FA+
Shop
Hotels: A Strategy Guide
13 years ago
A world that loves it's irony...
I've worked in the hotel industry now for over two and a half years, and I feel it's finally time to write this journal. I want to say this upfront: most guests I interact with are at worst forgettable, and at best really awesome people--I don't deal with dicks too often. Still, I see recurring problems with the people I see or talk to, and while I dig this journal is going to be more rant than helpful primer, I still want to get this out. So.
A Few Simple Guidelines for a Positive Hotel Stay
Booking Your Stay
1) As tempting as it is, try your hardest not to book on third-party websites like Expedia. I understand saving money, especially in the current economic atmosphere, but two things happen when you book via a third party:
A) Bureaucracy takes hold. While there are one or two situations where third parties will still have you pay the hotel directly, for the most part you are about to engage in a series of red tape knots that will make it unendingly difficult to cancel or modify a reservation should the need arise. I have also seen more reservation screw-ups through third party bookings than if you call the hotel direct.
B) It becomes excruciatingly difficult to do anything to you reservations. When you book third party, your rate is set and you pay for it then. When you check in, and you suddenly want some other rate or a different room type or any of a multitude of reservation-changing things, it is hard to help you out. A lot of times third party websites also won't tell you what kind of room you're booking, and when you arrive and you only have one bed and you need two, everyone gets flustered when we can't accommodate that.
2) Have all necessary materials ready when you're booking with the front desk. I cannot count the number of times I have had someone call to book a room, and then I end up sitting with dead air as the booking guest rummages around their house for credit cards, rewards numbers, and who knows what else. If you are calling hotels, even just shopping around, you're likely to find a deal that will suit your needs. Just have anything you may need on-hand--the three major ones being credit card, pen & paper, and if you have one for the hotel chain you're booking at, a rewards card number. That's it, that's all you need. Calling a hotel's front desk means you're competing with real, live guests who may need help as well; taking up their time is unfair.
The most heinous offenders are people who call to book rooms from their car. I understand, sometimes you're calling last-minute to book a room. Still, if you need to book this room, pull your car the fuck over. I am going to be asking you for a credit card number to hold the room, so unless you know it by heart, you will be taking a short trip to the breakdown lane anyway. Save yourself the hassle, pull off at a McDonald's or Starbucks, get a drink and book the room.
3) Be reasonable with your request for directions over the phone. From the airport to the hotel? Fine. From a local college or business to the hotel? Also okay. From a different state entirely? We are not your bloody GPS. Even for hotels that have concierge desks, or help desks that are unattached to the front desk, we are not here to provide you turn-by-turn directions from New York City to Boston. You think I'm joking, but people have asked me to do this for them before. It is the goddamn 21st century, you can find your way to a computer (even at a public library!), and Google Maps your driving route, if nothing else.
Check-In
1) For the love of god and all that is holy, do not walk up to the front desk to check in while you are still on your cellphone. The hotel I work at is a business-oriented hotel, which means we receive a lot of busy business travelers. This is okay, I won't fault you for needing to do your job. The thing is, to do mine, I need to interact with you by speaking. If your iPhone 5 is surgically attached to your face, I can't do that. There are ample seating areas in hotel lobbies partially designed for this situation--sit down, finish your call, then walk up to the counter and I will gladly check you in.
I'm not sure if people realise how demoralising it is to be the guest service agent in this situation. I may not be your job, I may not be your boss or colleague, but I am a fellow human being and you can give me enough respect to tell the person on the other end you will call them back in five minutes while I run down the hotel's amenities info. Five minutes of your life, at most--if you get a competent guest service agent (and I consider myself one), we have our check-in speech down to a science, and will give you the most bang for your buck. Speaking of....
2) Try your best to not interrupt us when we're explaining things to you. Any desk clerk worth his or her salt will hit all the major points of a hotel: restaurant & bar hours, WiFi info, business centre location, gym and pool locations, elevators. After we have finished talking to you, you are free to ask any questions on these. Interrupting us not only comes off as a little rude (moreso depending on your tone), but a lot of times the question you ask will likely be the next thing we say. Also, don't start questioning us before we even get a chance to go into our spiel. I understand there are some unsavory desk clerks who just give you keys and say nothing, but most of us (especially at more well-regarded hotel brands) are going to give you a cursory rundown of the property. Your badgering us as we're attempting to check you in is doing no one any favours. Patience is a virtue, my friends.
