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Revenge of the hotel clerks: 5 things they’ll do to difficult guests

August 14, 2010

If you think your hotel clerk is out to get you, you might be right.

Hotel employees are people, too — people under a lot of pressure. And although you might not have noticed it, there’s a price to be paid for the dirt-cheap hotel rates you’ve seen lately. The lodging industry is cutting staff, freezing salaries and eliminating perks for its workers.

Result: Hotel employees are grumpier than ever. It doesn’t take much to set them off, either.

“It can’t be overstated how much power a hotel clerk wields,” says Cyrus Webb, a former hotel employee who has worked at the front desk and managed hotels. “Front-desk employees know what rooms are the best, which have a great view, and which offer extra amenities. On the other hand, they know which rooms would not be at the top of a guest’s list.”


And guess who goes in those rooms? You will, if you tick them off. Here are five ways hotel employees exact their revenge on difficult guests, and what you can do to avoid it:

1. Make you wait.

Ever checked into a hotel, only to find your room wasn’t ready? Well, maybe it was ready, but the front-desk employee didn’t like your attitude. “For guests who are rude, drunk or just obnoxious, a clerk may well make them wait,” says Michael Matthews, a retired hotelier in Tucson, Ariz. How long you spend in “time out” depends on the seriousness of their crime, according to people who have experienced the wait (and I include myself among them). It may be a “Have a seat, we’ll be with you in a minute” for someone with a less-than-polite attitude to “Your room is still occupied, what’s your cell phone number?” for something more serious. “Guests really are not aware of the power of a front desk clerk,” adds Matthews.

How to avoid it? Remain calm. Sometimes your room really isn’t ready yet, and it doesn’t mean the hotel employee is necessarily out to get you. If it makes any difference, staying calm will get you into your room faster.

2. Freeze your credit card.

Hotels routinely place an authorization “hold” on your credit card that equals the full cost of the room nights, tax and an estimate of incidentals. “If the guest were particularly annoying, the clerk could place a huge hold on the card, rendering it unusable for any other purchases,” says David Chen, a hotel executive in Hawaii. He recalls it happening to a honeymooning couple that checked in with the only credit card they had brought along. Once the hotel placed its hold, their card was declined for all other purchases during the stay. “Even calling the merchant provider to release the hold did not fix the problem, because the reversal takes two to five days to work its way through the various provider networks,” he recalls. In that particular case, Chen believes that particular “hold” was unintentional. But others are not.

How to avoid it? Carry a second credit card or debit card. Or bring lots of cash.

3. Assign you the least desirable room.

That’s probably the easiest way to get back at a guest for being rude or just looking like they don’t belong. Ian Spector was sent down a long hall to one of the worst rooms in the house when he checked in at an upscale hotel in San Diego recently. “I couldn’t help but think that because I was under 30, the check-in staff figured they could put me in the crappy room,” says Spector, a Web developer who was in town for a technology conference. “The in-room bathroom was really cramped and awkward.” Stories like this are the stuff of travel legends: The hotel employees take a look at you and decide you’re in the wrong place, or that they don’t like you, and you’re sent off to Siberia.

How to avoid it? Don’t check into a five-star hotel in a jeans and T-shirt, even if you’re on vacation. And for goodness sakes, be nice to the employees.

4. Find an extracurricular way to torture you.

True story: When Margot Chapman checked into a New York hotel recently, she says she “may have rubbed a hotel employee the wrong way” when she complained about the size of her room, which was so small that the bed touched the TV. She was sent to another room, and checked out without incident. “I then was besieged by hundreds of obscene phone calls at my home and office over the next month,” says Chapman, who runs a marketing company in Chicago. The phone calls were traced back to the hotel, which, when confronted with the crime, offered her an apology and a free seven-night stay.

How to avoid it? A polite request made in person is preferable to a phone call, but short of being extra nice, it’s hard to see something like this coming.

