An open letter to hotel receptionists

David Whitley May 30, 2011 6 TOPICS » guides, hotels, Travel Writing

Dear hotel receptionists,

Imagine someone comes into your hotel. They say they’re a journalist, and would like to see a room as they’re writing a city guide and need to recommend places to say. What do you think they’re asking for?

Is it (A) to see a room? Or (B) to pointlessly swap business cards with someone from the sales and marketing department after waiting half an hour for them to emerge once you’ve called them?

A clue. It’s not (B).

In fact, there’s a high chance that the person from the sales and marketing department is the last person they want to see. If the journalist did want to see them, have coffee with them and embark on a lengthy tour of every facility the hotel currently has and may have in future, he or she would have probably set up an appointment in advance.

Now imagine that you’re in a really large building. Or maybe a shopping centre. You’re time pressed and you really want the toilet. If you ask an employee where the toilet is, do you (A) want them to point you in the direction of the toilet? Or (B) dive into a back room and make a phone call to the person in charge of cleaning the toilets, who will then escort you to every toilet in the building – including the ones that are gender irrelevant – and laboriously point out every detail on the sinks, bowls and cubicles before you can have a piss?

ENJOYED THIS POST?

Then you may be interested in my book. Sharing the stories via Twitter (I'm @GrumpyTrav) or Facebook is always appreciated too. You can also 'like' the Grumpy Traveller Facebook page to get new story updates.

BOOK YOUR OWN ADVENTURE

The following sites are usually my first port of call when booking a trip - so I recommend them as somewhere to start when booking your own holiday.
HOTELS: Hotels.com (£) or Agoda (£)
FLIGHTS: Skyscanner (£) Kayak or Roundtheworldflights.com
CAR HIRE: Car Rentals (£)
GUIDE BOOKS: Amazon (£)
TOURS AND ACTIVITIES: Viator (£)

The first step to good service and being able to help a guest is listening to the question in the first place. It’s worth remembering that, because the journalist probably will do when he finally gets round to writing that guide.

Thank you for your time. As you were.

Yours sincerely, David Whitley

6 Comments »

Tim Richards May 30, 2011 at 10:12 -

I hear ya talkin’. I get this occasionally on Lonely Planet gigs; I prefer to review things anonymously, but if I want to look at different sized rooms it helps to identify myself. Of course I’m in the middle of a busy day of slogging around a city and need to get in and out quickly, so the last thing I want to do is chat with the marketing person. It’s only a problem with the really expensive chain places I find, the budget or boutique ones are usually more relaxed. Something to do with corporate control, I suspect.
David May 30, 2011 at 10:19 -

Yep. Almost always the more expensive places. It’s a mindset of dealing with journalists belonging to the sales and marketing department. I could pretend I was interested in seeing a room to stay at myself, but that creates other problems. And besides, I just don’t like lying about that sort of thing.

Worst is when the receptionist puts through the phone call and it goes something like this:

“I’ve got a – what was your name again? – who says he’s working for a magazine – what was it called again? – and would like a tour of the property.
Joe Sexton May 30, 2011 at 20:15 -

Dear David Whitley,

Your open letter seems a bit self-absorbed and myopic, not to mention condescending. You might want to consider the policy of the hotel in communicating with journalists, and the consequences a receptionist might face if he ignores or simply violates that policy. In short, you and your publications are not the center of the universe. A receptionist might lose her job to comply fully with your immediate demands.

Rather than whine about not being able to immediately get in and out of the hotel (BTW, your bathroom analogy is odd; I mean really? Viewing a hotel room as the basis for your city guide is tantamount to having to urinate? You just want to get in, take a piss, and leave? I think I’ll pass on your city guide), I might have taken advantage of the spontaneous tour with the marketing department employee. And also, thirty minutes doesn’t seem like an offensive wait to see someone who was likely working on something else when you demanded unfettered access to their hotel.

Yours sincerely,
Joe Sexton
David May 31, 2011 at 09:05 -

Hi Joe. I have put this in the ‘Petty Gripes’ category for a reason…

As you intimate, my criticism isn’t really of hotel receptionists – it’s of the corporate structures that insist a marketing person has to deal with journalists.

I don’t want to have to lie and pretend I am an ordinary punter interested in a room for the night. But if I did, the receptionist would surely find a room right away and let me go take a look at it – which for the purposes of the guide is exactly what I need. Any additional faff is just wasting everyone’s time. This is part of why I don’t want to see the marketing person; they’re busy with something else and neither of us really wants them to break from it to show me round things I don’t need to see for half an hour.

In the interests of getting things done in geographical order, setting up a series of appointments isn’t practical. All it takes is one person not to be available at a certain time, and the whole day is thrown. Yes, this is selfish and entirely done from my point of view. However, unless a hotel is fully occupied, it is good practice to allow a walk-in guest to see a room. Putting up unnecessary hurdles for this is in no-one’s benefit.

I never demand, either. I just ask nicely whether there’s a room available that I could possibly see. The problem comes when corporate policies put needless extra people in the way.
Tim L. June 3, 2011 at 04:28 -

I don’t know David, I’m kind of torn on this one. At least 25 times I’ve gone through this scenario, wanting to get in and out quickly, but the story is complicated. It turns out all the rooms are about to get stripped to the bone and completely renovated—something I only would have known if I’d spoken to someone. Or the hotel is going to close for remodeling and won’t be open again for a year and a half. Or right now it’s a Sheraton, but in two weeks it’s going to be independent because they’ve gotten into a fight with the managing company. Or it was independent but next month it’s a Holiday Inn. Or it’s going timeshare in the summer.

If you don’t talk to someone and ask these “what’s coming up” questions, you are doing your future readers a big disservice. I know the pay often sucks and time is precious, but you’re having a huge impact on someone’s business.
chris ward June 7, 2011 at 07:19 -

I’m afraid I’m with Joe on this one. Just being a journalist gives you no right to expect a hotel to just let you do as you please. It’s a whole different thing to showing a potential guest a room, which falls within a receptionists duties. Had I been the guy on reception I would have told you to wait for a manager/sales guy as well. Perhaps you should just pretend to be a guest if it would make things easier.