3) Be ready. This is much like the booking bulletpoint--have your credit card, your ID, and perhaps your rewards card number handy upon check-in. At the very least have your wallet or purse ready. You may be at the desk talking with me, but if a line forms behind you not only are you stressing the GSA (guest service agent) out, but you're going to start making the people behind you irate, especially depending on time of day and type of guest. Take an extra moment in your car or outside to find all applicable check-in materials, then approach the desk. It makes everything smoother, and will guarantee you get an amazingly smile-filled check-in.
4) Sometimes, shit happens and either the way you booked gives you a room type you don't want (number of beds, possible handicapped shower, et cetera), or we at the hotel are overbooked in one type of room or another. We understand the inconvenience, and we don't expect folks to be happy (moreso if it's our fault versus a third-party booking site's fault), As GSAs, we do our best to keep you, the guest, happy. Our job is to not fuck up, and most of us take that with pride. That being said, while you can be perturbed, yelling at us or getting fist-slamming, desk-punching angry isn't going to help anyone. This is a point I'll be reiterating throughout this journal--there is no excuse for yelling at a front desk clerk, save if one insults you directly.
We do our damnedest to make sure you have the best experience possible. If you think you booked a room with two beds, but we have it as a room with one bed, we have no actual reason to lie to you about the reservation's change history saying anything otherwise. We don't gain much from giving you bad news--it's an easy fix to switch your room from one type to another if we have it available. The issue is if we have it available. There is one absolutely awesome way to minimize your chances of this happening to you: give the hotel a call maybe a week or so before your check-in date and confirm room type with us. It's far easier to move people around, even if it may put one room type negative, a week in advance--people are likely to cancel between now and then, and if we can't accommodate your request, you have at least a week to find something more suitable.
Your Stay
1) We are not magicians. We cannot make something you want just appear out of thin air. Bigger, fancier hotels may have concierges who can do that to a degree further than my hotel can, but even so, not every request is manageable. Time is a big factor: if you ask us to do something during daylight hours, it will probably be a little more likely than if you ask us at 11p. This goes for a specific amenity, a restaurant suggestion, or a place to go hang out outside of the hotel.
I think there's a misconception that, like the dead-eyed stock clerk at a grocery store, people who work at the front desk of hotels are there just to make a living. Not so--most people I have worked with went to college for hospitality, and want to become managers or sales department members or something in the inner-workings of a hotel, something that keeps everything moving smoothly. I suppose lower-class hotels than I (motels, if you will) may get a more transient group of employees, but for the most part we like our jobs a whole hell of a lot, and want to help. Do not take advantage of that--do not get mad when we do not have a very specific brand of coffee, or don't have food that fits the parameters of your diet. If you have a specific allergy or limits to your food intake, learn in life to bring a few essentials with you. We can accommodate diabetes and we can make sure your food allergies are avoided, but we do not keep stocks of diet-specific food waiting for the one person with ciliac, or that person who can only eat organic donuts.
2) Be nice. I can't believe I have to say this, but seriously, be nice. For all guests, most employees at a hotel will do enough to make your stay pleasant, but if you are nice to us--and being nice is as simple as smiling back, not speaking to us in rude or condescending tones, and being flexible--we are willing to go the extra mile. It is not required to go above and beyond, don't ever assume it is. Most of us are more than willing to do extra things for a guest, though, if they have been pleasant to deal with. It's a simple thing, but so few understand it.
3) There are other people at the hotel. As such, we will triage problems based on current severity. If there is a guest calling to say their toilet is clogged, or that their heat/AC isn't turning on, we are going to put that a little before a call about needing more towels. Your shower can a couple of minutes, and if it can't, what is wrong with the towels you may have used once? Do you burn every towel you use at home the minute you use them?
Understand, we want to make every guest comfortable. We will do our best to keep you informed of situations at our hotel, and if your request may be second or third in line, we will tell you that our houseman or engineer is currently busy on another call, but will be with you as soon as possible. It may be frustrating, but we don't like to have to make guests wait any more than you want to wait.
4) Housekeeping gains nothing from not cleaning your room. Each person in housekeeping is given a set of rooms in the hotel to clean each day. Some of these may be rooms that have checked out, so they do a full room servicing. Some may be stay over rooms, so they are going to do turn-down service, but depending on your stay length they are not going to replace sheets or other major things. Sheets are replaced every three days of a stay, at least at my properties.