5. Make you pay — literally.

Hotel employees can wreak all kinds of havoc on your guest folio, adding late charges that don’t show up on your bill until after you’ve checked out, or putting in little extras that you assumed were included in the price of your room. “It is not uncommon for rude guests to have to pay for services that others might not have to,” says Webb, the ex-hotel employee. “This includes long-distance calls, the breakfast bar, drinks and food.” Other tricks include manipulating your confirmed room rate or adding unexpected extras, like charges for Internet, the minibar or pay-per-view movies. Rarely are they so overt, though. Usually, it’s something smaller that you discover a few days after you’ve left, like a minor late charge, like breakfast.

How to avoid it? Be nice. Polite guests are far less likely to have “mistakes” like this happen.
In fact, being nice may be the single-best defense against vindictive hotel employees. It works for travelers like Robb Gordon, a mortgage banker from Sedona, Ariz.

“When we get a difficult hotel clerk, we try to empathize and cheer him or her up,” he says. That includes tipping them generously. “We always get a decent room, and sometimes we are nicely upgraded to a suite, in which case we generally return and enhance the tip.”
Failing that, a chat with the hotel’s manager might help.

Then again, it might not.

(Photo: Stuart C halmers/Flickr Creative Commons)

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

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32 comments

  • http://www.thetravelinggiraffe.com Crissy

    On the flip side, does this mean that if I’m extra nice, fit in and the clerk is in a good mood I might get an upgrade or something for free?

  • Kevin

    After working many years in customer service, my experience and charm have given myself numerous perks while traveling – free upgrades galore…all because I know how to work kindness and compassion. Unfortunately, it can be quite the opposite for the people that raise voices, snappy attitudes, and have unnecessary demands and the sense of entitlement.

    And unfortunately, human nature can lead us to either be your best friend or the road, or your worst enemy. I have had numerous friends and family members be put through living hell because they boiled over at some employee who could have helped them, but instead chose to put keep them in their state of steam.

  • GSA

    “Make them wait” is perhaps my favorite activity, no matter how nice you are if you show up to check-in early without calling ahead you will wait until the actual check-in time. I’ve had guests show up anywhere from 6am-2pm, with checkin being at 3pm. Especially if you walk in with all your luggage expecting that we have a room ready for you. We probably do have ready rooms, but those are blocked for the people who actually arranged for an early check-in or for people (ie elite members) with special requests.

  • Kathy

    When I was in college, I worked at a motel in Newport, RI that catered to military, families and budget-conscious folks. We were not on the beach, we were not downtown, and most of our clientle were transient people who were either working in the area or moving on/off the base.

    However, since our rates were low, we often attracted an obnoxious crowd from NYC–Hassidic Jews taking their vacation to visit the first Temple in the US. These were the worst people in the world to deal with. Every family/group of them that checked in would do the following:

    1. Insist on tax exempt status and argue with you when you said their tax exempt card (how do they all have them???) are only good in NY, not RI.

    2. Try and put 6-8 people in one room. We’re not talking kids, either. We’re talking adults. They’d also try and haggle for a ridiculous rate. I told one of them to try the Motel 6!

    3. Cook on the balconies. The fire department came by and cited a few of them a couple of times. We called them because the smell was disgusting, it was a fire hazard and they refused to listen to us tell them not to.

    4. Try and get us to close the pool so they can have private swim time. When we told them we could only do that if they paid the pool rental fee, they would scream “discrimination.”

    And nothing was ever good enough. The beds were too hard. The beds were too soft. The bathroom was dirty. The tub wasn’t large enough. They’d also try and scam us out of paying with fake complaints. One woman tried to claim that her bathroom hadn’t been cleaned in three days, but since we knew they’d be trouble, the head housekeeper snapped photos of their rooms before and after cleaning every day. Then she tried to claim the photos were “doctored.”

    It would be a sort of initiaton for new clerks to deal with them. We’d always authorize their cards for something ridiculous like $10K, put them in the worst rooms (they’d complain about anything anyway) and sometimes even give them bad directions if they were really irritating us. One time I sent a family who complained that for (the cheap rates we had) they should’ve been on the beach. They were going downtown. I sent them up the island, through Providence and back over the bridge, so what was a 5 minute drive turned into an hour.

