the
incorrect room with his payment and expect a clear explanation from the staff. However, the
staff said that she would not have worked with him if he had not turned off his camera.
Moreover, she asked the guard to take his camera and delete his video without listening to
the customer and letting him say any word. This action is supposed to lack listening
techniques.
 Distractions: Emotional interference and physical distractions are causes in leading the
miscommunication between the resort and customer. The resort should not let the
receptionist who was pregnant at that moment resolve conflict with the customer. Her
emotion was unstable, it can affect her working capability.

4. Consequences of this situation 

 Although the youtuber has removed videos related to the crisis from his channel, these videos
truly boomed at that moment. Each video reached millions of views with thousands of
comments and likes after a few days. Generally, people supported the youtuber and gave
negative comments to the resort. It can be seen that Aroma resort would lose a great number
of potential customers after the crisis.

Video related to Aroma Resort have been removed on Khoa Pug’s Youtube channel
 Many social network users called for a boycott of Aroma resort. As a consequence,
thousands of 1-star ratings attached negative feedback for Aroma resort appeared on Google
and other online booking platforms such as Booking.com, Tripadvisor… Aroma resort has
been changed to Aroma cheating resort with only 1.2 – star rate on Google Maps at that
time. Even if the resort put great effort into retrieving the reputation, the rating for Aroma
has only reached 1.7-star up to now. 

           Negative feedback and poor rating of Aroma Resort on Google in April, 2019

5. Solutions

a. To the staff: 
 The resort’s staff especially, the receptionist always has to be honest, friendly with
customers; also respects and has professional working style when talking with customers. In
case there is a conflict with customers, the staff has to be patient and professional. Do not
argue or misbehave with customers. Let the customers talk first, listen to them and then, the
staff can explain the issue with them and resolve the conflict. If the staff makes a mistake,
he/she has to immediately apologize to the customer, reasonably compensate for them. 
 During the working process, if the customer records or films for any purpose, do not
force them to stop recording impolitely. The staff can use it as an advantage to improve
image and gain more fame for the firm. Moreover, the resort’s staff should also record the
process at the same time in case customers use video to vandalize the firm’s image. The staff
can use video to compare with the customer's video if there is a miscommunication.

b. To the manager:
 Temporarily fire or heavily fine the staff who makes a mistake, misbehaves with the
customer to make an example for other employees if he/she denies persistently his/her
fault.
  Organize training courses regularly for the staff (receptionist, bellman, security, etc) to
improve their skills and proficiencies.

 When the Faculty of Pug published this email, quite a lot of people thought it as a
challenge from Aroma. So the anger flared up, many negative comments. They said that this
resort was very unprofessional when it came to crisis.
 On the other hand, many individuals believe that the service nature of Aroma Resort is
inherently poor. So this unit easily revealed many problems in this case. It can be seen that
the long-standing efforts of the whole system no longer seem to exist in the eyes of
customers.
 The Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Binh Thuan province spoke up
 As soon as the heat of the incident was at its highest point, the leader of the Department
of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Binh Thuan province said that, through information from
the social network, the Department had grasped a specific incident, a customer claiming to be
deceived by the resort, threatened and assaulted. However, after watching the video and
sharing from Khoa Pug, it is still impossible to confirm that the resort side is completely
wrong because the clip is only reflected from one side of the customer, needs to be verified
and clarified. .
 The name of the resort on Google was immediately changed to "Aroma Resort Phishing"
and many 1-star reviews from the online community. As soon as the clip appeared on
Youtube, many people were angry with the behavior and work of the Aroma resort staff. To
satisfy their anger, some people went to Google Maps to search for the resort name and voted
1 star for this resort. The average score was so high that the initial threshold suddenly
dropped to only 1.2 after receiving more than 3,000 1-star reviews. Even more extreme
action happened, the resort was renamed "Aroma Cheating Resort" (Aroma Resort Cheating).
II. Situation 2: Aroma failed to manage negative news online

1. Descriptions of the situation

After Khoa Pug – a famous reviewer posted a video to critise Aroma Resort for fraud behavior
and staff’ attitude, the incident quickly received the attention of the online community. After 6
days of the incident, the letter of apology and explanation was published on the resort's official
Facebook account. Especially, the content written in the letter face major backlash from the
online community and the wave of boycott of this resort was growing due to the
misrepresentation of what actually happened compared to the video record.
2. Reason why we want to study this situation

The resort posted the apology with aims to ease the current situation; however, the letter made
the public more angry due to the inappropriate usage of words and tone. Furthermore, despite
offering an apology, the text still tend to have a bias tone and a slight case of fact twisting. In
reality, many companies choose written communication to solve the problem and have
succeeded in reconciliation. In this situation, we perceive that the resort had failed to deal with
problems via this channel of communication. Therefore, we decide to study this situation to find
out writing mistakes Aroma Resort had made.

3. Reasons for this situation 

In chapter 4, “distraction” is considered to be one of the barriers that creates misunderstanding

when typographical and spelling errors can disrupt written messages. In this situation, the
apology letter with misspellings and inconsistent words indicates that it was not elaborated
before uploading. More seriously, the receiver might not feel respected with the insincere
apology. 
 Another reason for this siuation is response time. Aroma emailed the customer 6 days after the
incident happened. We believe that it was the wrong time when the incident had received too
much public attention.
“Selecting the best channel” to communicate is very important for companies dealing with
problems. Choosing the wrong medium can result in a message that is less effective. In this
situation, we realize that Facebook is not the most appropriate communication channel. 
“Audience oriented” in business writing claims that you will concentrate on looking at a
problem from the perspective of the audience instead of seeing it from your own. In this
situation, the letter of Aroma Resort focused too much on explaining the happened situation
without giving any apology, which can not satisfy receiver.

4. Consequences of this situation 

The behavior of this resort makes the burning flare out again and in a short time, the number
of Aroma reviews on Google jumped from about 1,500 to more than 6,000. The number of 1-star
votes overwhelmed and the name of this resort had also been changed to the sarcastic name
'Aroma Resort cheat guests'
In addition, at the present time, if users search for the name of the Aroma resort, a series of
negative results are also caught in the eye. Keywords: scam, 2 million, intimidation, boycott…
appear massively with comments expressing frustration.
5. Solutions
The letter should be mailed to Khoa Pug and published within 24 hours after the incident
happended. Therefore, the resort calm public before the incident got too much attention.
Aroma Resort should publish the letter after it had been carefully approved to avoid unwanted
misunderstanding in terms of its words and tone. Furthermore, the resort should make the most
sincere and honest apology for the customer.
Instead of using unofficial social media, it will be ideal for AROMA to use the major news
sites (where the articles about the incident were published) posting apologies to increase
coverage and use credibility, the reputation of that newspaper to provoke sympathy in the mind
of customers as well as may ease the situation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9w0Tvj87VDI
https://vietnammoi.vn/nhin-lai-toan-canh-vu-lum-xum-giua-youtuber-khoa-pug-va-aroma-resort-
20190407013130536.htm
https://www.tripzilla.vn/khoa-pug-va-aroma-beach-resort-ai-la-nan-nhan/6124
https://tiin.vn/chuyen-muc/song/sau-la-thu-xin-loi-khong-mot-chu-xin-loi-nao-aroma-tang-han-
5000-danh-gia-1-sao.html