If your room was not serviced, first make sure you didn't have a Do Not Disturb sign on your door handle. Once again, someone in housekeeping gains nothing if they don't clean your room. In fact, if a housekeeper finishes all her rooms early, she's merely sent home. They want to stay as long as possible, they want to be paid. We have houseman here all night, even after housekeeping leaves--if you were not restocked with towels, or you would like an extra blanket or your trash re-emptied or literally anything to do with keeping your room clean, we can have someone come up. Be aware that it may be your own damn fault your room wasn't serviced, and don't flip out at the front desk for supposed incompetence.
Mishaps, Mistakes, Unfortunate Incidents, and Miscellaneous
1) Walks. No one, no one with a soul who works at the front desk, likes doing walks. A walk occurs when the hotel, for whatever reason, is oversold. My main hotel has 119 rooms. If, via a high-level member booking or a room being unusable, we have more arriving guests than available rooms, we will have to walk someone to another property. Thankfully, since the hospitality company I work for runs two properties in the same parking lot, it's a little less horrid for us, but that doesn't stop people from becoming indignant.
This is one of those times I don't deny a certain amount of distress from the guest. You booked a room at Hotel X, thinking you would stay at Hotel X. Instead, you are being told that your room is at Hotel Y, and even if it's only two hundred feet from one front door to another, that is still a big jump in your expectations. Understand that no one working the front desk enjoys giving this news. We are not happy to kick you out of our hotel that you were more than willing to pay for, and we are genuinely sorry for having to do it. The first few times I had to walk someone, my stomach was in knots and my legs were physically shaking. I had to sit down in the back with some water afterward, because it is nerve-wracking to the point of being physically exhausting. We pick a small number of arriving guests who are potential walks, and as they filter in we cross names off the list until there is one left.
You being walked is purely luck of the draw. You being walked is not a slight against you as a person, nor do we think your business is lesser-than. But if a room has no working heat/AC unit, or there is a giant leak that is turning the carpet into a swamp, would you really to stay there? No.
We will do all that is possible to make your walk painless. Depending on the type of hotel we have versus the type we're walking you to, you may be comped the night, or at least a greatly-reduced rate. Our hotel doesn't have free breakfast, so we offer guests to come back the next morning and have breakfast on us. If you had a rewards number for our hotel, we will make sure you get issued the number of points you would have earned staying with us. We do not want to walk you--it sucks if we have to. We are sincerely apologetic, and all we ask in return is begrudging understanding that we are not taking pleasure in doing this.
2) First, watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCqm4H3m3Ew I'll wait.
Your member level tells us how often you've stayed with our hotel brands, and how much money you spend with us. We appreciate that you stay at the same sort of hotels often, but just because you've spent half of the past year in Marriotts or InterContinental hotels does not give you the right to lord over people who work at the hotels. We understand your status, we are happy to do extra for you, but this is not a dick-swinging contest. Do not call down, angry, because your room didn't have a sparkling water fountain or a smattering of rare snacks from India. We could offer you nothing, but we do offer you certain perks.
These perks depend not just on your level, but on the type of property you're staying at and what we can offer you. In the Marriott chain, a Fairfield Inn is going to have less to offer than a J. W. Marriott property. A Courtyard by Marriott (the Marriott hotel I work for) is a stripped-down hotel in some senses, because we have amenities but not to the extent a full-scale Marriott (the next step up from us) would have. Yes, the gym is on the smaller side, but lower brands on the Marriott property ladder might have even smaller gyms, if they have them at all. No, our pool is not Olympic size, but at least we have one.
You are a Platinum/Diamond/Eridium guest, and that's fantastic. We are willing to give you some perks and do a little more for you as a baseline and generally make your stay that much more pleasant because you've spent so much of your life in hotels. This does not give you the right, or the privilege, to be a total douchenozzle thundercunt to those of us working at the hotel. We are all still humans, and your job/status gains you little in the long run. Once again, be nice. You may get more from the start, but that's all you'll get if you start demanding upgrades we don't have or free food we don't serve.
3) Hotels are expensive. They are more expensive than they were even just two years ago when I started working in the hospitality industry. The brand dictates a lot about the price of a hotel room, and if you want to stay in a hotel with a nicer brand image, you're going to pay for that. The more amenities we have, the higher the price as well--or, at the very least, the fewer of those amenities that will be included in the rate.
