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.
At our property there is an automatic 18% room service gratuity charge on all orders. You certainly don't have to tip beyond that, as it's meant to serve as the delivery person's tip, but I think typically anyone showing up to my door with any service will get at least a $2 cash tip minimum, just for the effort. Like all tips in hotels, I like to say that they're not expected, but always appreciated. Of course if room service bungles it completely, you may just want to leave the 18% on there and call it a day, or if it was absolutely awful, just talk to me at the front desk at checkout and I may be able to waive the entire room service order from your bill. Don't get in the habit of faking it, because I have a built-in bullshit detector.
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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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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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It's so hard to point out one specific incident, but I would say the phone call from someone that makes me jump through dozens of hoops to get them a specific type of reservation (for some callers, this process takes weeks of back and forth), who then cancels for no apparent reason. I mean this is someone who's had me also book them a car service, massages, dinner reservations, made me go to my Director of Sales to see if I can get them a rock-bottom rate, and I work so hard for so long out of the goodness of my heart, and then...sorry! Cancelled. Second place to that would be guests of guests being the hardest ones to deal with, asking for things that the hotel would and should never actually provide as a service, when they're not even the ones paying for the room! That to me is crazy.
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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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As far as I know we have to for a variety of reasons: 1. Fire code in each locality specifies how many people can occupy a room in a building, this is specified when the building is inspected and brought up to code. 2. Hotel policy - A. To make sure that each occupant is paying their fair share to stay which protects the hotel's bottom line. B. To make sure that the likelihood of a party or other potential disturbance or unsafe event is decreased. Do people get around this policy by just putting "1" on the number of occupants and then bringing in six friends through the back door? Of course! But if they create a disturbance, I have that reservation stating it's only for 1, and our security officer can reference that when he knocks on the door to investigate.
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There are definitely moments with "down time" but more often than not I've got a steady, constant stream of tasks. Down time is usually when you catch up on what you couldn't before, and get to know your co-workers. At larger corporate hotels, there seems to always be someone manning each station. In my experience at a smaller boutique hotel, there's usually fewer employees per department. That means if the reservationist calls in sick, I may have to check you in while simultaneously booking a room over the phone for someone calling from France with a thick accent that's hard to understand. There have been days like that where the bellman has called in sick too, so as soon as I'm done with the other two tasks, I'll be taking you and your bags up to the room, maybe after taking your keys to your car which I'll park in valet later ('cause he could have called in sick, too). The overall goal is not to let you notice how close to chaos it's become.
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