Friday, April 21, 2006

The secret...

As I have stated before, I work at a hotel. The name and location of this hotel shall go undisclosed (of course). I work in a reasonably nice hotel, with very nice rooms. The hotel itself is a million times nicer than the ones I worked in previous, however, they are all successful for the same reason. And it's not why you think. Shitty red roof inn has shitty rooms, shitty employees, and shitty management. Holiday Inns/Super 8 had shitty rooms, shitty employees, and shitty management. Granted, those hotels paid us for shit and the rooms were dirt cheap, so you would expect so much, but maybe not so from a nicer hotel. However, a lot of nice hotels have shitty management, and employees that don't care. ahem.

Regardless of the hotel though, people continue to stay at even the shittiest of hotels, and LEAVE HAPPY! Why is this you say? How can people have a totally shitty time and still leave happy?

It is not because everyone needs a hotel to stay when they travel. If that were the only reason hotels were successful, then there would be no need for hookers, drug dealers, and adulterists.

It is not because the hotels care for the guest, and the guests needs. Most of the time, we could give a shit. It's all a front. We just want to shut you up so you don't go reporting us to our boss company, and making us look bad on Trip Advisor. (Oh yeah, I'm all about customer service.)

It is also not because the rooms are clean or even comfortable. All I have to say for that is, People still stay at the red roof inn. It obviously doesn't matter.

So what is our secret? Hotels do not need good management (obviously), decent rooms, or even decent rates. The only thing hotels need to keep the customers happy are beds, coffee and newspapers.

It occurred to me at 8:38 am this morning when our copies of USA TODAY arrived 2 hours late and I was faced with a lobby full of 55 unhappy people with 35 more on the way because the precious had stopped dripping momentarily, and the newspapers were not here yet. They do not care about customer service, although they do put a lot of emphasis on it. Nope, all they care about is that you have a bed for them to sleep on, you have coffee for them to drink, and a newspaper to keep them updated on the "daily events."

Don't believe me? Travel 5 hours to another town for Memorial Day weekend, and call any place the day before to see if they have rooms. No rooms, right? See how pissed off you are?

Wake up at 5am to go to a 12 hour work day, and go downstairs to the lobby to see that there isn't any coffee made so you can wake your ass up. No coffee, right? See how pissed off you are?

Put yourself in an anal businessman's shoes for just a moment. (Just a moment don't get crazy on me.) Lets say you just MUST know who won that Mets game last night (even though you watched it on the telly) and what the wanker from USA today thought about the players, and the truck that brings the papers broke down on the way to the hotel. See how pissed off you are, you anal bastard?

You have to understand, people don't care about televisions, clean bathrooms, nice polite employees, even cockroaches as long as you have room for them, coffee, and reading material. The red roof inn was the worst hotel I've ever been to, and people didn't say shit about the cockroaches, the horrible rooms, and the fuckin bitch at the front desk that pissed EVERYONE ELSE off because we had coffee, lots of room, and newspapers. We could've charged $150.00 for those rooms and people STILL would've stayed there.

Think about it. It goes back to Jesus. "No room for you, you married couple. You should've made reservations. It's Christmas, afterall." "What's that Joseph? You want some fucking coffee? You didn't pay for a room here! You want coffee get your ass over to starbucks!" "What's that Mary? You're bored after having the baby and need some bed time reading material? Tough shit, get off your ass and get yourself to a newspaper stand." I think that would've brought the wrath of god a lot sooner than expected...

So see, it's a very simple equasion. Drug+Sleep+Information= quiet customer. And you thought this whole time this business was about "Hospitality." Lets just hope I don't get blacklisted.

1 Comments:

<$I18NCommentAuthorAdded$>

nice work. i especially dig the word 'adulterist.' but usa today? please. this paper is shit. did you know this is the paper on which the onion bases its format? and i think you can get more legitimate info outta the onion anyway...

geting your news from usa today is like getting it from that cnn headline news channel. hell. tell your businessman to fuck off (and remind him that the mets lost last night in frisco).

12:56 PM  

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