Do not become irate with us when we say the rate for the night is something you cannot afford. Do not keep the phone call going forever because you want to shop for a discount. A normal front desk agent has patience enough for three to four possible discounts to look up before it becomes painfully obvious you don't actually qualify for any of the preferred business rates, and you're just naming companies in the hopes that we'll give you some heavily-discounted rate. That is not how it works.
I understand that $279 maybe out of your price range. You need to understand that on a busier night, there are business people who are willing to pay that--either because their company is going to reimburse them, or because they're used to expensive stays. Discounts aren't always available--a hotel's reservation manger will close off or open up certain discounts based on daily availability. Your are not guaranteed a discount unless you know your company as a pre-set preferred rate with us, and even then don't get angry with us when that rate has a guest cap per night and you missed it because you're booking the day before.
In Conclusion
I love working in the hotel industry. I get to interact with people daily, most of whom are nice. I am able to chat with people with interesting backstories, I get to see this wonderful cross-section of world culture being a business-oriented hotel, and it fuels my creativity a bit.
I have rambled here about some do's and don't's, but the main thing to take away from the journal is this: don't be a dick to your hotel staff. We take care of your food, your lodging, your comfort. We want to help you, we want you to enjoy your stay and come back and stay with us again. Being an ass will get you nowhere in an industry called hospitality. We will bed you and feed you, but you'll get real extraordinary service if you'll just smile and be understanding.
If you have any questions about what I do, I'm happy to answer them in the comments! I really enjoy talking about this job, and getting people informed on how to make a stay better.
A Few Simple Guidelines for a Positive Hotel Stay
Booking Your Stay
1) As tempting as it is, try your hardest not to book on third-party websites like Expedia. I understand saving money, especially in the current economic atmosphere, but two things happen when you book via a third party:
A) Bureaucracy takes hold. While there are one or two situations where third parties will still have you pay the hotel directly, for the most part you are about to engage in a series of red tape knots that will make it unendingly difficult to cancel or modify a reservation should the need arise. I have also seen more reservation screw-ups through third party bookings than if you call the hotel direct.
B) It becomes excruciatingly difficult to do anything to you reservations. When you book third party, your rate is set and you pay for it then. When you check in, and you suddenly want some other rate or a different room type or any of a multitude of reservation-changing things, it is hard to help you out. A lot of times third party websites also won't tell you what kind of room you're booking, and when you arrive and you only have one bed and you need two, everyone gets flustered when we can't accommodate that.
2) Have all necessary materials ready when you're booking with the front desk. I cannot count the number of times I have had someone call to book a room, and then I end up sitting with dead air as the booking guest rummages around their house for credit cards, rewards numbers, and who knows what else. If you are calling hotels, even just shopping around, you're likely to find a deal that will suit your needs. Just have anything you may need on-hand--the three major ones being credit card, pen & paper, and if you have one for the hotel chain you're booking at, a rewards card number. That's it, that's all you need. Calling a hotel's front desk means you're competing with real, live guests who may need help as well; taking up their time is unfair.
The most heinous offenders are people who call to book rooms from their car. I understand, sometimes you're calling last-minute to book a room. Still, if you need to book this room, pull your car the fuck over. I am going to be asking you for a credit card number to hold the room, so unless you know it by heart, you will be taking a short trip to the breakdown lane anyway. Save yourself the hassle, pull off at a McDonald's or Starbucks, get a drink and book the room.
3) Be reasonable with your request for directions over the phone. From the airport to the hotel? Fine. From a local college or business to the hotel? Also okay. From a different state entirely? We are not your bloody GPS. Even for hotels that have concierge desks, or help desks that are unattached to the front desk, we are not here to provide you turn-by-turn directions from New York City to Boston. You think I'm joking, but people have asked me to do this for them before. It is the goddamn 21st century, you can find your way to a computer (even at a public library!), and Google Maps your driving route, if nothing else.
Check-In
1) For the love of god and all that is holy, do not walk up to the front desk to check in while you are still on your cellphone. The hotel I work at is a business-oriented hotel, which means we receive a lot of busy business travelers. This is okay, I won't fault you for needing to do your job. The thing is, to do mine, I need to interact with you by speaking. If your iPhone 5 is surgically attached to your face, I can't do that. There are ample seating areas in hotel lobbies partially designed for this situation--sit down, finish your call, then walk up to the counter and I will gladly check you in.
