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.
If you can, try to delegate to one or more staff members, including yourself, a call-around to all of your incoming guests for the day (each day until the construction is to be done or roadway opened), warning of any route changes into the hotel. Maybe place a staff member or valet attendant at the nearby route change if possible with signage or uniform to "direct" traffic into the correct route. Also sending a blind email to all the addresses of guests coming in daily and weekly to advise them in advance. Then you've covered yourself.
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That sounds like a terrible hotel, and I would say that is definitely not okay. I would try to proceed past the on-site management if the management theirselves are not able to help you, and definitely reach out to regional or corporate management if it is a chain. You could file a corporate or at worst, criminal complaint.
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For non-payment of a bill the same structure would apply typically that would in a restaurant or other service situation. In most states there is an innkeeper's lawbook that would reference what the recourses are for a hotel manager to collect payment from or pursue legal action against a non-paying guest. The reason most hotels do not accept cash in the states is that by accepting and pre-authorizing a credit card for one night's room and tax (or duration of expected stay) plus usually an additional authorization (anywhere between $100-$500 or more per night), it guarantees the hotel can charge that card at will if necessary. In Paris, it could be a different situation entirely. If I were in another country, i would prefer not to get arrested or prosecuted, so i would reach out to friends or family to see if they could float the funds to pay the hotel through a credit card authorization form or other third-party payment just to make sure there were no issues getting home (or being stopped at the airport because there's a warrant out for you!).
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woulid read your employee handbook very carefully to see if there's a rule against this. If there isn't, then you're fine, if there is, then do that second job at your own risk.
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At larger, corporate, branded hotels, there may be one person dedicated completely to reputation management and even sometimes a PR agency as well. Then again, there are companies you can outsource to, like reputation.com whose entire purpose is online reputation management. However, what I've seen is that usually someone not involved in the front office operations, like a Director of Sales, Revenue Manager, Assistant General Manager, or even General Manager might be responding to the most negative (but also the most positive) reviews. Trash-talking another competing hotel by writing false negative reviews might get some short term advantage over the competition, however in the long run, as a hotelier you would want to differentiate your property by having a better (and different) product than your competitive "set" of hotels nearby. In the end you will more than likely need a favor from your neighboring hotel, so having a good relationship on the back end is to your advantage. Plus, you'd need some extra time on your hands to write those fake reviews!
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Let's put it this way, the laws of the public street also apply to hotels. If someone is okay with something such as a sexual encounter, then yes, it's probably legal, but there are usually restrictions and rules in the employee handbook regarding fraternizing with guests. Generally, most of our co-workers do not like to mix work with personal life, such as this.
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Technically by law in most states, an employee's wages cannot be garnished to offset a loss unless the error in question causes a loss over a certain amount, and that generally has to have been done with malicious intent by the employee. It all will have to be listed in the employee handbook (if available) as to what type of error that would be and what the limits are. Generally like in California, an employee can be terminated at any time, as can they quit at any time, because California is an "at will" state. However, any major error could result in being terminated at most hotels. If the guest maliciously avoided paying the bill, such as skipping out after racking up a huge restaurant or room service bill or even using fraudelent credit cards, counterfeit bills, etc, and the hotel does not receive payment, then it's the former guest, NOT the employee, who is really at fault.
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