  • Hannah

    I honestly find these “facts” appalling. Although I am one of the customers who know how to turn on the charm and I am often upgraded rooms (even when I use websites such as Hotwire) – it is very disturbing to find out that this is an industry standard. By being posted here it even shows that these ILLEGAL behaviors are accepted by the industry and hotels and that is not right. Customer service is still a part of the reason the hospitality service survives in hard economic times and facts like this will help shape the way I travel and the industries I use. (I may start looking at local companies such as bed and breakfasts where customer service is still a priority.)

    Thanks for the update but I’d like to see hotels do things about these sometimes difficult employees (who take a bad day out on an unsuspecting guest).

  • Tanya

    I work in a service industry and will NEVER treat someone better or worse based on how they are dressed. I don’t care if they come into my office sweating and in gym clothes. Where I am from, we have a term, called, blue jean millionaire, as most of our big clients wear worn out jeans, drive 10 year old vehicles, and are just good old working folk. Around here, you never know when you are speaking to someone who is a millionaire and they could be dressed in anything from blue jeans to a designer suit. They may have on workboots and look like they came in off the field. Any service employee (including hotel clerks), and anyone who suggests that you should have to dress up, should be ashamed of themselves for treating those who do not dress to their standards worse than those who do. Who knows, you may have just alienated a life-long customer and they do have friends.

  • Carver

    @GSA

    “if you show up to check-in early without calling ahead you will wait until the actual check-in time.”

    I hope I never stay at a hotel where you’re the front desk agent. If there are rooms available and I show up early, you won’t give me one? I understand if the room has been blocked for someone else. In my mind that room really isn’t available. But to punish me because I didn’t call ahead to arrange an early check-in time is plain stupid. If I ever found out that a front desk clerk did that to me, I would make sure that the GM knew it and knew exactly why he/she risked losing my business forever.

    That almost happened to me once. I arrived at a hotel at about 1pm. The lazy front desk clerk couldn’t be bothered to finish her cigarette break then didn’t want to let me check in until 3pm even though by her own admission my room was ready. I asked her point blank, you mean my room is ready , but you don’t want to let me check i?. Cancel my reservation. All of a sudden she changed her mind and decided to make an “exception.”

  • Wade

    Thanks for this article, I love industry topics. However, I’ve worked in the industry for 17 years and can’t say that I’ve seen some of the more serious items. Posting incorrect charges, freezing your card (on purpose) and harassing you personally are all serious behaviors and would be handled like any company would- termination. Smaller inns and hotels that are non-affiliated, may have less checks and balances in their organization as compared to larger affiliated properties that have audit processes and oversight which would make these items unlikely. Also, hiring the right kind of people in your organization in step #1, and if your have vengeful employees as your first point of contact, customer satisfaction is not likely.

  • Raven

    @Hannah
    I’m not sure how any of this is illegal. Nothing posted is discriminating against anyone, just minimum wage employees getting a little revenge on people who cause them a lot of trouble.

    @Kathy
    I’ve had to deal with that demographic before and I agree. They are nuts. I don’t know how they all manage to get tax exempt status, but they try it all the way out here as well.

    “Discrimination” for not closing the pool just for them? Isn’t that discrimination against all the other guests? I hope you didn’t cave in to that threat of nonsense.

  • GeekChic

    @Raven: The one and only time I had something like what was described in this post happen to me (multiple phantom extra charges on my credit card), I made it my personal mission to see that clerk fired. I succeeded. So… that minimum wage employee looking for revenge got revenge alright, on themselves. Serves them right – you mess with my money you deserve to lose your job.

