Now ye're talking - to a Hotelier

Prominent_Dawg wrote: »

What's a typical day in the life?
Has a customer ever found something they shouldn't have?.. Was recently in a hotel and a woman found a screw in her scone

Your days are never typical. Something new always happens and thats one of the best things about hotels.

From my own perspective, assuming i was just on a regular day - there are core tasks that you need to oversee so you would start with making sure early reception shift is prepared for the day and see how many departures and arrivals you have which will give you a good indication for how busy the day is likely to be. You would then check on the restaurant and make sure they were ok and that breakfast service was running smoothly and slot in for a while if they needed help. I would talk to the chef and see how they were fixed, check how many people were booked in for lunch / dinner service that day and have a look at the stock levels / staff rosters and make sure they were all covered for that. I would then liaise with accommodation and see if they had any issues that might affect the operations for the day. I would then settle in, catch up on emails, take a look at the monthly figures and see how we are shaping up. I would normally have a quick 10min staff meeting with the guys around 10am and let them all tell us whats happening that day. I would meet with sales and marketing team and get an update from themselves as to what business they are chasing at the moment. I would take a look at our guest metrics, tripadvisor reviews, etc and see if they highlighted any recent issues that i may need to address with dept heads. I would have a lot of dealings with head office as we would have multiple things going on at any given time so that could take up a bit of my time. I would also have tonnes of meetings with people which may include site visits by companies to the hotels with a view to getting business from them, etc etc I would also be heavily involved in local business groups such as the chamber of commerce so this can take up some time as well. And then you would see what else the day would bring for you

You do get mishaps from time to time. If the guys rush through cleaning rooms then you will sometimes find something there that you shouldnt. Never had anything too bad so far though thankfully

**Timbuk2** wrote: »

Really interesting thread, thanks for your answers!

If staying in a hotel alone (e.g. business), is there any difference whether you select 1 or 2 guests staying? (Assume no breakfast included to make comparison easier).

On some rare occasions, I've been put in a room with only 1x large towel in the bathroom - which makes me think despite being a double bed, some rooms are set up for 'single travellers' and mightn't be as nice.

Yes there can be a difference. Hotels, certainly city centre ones, would usually have corporate floors / reserve rooms for corporate guests and would have a good idea of what type of business they can expect to get and operate accordingly. so we would have a fair idea of how many corporate rooms we would sell on sun - thurs nights. Usually corporates are single travellers so we would service a double room for single occupancy and provide one set of towels, one set of teas / coffees / shampoos / showergels to save money.

In terms of the 1 vs 2 people and the single traveller rooms, i mentioned it earlier in the thread. I would always select 2 people so that you get a proper double room. Single rooms can be small and just shoehorned into hotels

Yester wrote: »

What do you do with all the cash after a big night? Do you have a safe on the premises? Also, whereabouts in the building is that safe?

LOL its locked away very securely !!!

troyzer wrote: »

Is this why Booking.com asks if it's a business or leisure trip? To see if it can save money on providing for a single occupant?

No. Booking.com do that for their own market research. They like to know what % of their business is leisure and what % is corporate

troyzer wrote: »

Fair enough. But I imagine a hotel would like that information as well?

Yes but we have our own systems that can give us information like that as well.

DrPhilG wrote: »

Have you ever been to Vegas, and if so did you try the infamous "Vegas sandwich" at check in?

The Vegas Sandwich haha :D havent heard of that one in years. It does work now to be fair. America is defo the right place for that kind of thing. Key to this is to arrive just around the advertised check-in time for the hotel. The earlier you get there, the more rooms the reception team have to play with and can move you around, upgrade you, etc etc