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Afflicted by B&B Burnout
Ask Chris · March 16, 2000

Q: We have owned a small hotel for the last 12 years and have just today signed the paperwork for its sale. We have no employment prospects and no idea what we want to do with our lives from now on.

We got to the stage where it was being increasingly difficult to look those guests in the eye and smile.

One thing I just hated was people talking about me in front of me as though I wasn't there. As in: "SHE says we have to have breakfast at..." (which wasn't what I said). I often felt like screaming, "LISTEN carefully and I will repeat myself slowly," but I'm too inherently polite.

I don't want to see another suitcase the size of which would sink the Titanic, and which I know I'm expected to carry upstairs, because its owner (younger than me by 20 years) 'simply can't'. I don't want to be responsible for organizing their leisure time because they're too feeble to do it.

I don't want to be called from my bed at 2 a.m. because someone has lost a sock (yes, it's happened). I can no longer cope with filling in for the waitress/chambermaid/chef when I feel ill myself. So my philosophy is 'If you can't do it well and professionally, don't do it at all!'

We've had some laughs, some good times, made many friends, but now it's time to stop and put ourselves first for a change.

-- Patti Evans

A: You are suffering from hotel burnout, a problem that is arguably reaching epidemic proportions. According to research conducted by Gary Vallen, a professor at School of Hotel and Restaurant Management at Northern Arizona University "burnout" rates from emotional exhaustion are the highest in the lodging business.

Burnout rates from what he calls "depersonalization" - treating customers as if they are numbers rather than guests - is the second highest, behind that of teachers.

Vallen is about to begin research on small inns and bed and breakfasts, which is likely to shed light on the challenges that led you to sell the property. But it's already common knowledge among innkeepers that the threat of "B&B fatigue" looms constantly over the operation.

Pat Hardy, the director of the Professional Association Of Innkeepers International, says burnout tends to happen in phases. "During the first three years people get into inkeeping, there's a lot of dropout because people don't realize they have to be there all the time. They go back to their day job, or they sell the hotel. If they get past that, they start to hunker down and say they're going to deal with it. But it's still a constant lifestyle."

Could all of this have been avoided? While Hardy doesn't think guests should worry about burning their innkeeper out, she says a little common sense on the part of customers could prevent "B&B fatigue" from happening. Vallen told me the same thing: Common courtesy on the part of guests could curb burnout.

"I think that customers should appreciate the fact that in our industry we hear lots of complaints," he said. "In any guest's experience at any particular hotel, there can literally be hundreds of moments of truth - one-on-one experiences that for a variety of reasons might not be as positive as management would like them to be. With that in mind, managers too often hear complaints, which are valuable in adapting and changing the experience. But when managers hear compliments, those go a long way to mitigating burnout."

While I agree that compliments and common courtesy are helpful, I think more is needed. I've personally seen hotel guests do some of the rudest things, including defacing hotel furniture, browbeating the staff and carrying on as if they were at the circus. It's disgraceful.

Shouldn't hotels spell out what kind of behavior they expect from guests - and in return, let guests know what they can expect from the hotel? If those policies are already articulated, could the hotel do a better job of communicating them?

I think that in this day and age, customers tend to default to acting like Neanderthals when they're away from home. Innkeepers ought to read them the riot act before they do.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator and author of A Bridge to Nowhere: A Year in the Florida Keys. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion. Ask Chris appears weekly on this site.