  • Eros

    Well, try being the worst guest to an extreme gets you the same thing too, by that I mean, avoids the “retribution” from hotel employees. If you are indeed a horrible guest, by that I mean, you complain about everything not just straight to the GM, but to the headquatre of the chain. In the same time you also happen to have an elite status with the hotel, then it is a gurantee that you will not get those treatment listed from your hotel. Big independent and especially chain hotels keep a guest profile. Amongst other things such as how a guest is rude (which can be overwritten by the staff’s supervisor at any time), the most important things almost any hotel employee looks for is the guest’s complain records. eg, if the guest holds a certain status or paid for a higher room rate, his revious complains of “unprofessional wait times” during check-in, made to the hotel’s GM and the headquatre, would be taken far more seriously as a warning sign to be EXTRA CAREFUL with the guest, rather than a side note that says “this guest has been rude to us before.”

    So, know your rights, and know what you deserve. Make sure the hotel/hotel staff know that you know what level of service you expect, and anything less than that could leave them a nasty record of “customer feedback”. But also, don’t forget to be nice, because there are dozens of ways that these guests profiles can be “unavailable” or lost.

  • Joe Farrell

    the beauty of the marketplace is that people talk – and there are places like tripadvisor – because the people who are desk clerks here sooner or later end up being un-employed . . .

  • Arizona Road Warrior

    @ Carver – I can’t speak for GSA but I think that he\she was referring to rooms that were reserved for guests that made arrangements for early check-in. If you had ten ready rooms and ten people who have called\written the hotel for an early arrival, I won’t give away on of those rooms to a person that didn’t call the hotel in advance…it will be unfair to the ones contacted the hotel for an early arrival.

    GSA made a very good point about contacting the hotel in advance for special requests for early check-in and etc. I do that all of the time when I have a special request. I will contact the General Manager via e-mail before my visit at least one to two weeks.

    For example, this morning I arrive at the hotel at 6:00 AM. The front desk was expecting and the hotel wasn’t sold out the night before so I ended up with an early check-in as well as an upgraded room.

  • Carver

    @Arizona

    Perhaps that what GSA meant, but I re-read it several times. What I took away was that supposed there were 10 empy, clean rooms at 1pm and check in is at 3pm. 7 people called for early check-in. Cool. I don’t expect to get one of those 7 rooms. As far as I am concerned those rooms are not available. But there are still 3 rooms available.

    I took it that GSA meant that he/she still wouldn’t let me have one of those 3 rooms for no reason other than the fact that I didn’t call ahead.

    The reason why I took that away from the post is because of the unqualified language used, to wit:

    “if you show up to check-in early without calling ahead you will wait until the actual check-in time.”

    Not you might have to wait, or you will wait if the rooms aren’t ready, but, you-will-wait. period. That’s just a petty, juvenile power play.

    I agree that calling ahead is smart, although if everyone called the GM, it would be chaos.

  • http://www.travelreportage.com Giulia – Travel Reportage

    I’m a hotel clerk and I sooo much know about all this!
    But “unfortunately” I always worked in luxury hotels and you can’t really be rude to guests… but you’ll always find the way to get your revenge!:)
    Rude guests watch out!!! :)

  • GSA

    @ Carver

    It really depends on the first words out of the guests mouth and if they are polite. Examples:
    If you walk in at 1pm, talking on your cell phone and thrust a confirmation page in my face, I will circle the check-in time and hand it back to you. This example is the majority of guests checking into my hotel.
    If you dont ask me, but instead tell me that you are checking in even though its 10am.
    If I tell you that there are no rooms ready and your first respsonse is that I must be lying because the parking lot is empty. (that’s because everyone checked out and we’re currently cleaning the rooms!)
    If I tell you I have nothing available and you ask me to text you when a room is ready!! They will be ready at 3pm, sorry. I have no time to text you. 1st I am not texting you from my personal cell phone. 2nd I have laundry to do, continental breakfast to clean up, and a lobby to sweep, mop, and dust.

    Pretty much my motto is “nice people get nice things.”
    If you are polite and either call ahead or even ask nicely (not demand) if there is a room ready I will try to get you one, but you will find that most of the travelers are not polite to us “line level” employees. But you expect us to give you the world.