I'm not sure if people realise how demoralising it is to be the guest service agent in this situation. I may not be your job, I may not be your boss or colleague, but I am a fellow human being and you can give me enough respect to tell the person on the other end you will call them back in five minutes while I run down the hotel's amenities info. Five minutes of your life, at most--if you get a competent guest service agent (and I consider myself one), we have our check-in speech down to a science, and will give you the most bang for your buck. Speaking of....
2) Try your best to not interrupt us when we're explaining things to you. Any desk clerk worth his or her salt will hit all the major points of a hotel: restaurant & bar hours, WiFi info, business centre location, gym and pool locations, elevators. After we have finished talking to you, you are free to ask any questions on these. Interrupting us not only comes off as a little rude (moreso depending on your tone), but a lot of times the question you ask will likely be the next thing we say. Also, don't start questioning us before we even get a chance to go into our spiel. I understand there are some unsavory desk clerks who just give you keys and say nothing, but most of us (especially at more well-regarded hotel brands) are going to give you a cursory rundown of the property. Your badgering us as we're attempting to check you in is doing no one any favours. Patience is a virtue, my friends.
3) Be ready. This is much like the booking bulletpoint--have your credit card, your ID, and perhaps your rewards card number handy upon check-in. At the very least have your wallet or purse ready. You may be at the desk talking with me, but if a line forms behind you not only are you stressing the GSA (guest service agent) out, but you're going to start making the people behind you irate, especially depending on time of day and type of guest. Take an extra moment in your car or outside to find all applicable check-in materials, then approach the desk. It makes everything smoother, and will guarantee you get an amazingly smile-filled check-in.
4) Sometimes, shit happens and either the way you booked gives you a room type you don't want (number of beds, possible handicapped shower, et cetera), or we at the hotel are overbooked in one type of room or another. We understand the inconvenience, and we don't expect folks to be happy (moreso if it's our fault versus a third-party booking site's fault), As GSAs, we do our best to keep you, the guest, happy. Our job is to not fuck up, and most of us take that with pride. That being said, while you can be perturbed, yelling at us or getting fist-slamming, desk-punching angry isn't going to help anyone. This is a point I'll be reiterating throughout this journal--there is no excuse for yelling at a front desk clerk, save if one insults you directly.
We do our damnedest to make sure you have the best experience possible. If you think you booked a room with two beds, but we have it as a room with one bed, we have no actual reason to lie to you about the reservation's change history saying anything otherwise. We don't gain much from giving you bad news--it's an easy fix to switch your room from one type to another if we have it available. The issue is if we have it available. There is one absolutely awesome way to minimize your chances of this happening to you: give the hotel a call maybe a week or so before your check-in date and confirm room type with us. It's far easier to move people around, even if it may put one room type negative, a week in advance--people are likely to cancel between now and then, and if we can't accommodate your request, you have at least a week to find something more suitable.
Your Stay
1) We are not magicians. We cannot make something you want just appear out of thin air. Bigger, fancier hotels may have concierges who can do that to a degree further than my hotel can, but even so, not every request is manageable. Time is a big factor: if you ask us to do something during daylight hours, it will probably be a little more likely than if you ask us at 11p. This goes for a specific amenity, a restaurant suggestion, or a place to go hang out outside of the hotel.
I think there's a misconception that, like the dead-eyed stock clerk at a grocery store, people who work at the front desk of hotels are there just to make a living. Not so--most people I have worked with went to college for hospitality, and want to become managers or sales department members or something in the inner-workings of a hotel, something that keeps everything moving smoothly. I suppose lower-class hotels than I (motels, if you will) may get a more transient group of employees, but for the most part we like our jobs a whole hell of a lot, and want to help. Do not take advantage of that--do not get mad when we do not have a very specific brand of coffee, or don't have food that fits the parameters of your diet. If you have a specific allergy or limits to your food intake, learn in life to bring a few essentials with you. We can accommodate diabetes and we can make sure your food allergies are avoided, but we do not keep stocks of diet-specific food waiting for the one person with ciliac, or that person who can only eat organic donuts.
