Hotel Front Desk
Los Angeles, CA
Male, 27
For the past two years I've worked the front desk at a boutique luxury beachfront hotel in Southern California. My job can range from simply checking guests in & out to many other duties, including: pretending I work in different departments so that behind-the-scenes chaos is never seen by a guest, shielding guests from stalkers that come looking for them, and picking up used drug paraphernalia from a trashed room. Ask me anything.
The easy answer is yes, my property may even be contractually obligated to give the website and in turn you up to 30% lower than my hotel's asking price for the room. That is a great deal, however think of yourself more as a guest of Travelocity, Orbitz, etc than a guest of the hotel once you've gone through one of these. Admitted or not, hotels will treat guests paying the full room rate directly to the hotel with more care than someone who bought their room online. One most important lesson regarding these bulk travel sites is that while you save money in the short run, making changes to or canceling your reservation is an absolute hassle! As a front desk agent I only want to help each guest, but when they decide that the deceptively alluring pictures and description of the property don't match what's actually there once they arrive, I have to nicely but firmly explain that I and my management have zero control over the third party website's content or frequency of communication to my hotel. I and management have made call after call and sent dozens of emails with updated photos and descriptions, but the regional rep from that site neglected to respond or update THEIR site, in turn giving the guest a flawed perception of what's really going on. In short, if you're not too particular, go ahead and book through a third party, but if it's your honeymoon or for your very picky boss, book direct and you'll be able to deal directly with the hotel, which is bound to give you updated, real-time information and preferred service. As cheesy as it may sound, being a rewards program member means something to me. Even though my property doesn't have one, I've been a member of several and it really does give you some extra weight when negotiating an upgrade or any other perk.
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Another good question! Early check-ins are just like late check-outs, everybody seems to want them! The problem is, having too many of one will make it impossible to grant the other. Again, all I want is to give the guest what he or she wants, but when a hotel is sold to the gills, it's near to impossible to grant a late checkout, without making someone checking in wait longer for their room. Consider that many guests don't tell the front desk when they leave, since they can just leave their keys in the room. It may take until 11, 12, 1 o'clock to even know whether that guest's room is vacant (extra thanks to those that leave the "do not disturb" sign idly hanging on the door even though they've already checked out). Only then can the housekeeping staff begin to work on cleaning the room(s) and this can take anywhere from 25 minutes on a fast day to 3 or 4 hours depending on the condition the room was left in. If the room is really trashed it may have to be taken out of order entirely for deep cleaning. The general rule is, smaller the hotel's size and room count, and the closer to sold out (ie: holiday weekend) a hotel is, the harder or more impossible it's going to be to grant any special requests, ESPECIALLY late checkouts or early check-ins. I once had someone SO angry that he couldn't check in early that the staff had to skip many of the steps in cleaning his room just so I could get him out of the lobby.
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This I am in 100% agreement on with you. Wi-fi is such a necessity to function in this world that it is very frustrating to pay for a hotel room and then have to pay for wi-fi on top of that. However, I see where some of the larger hotels are coming from on this. They often depend on corporate or business travelers for such a large percentage of their income that they know the likelihood of that corporate traveler paying for these fees directly is low, so they can get away with it. At a boutique hotel, I just don't see how it makes sense. It is just another fee that will end up getting waived when the guest is upset about something. My property happens to have free wi-fi, but I would hate to have to disclose to guests they're getting charged for it.
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I've come up with a theory: people generally fall into three categories of guests. 1. Getting room due to happy reason 2. Getting room because of bad reason 3. Getting room because job requires them to. Guest category # 2 is the scary one because for some reason people think it's okay to take out their frustrations on a place that isn't theirs. While I am thankful to say that no suicides or deaths have happened on my watch, there have been people who have passed away, including one suicide by gun, since the hotel was built. I have had close calls like a drug overdose, and I have found rooms so trashed and littered with blood stains (one time we had to throw out the sheets because they were so soaked in blood) that I could swear they WERE suicide attempts that just failed, and the guest was too embarrassed to admit what they did. We did charge all these people for the damages, by the way, and none of them called to complain about the charges, which leads me to believe they didn't want to draw attention to their situation. It's very sad, but from my perspective I just don't want it happening on my watch or affecting other guests who are category # 1 or # 3!
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Absolutely. If you like helping people, and you like taking ownership of a problem from start to finish, this is the job for you. Sure, it has its challenges, like strange working hours, confrontations with guests and others that are difficult to resolve, and sometimes having to magically make something out of nothing, but it can be very rewarding when I am able to be a good host and make people feel at home.
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I have had to call security (or in the instance of working the PM shift on a short staff go up there with an earpiece and pretend to BE security) so many times I can't remember. Usually if one guest couldn't sleep because of the noise of their neighbor(s), it's due to partying, but I have received a call or two where the complainant says, "I'm not trying to rain on anyone's parade here, but the people next door that are doing it are being really LOUD!" Sure, that does happen.
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Hey, so long as they don't fight and cause a ruckus, what happens in their room hopefully stays in their room and they both get a fair deal. In the end the hotel's bottom line and reputation shouldn't be affected. However, I've met the vice cops in our district who bust gambling, illegal alcohol and prostitution only once, and they were super-nice and I've never seen nor noticed them at our hotel again. I do know I'd see them again if a room continued to be used over and over again, and obviously, for any of the three vices to the point where it caused a disruption.
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