  • Carver

    @GSA

    No, I just expect you to give me a room. Your follow up post confirms my initial understand. Arizona tried to give you the benefit of the doubt, but basically, you are punishing the guest because you decided that he/she didn’t give you the proper respect.

    Again, I hope that I never darken the doors of a hotel where you are the front desk agent. I can only assume that I will commit some transgression, whether real or imaginary, and be punished by you.

  • Jake

    I think the moral of this story, that appears to have been lost in the GSA/Carver convo, is the golden rule: “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” If you walk in and behave in a rude manner, you will receive it in return. Carver, you appear to be under the assumption that would would act in a polite manner (which I have no reason to believe you would not), and as such would receive excellent service from GSA (per their comments). They’re just doing their job, and having followed your posts I know you place a preference on treatment of others – just the other day you said “If somebody like that [basically an OP unhappy with a hotel chain's handling of a pricing error on the hotel's side] came to my office for advice I’d decline the case. Why? Because at the first opportunity, I know that he’ll be looking to screw me next.”

    I know that, even having informed the hotel upfront of early checkins (gotta love international flights and the time zone difference that comes with it!), my room has not been ready. Did I make a fuss? No, because I was asking for special treatment. I simply asked if there was anywhere I could wait until it was, and the staff was more than willing to help me out. Ultimately, when I made the moron move of leaving our passports in the hotel safe (and having gotten in the cab headed to the airport), I’d like to believe that my respectful treatment of hotel staff was what lead to one of them IMMEDIATELY rushing up to my room with me to let me in and retrieve them, rather than having to sit in the lobby and wait for “someone to become available”. Was I considering this situation when I checked in? No. I just try to put myself in the shoes of anyone helping me, and make it as pleasant as possible for the both of us.

  • Mike Z

    @Raven “@Hannah
    I’m not sure how any of this is illegal. Nothing posted is discriminating against anyone, just minimum wage employees getting a little revenge on people who cause them a lot of trouble.”

    I’d beg to differ. in the stories it is said that there would be extra charges placed for breakfast or other stuff. The clerk knew that these items should either be included or were not used but decided to screw the customer. So yes, this is illegal, they charged the customer with knowledge that the charges were fake.

  • Chicky

    Our dear, now-retired receptionist/switchboard operator used to say, “All the drunks have the newspaper on speed dial.” A friend of mine at the police department said if the newspaper was no. 1, they were no. 2.
    After nearly 18 years of dealing with stuff like this and hearing stories you absolutely would not believe, I can sympathize with some of the hotel clerks. And I have to admit, there have been times when I’ve been a little more hard-nosed about bending the rules because the caller was rude and nasty. I didn’t make up policies we didn’t have, but neither did I make an exception for them because they were determined to be rude when they dialed the phone — and because they were griping about a free service the paper offers. You don’t gripe about FREE, people. But, I digress.
    Having said that, my experiences at my workplace, as well as the summer I spent working a McJob, impressed on me the importance of courtesy and good manners (although my parents taught me this, too). They don’t cost a dime. My dad always stressed the importance of being especially kind to those in the service industry because of what they have to deal with on a daily basis, often for insufficient pay. So it’s pretty much second nature to me to go to a hotel desk, not on my cell phone (which I think is beyond rude. If it’s an emergency, go to a quiet corner of the lobby and finish the call before going to the front desk,), and to have a smile and pleasant greeting for the desk clerk. I did it even when I had been on the road five hours, it was literally 100 degrees outside and I had been driving in utterly beastly Atlanta traffic. I still managed a smile and a courteous greeting for the clerk. It can be done.
    I’ve never experienced desk clerks taking their vengeance, but again, I really do try to be nice to them.