2) Be nice. I can't believe I have to say this, but seriously, be nice. For all guests, most employees at a hotel will do enough to make your stay pleasant, but if you are nice to us--and being nice is as simple as smiling back, not speaking to us in rude or condescending tones, and being flexible--we are willing to go the extra mile. It is not required to go above and beyond, don't ever assume it is. Most of us are more than willing to do extra things for a guest, though, if they have been pleasant to deal with. It's a simple thing, but so few understand it.
3) There are other people at the hotel. As such, we will triage problems based on current severity. If there is a guest calling to say their toilet is clogged, or that their heat/AC isn't turning on, we are going to put that a little before a call about needing more towels. Your shower can a couple of minutes, and if it can't, what is wrong with the towels you may have used once? Do you burn every towel you use at home the minute you use them?
Understand, we want to make every guest comfortable. We will do our best to keep you informed of situations at our hotel, and if your request may be second or third in line, we will tell you that our houseman or engineer is currently busy on another call, but will be with you as soon as possible. It may be frustrating, but we don't like to have to make guests wait any more than you want to wait.
4) Housekeeping gains nothing from not cleaning your room. Each person in housekeeping is given a set of rooms in the hotel to clean each day. Some of these may be rooms that have checked out, so they do a full room servicing. Some may be stay over rooms, so they are going to do turn-down service, but depending on your stay length they are not going to replace sheets or other major things. Sheets are replaced every three days of a stay, at least at my properties.
If your room was not serviced, first make sure you didn't have a Do Not Disturb sign on your door handle. Once again, someone in housekeeping gains nothing if they don't clean your room. In fact, if a housekeeper finishes all her rooms early, she's merely sent home. They want to stay as long as possible, they want to be paid. We have houseman here all night, even after housekeeping leaves--if you were not restocked with towels, or you would like an extra blanket or your trash re-emptied or literally anything to do with keeping your room clean, we can have someone come up. Be aware that it may be your own damn fault your room wasn't serviced, and don't flip out at the front desk for supposed incompetence.
Mishaps, Mistakes, Unfortunate Incidents, and Miscellaneous
1) Walks. No one, no one with a soul who works at the front desk, likes doing walks. A walk occurs when the hotel, for whatever reason, is oversold. My main hotel has 119 rooms. If, via a high-level member booking or a room being unusable, we have more arriving guests than available rooms, we will have to walk someone to another property. Thankfully, since the hospitality company I work for runs two properties in the same parking lot, it's a little less horrid for us, but that doesn't stop people from becoming indignant.
This is one of those times I don't deny a certain amount of distress from the guest. You booked a room at Hotel X, thinking you would stay at Hotel X. Instead, you are being told that your room is at Hotel Y, and even if it's only two hundred feet from one front door to another, that is still a big jump in your expectations. Understand that no one working the front desk enjoys giving this news. We are not happy to kick you out of our hotel that you were more than willing to pay for, and we are genuinely sorry for having to do it. The first few times I had to walk someone, my stomach was in knots and my legs were physically shaking. I had to sit down in the back with some water afterward, because it is nerve-wracking to the point of being physically exhausting. We pick a small number of arriving guests who are potential walks, and as they filter in we cross names off the list until there is one left.
You being walked is purely luck of the draw. You being walked is not a slight against you as a person, nor do we think your business is lesser-than. But if a room has no working heat/AC unit, or there is a giant leak that is turning the carpet into a swamp, would you really to stay there? No.
We will do all that is possible to make your walk painless. Depending on the type of hotel we have versus the type we're walking you to, you may be comped the night, or at least a greatly-reduced rate. Our hotel doesn't have free breakfast, so we offer guests to come back the next morning and have breakfast on us. If you had a rewards number for our hotel, we will make sure you get issued the number of points you would have earned staying with us. We do not want to walk you--it sucks if we have to. We are sincerely apologetic, and all we ask in return is begrudging understanding that we are not taking pleasure in doing this.
2) First, watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCqm4H3m3Ew I'll wait.
Your member level tells us how often you've stayed with our hotel brands, and how much money you spend with us. We appreciate that you stay at the same sort of hotels often, but just because you've spent half of the past year in Marriotts or InterContinental hotels does not give you the right to lord over people who work at the hotels. We understand your status, we are happy to do extra for you, but this is not a dick-swinging contest. Do not call down, angry, because your room didn't have a sparkling water fountain or a smattering of rare snacks from India. We could offer you nothing, but we do offer you certain perks.
These perks depend not just on your level, but on the type of property you're staying at and what we can offer you. In the Marriott chain, a Fairfield Inn is going to have less to offer than a J. W. Marriott property. A Courtyard by Marriott (the Marriott hotel I work for) is a stripped-down hotel in some senses, because we have amenities but not to the extent a full-scale Marriott (the next step up from us) would have. Yes, the gym is on the smaller side, but lower brands on the Marriott property ladder might have even smaller gyms, if they have them at all. No, our pool is not Olympic size, but at least we have one.
You are a Platinum/Diamond/Eridium guest, and that's fantastic. We are willing to give you some perks and do a little more for you as a baseline and generally make your stay that much more pleasant because you've spent so much of your life in hotels. This does not give you the right, or the privilege, to be a total douchenozzle thundercunt to those of us working at the hotel. We are all still humans, and your job/status gains you little in the long run. Once again, be nice. You may get more from the start, but that's all you'll get if you start demanding upgrades we don't have or free food we don't serve.
3) Hotels are expensive. They are more expensive than they were even just two years ago when I started working in the hospitality industry. The brand dictates a lot about the price of a hotel room, and if you want to stay in a hotel with a nicer brand image, you're going to pay for that. The more amenities we have, the higher the price as well--or, at the very least, the fewer of those amenities that will be included in the rate.
Do not become irate with us when we say the rate for the night is something you cannot afford. Do not keep the phone call going forever because you want to shop for a discount. A normal front desk agent has patience enough for three to four possible discounts to look up before it becomes painfully obvious you don't actually qualify for any of the preferred business rates, and you're just naming companies in the hopes that we'll give you some heavily-discounted rate. That is not how it works.
I understand that $279 maybe out of your price range. You need to understand that on a busier night, there are business people who are willing to pay that--either because their company is going to reimburse them, or because they're used to expensive stays. Discounts aren't always available--a hotel's reservation manger will close off or open up certain discounts based on daily availability. Your are not guaranteed a discount unless you know your company as a pre-set preferred rate with us, and even then don't get angry with us when that rate has a guest cap per night and you missed it because you're booking the day before.
In Conclusion
I love working in the hotel industry. I get to interact with people daily, most of whom are nice. I am able to chat with people with interesting backstories, I get to see this wonderful cross-section of world culture being a business-oriented hotel, and it fuels my creativity a bit.
I have rambled here about some do's and don't's, but the main thing to take away from the journal is this: don't be a dick to your hotel staff. We take care of your food, your lodging, your comfort. We want to help you, we want you to enjoy your stay and come back and stay with us again. Being an ass will get you nowhere in an industry called hospitality. We will bed you and feed you, but you'll get real extraordinary service if you'll just smile and be understanding.
If you have any questions about what I do, I'm happy to answer them in the comments! I really enjoy talking about this job, and getting people informed on how to make a stay better.
I'm going to mention, at least you have a night service guy. I was the only person on staff for 5-6 hours of my 8hour shift. When someone is basically acting manager for minimum wage ($8/hr here), it's really hard to be motivated to offer ASTOUNDING customer service.
I do the audit a few nights a week along with working 3p-11p shifts, so I end up being acting manager for those shifts. Usually nothing happens, and thankfully we are in a far more urban area than some of the less savory hotel brands might be. Still, I feel your pain about not having anyone else there to help.
...which is when she started yelling at me, how dare I think this job was worth more than $8, how dare I try to make her spend more money on a security guard. After that is when I put in my resign letter.
So on top of the risky work environment it also became hostile.
I guess the warning is, don't be cheap and go to shitty hotels, be HAPPY to pay $200 a night because you get what you pay for.
I'm sure you have, crazy person. I'm also sure that when you sat on the bed, the moan of a dying prostitute came out from underneath the mattress. So, there's that.
If they even sat on the bed.... given the bedbugs.
That being said, at our hotels at least we take the situation incredibly seriously--we clean the rooms as often as we can (which is anywhere from daily to every three days), which is not enough time for bedbugs to settle in. If someone finds some, they more than likely got it from elsewhere and brought it to us.
Those fuckers.
At least there's reasonable paranoia. Then there's... that.
The young and attractive female employees are NOT, in fact, there for your sexual pleasure. It is NOT okay to ask a female to "come to your room after their shift". It is NOT okay to ask, "does the carpet match the drapes", "what's your favorite position", "are you single", or anything even remotely similar to that. It's a hotel, not a brothel.
Not to mention, it makes female employees nervous, even scared. My very first shift alone at night, I was asked to come up to the room with a client to "have some beers and mess around". He wouldn't leave me alone for an hour, kept coming back to the lobby, and harassing me. I ended up crying and calling my manager, and had her stay with me for the rest of the shift because I didn't know if the guy was going to try something.
Some men are total and utter pig-o-trons, it's true, and there has been more than once we've had to call a manager or security to make sure someone doesn't do anything untoward. I've noticed, too, that it happens a lot more to the girls who work in the restaurant--I don't know if it's because there is more alcohol involved there, or what, but one of my co-workers in the hotel restaurant got a line of questioning that started innocently and ended up with questions like, "Are you leaving here alone tonight?" and "I'll wait for you outside."
So yeah. Not cool at all.
Eventually I just got pissed off every time it would happen and I would berate them till they were embarrassed and left. I didn't even care if I lost a customer. Of course they wouldn't complain to my managers- they couldn't! What exactly would they say? "I'm mad because your employee wouldn't sleep with me"?
And if all else fails, threaten to call the police. Either he sobers up his thought process and leaves you alone or he gets thrown in jail for the night. .. which I'm sure is FAR less luxurious tan the hotel room he's staying in.
Wish it worked that way, but it doesn't. I learned a lot from working there, and I'm glad I don't anymore.
As a side note, when I saw "A Stratgey Guide," I instantly thought of the old Paula Poundstone joke: "Do you have a floor preference?" "Yes, I would like a floor." "...No, what -level-?" "Oh, obviously I'm pretty new at this. Beginner."
And of course it can be applied to most any customer service gig. I'm just posting what I've learned from doing this job for over a year (only job I've ever had where I hit that mark, and then some).
I do try to catch myself early enough and apologize and just say I'm frustrated.. The second best thing about doing that is that the person will most likely be understanding.. and the best thing is then they tell me what I should/can/must do ^.^
Some of these things is actually broader-ranging than just hotels though.. Don't be a dick, and at least try to have all the information you should've needed.
*cheshiesnugs*
I mean...you can still get clean, right?
Sometimes we, in making reservations, make a mistake. It happens, as human error is unavoidable. It's good you know how to catch yourself before you get too mad, but most times we definitely will do our best to accommodate a guest if it's our own human error. Moreso if the person is understanding. If extending an erroneously short reservation will put us negative for a day, I'm less likely to do it if the guest talks down to me or makes me feel smaller-than. I still may not be able to do it either way, but I'm more likely to do anything in my power to override things for someone who is nice and understands that stuff happens.
And I'd just want to hug you if you started getting flustered at me, fluffernutter!
My "worst" experience like this.. as in _my_ worst.. was probably when I Boston'd in december.. The hotel didn't have my reservation, and it was booked via my office's travel people who booked it through a travel agency and all I had was a PDF >.<
In the end I got so frustrated that I asked them to call the agency that booked, and sort it out for me.. Note though that this is a business-centered agency, and not these save 20p a day through us things.
I'm guessing this wasn't the horriblest option, as they did give me .. I think it was free access for more'n one wifi device.
In my defense; the worst I did was groan and flump face-down on the desk in frustration :P I had had a few Dew's so I was probably too wiggly to get irate ^.^
Hah! You're gonna get lifted even if I don't get flustered, cheshiegrin! ^.^
Second part is, if you're paying for a room for someone else, we still need physical representation of the credit card you want to pay on. One way is to do an advanced purchase reservations, or you can fill out a credit card authorization form and fax it to the hotel/e-mail it to a manager.
After that? Just give the hotel a call and let them know you booked a room, but someone else will be checking in for it, give the name, and usually it's okay. Or you can always book it in the person's name, but do the advance purchase rate or credit card authorization like I said above.
For the record, I was exploring the possibility of having my dad book a room for me, as part of a birthday present, or something along those lines. And I'll be turning 30 next year in late March, so in this case, the person staying at the hotel room would be plenty old enough.
You do need to be honest about it, your father will have to tell the hotel what to expect when you arrive so they aren't surprised when you show up and try to tell you last minute that you don't have a room. It would probably be best to talk directly to a manager if possible, so that someone higher up knows what's going on.