  • Colorado

    “No, I just expect you to give me a room. Your follow up post confirms my initial understand. Arizona tried to give you the benefit of the doubt, but basically, you are punishing the guest because you decided that he/she didn’t give you the proper respect. ”

    As a hotel clerk, and a CSA in general, I am going to have to disagree with this statement. It’s not punishing rude behavior, but rewarding good behavior. In GSA’s example, the rude guest got the checkin time of 3pm. This is the absolute letter of the policy. The clerk is doing nothing wrong with adhering to it. “Punishing” the rude guest would purposely make them wait until 4 or so. This is where I draw the line and believe such an action deserves discipline.

    In a personal example, under previous management of the Subway I frequent, they gave me a 10% discount because I was always polite. Rude customers had to pay full price, but not a penny more.

  • Steve

    I must not have encountered GSA in my travels, thankfully, because I’ve almost never had a problem checking in early without calling ahead. I never *assume* it will be possible and I wouldn’t be rude to a clerk who told me I couldn’t, but I do expect on a basic customer service level that if rooms are available early and they’re not reserved for other customers who have already requested early check-in, I’ll be given one. (And I always frame the request as “I know check-in isn’t until 3, but is there any way we could get into our room now?”, not in a way that I’m *demanding* an early check-in).

  • P

    I had a friend who checked into hotel late a nite for his job. He had stayed their for several months. The clerk handed him the key and it was far off and he had three pieces of luggage to drag along. Girl gave him wrong key and he had to go alllll the way back to get another key. Did this three times and fourth he lost it. Said something like “who could be so stupid to give you a key four times and none work” and a few other things he probably should of said in a different way.
    Anyway the clerk found out where he worked and called HR and end result she got him fired. When she should of been fired for not doing her job and caused him to blow. So all this other doesn’t surprise me.

  • Carver

    @Jake

    Thank you for the kind words. I strongly believe that politeness should be the norm. However, in this case, politeness seems to be a red herring. In GSA’s original post, it wasn’t that a rude person checking attempting to check in early got the shaft, it was anyone checking in early without calling ahead got the shaft.

    @Colorado

    I understand where you are coming from. I respectfully disagree. If my room is available, there is no good reason not to let me check in early. As a practical matter, the most likely reason is that the front desk clerk is pissed off, whether at me or someone else, and intends to exercise some modicum of authority. That’s not rewarding good behavior, that’s punishing a perceived insult.

    That behavior should never be tolerated.

  • WorkerOfHotel

    I have a PROBLEM with your so called ‘points.’

    1. If you come in with an ATTITUDE, we may not like dealing with you, but we will because it’s our job. And any website you use, any hotline you use, and 99% of the time, the hotels themselves have the signed posted of check in time and check out. If you come in BETWEEN times, yes, you’ll wait. Because the housekeeping is trying their hardest to keep their rooms cleaned. So wait, because that’s out of our control.

    2. Auths are put on your card with whatever system the hotel uses. The clerk has NO control over how it’s set, and we can’t see the prices. So if you’re being over authed, it’s nothing we’ve done. I know my work system auths for the room rate + room tax.

    3. About the less desirable room. I dunno how every other hotel does it, but unless you tell me you want a view (Which I’m in the middle of a city, so it’s parking lot or 2 shops for a view), I can’t help you.

    4. Any extra curricular activities, would result in an instant fire at my hotel.

    5. The ‘Extra charges” are on your bill when you CHECK OUT. IF you don’t like a charge (Safe fee or you have a breakfast charge, wifi charge and you didn’t use it..) Ask to take it off.

    And it must be a slow news day, because you have 2 points of ‘story’ from guests, but you can’t back up any other point. Do your research. Some hotels just plain suck, but talking bad like we’re all out to get our guests, is bull. I LIKE my guests. And not ALL hotels have shady clerks. SOME OF US work hard to keep our jobs.

  • Joe

    This article is very true… I worked in management at a luxury hotel and on NUMEROUS occassions we would make rude guests wait until the very last possible minute until releasing their room keys. I have actually been instructed by my director in the morning time… “I don’t care what time his room is ready, he doesn’t get his keys until 4pm.”

  • WorkerofHotel

    I showed this to my Regional Manager, and the first thing out of him:: These are either calls by management or cruddy hotels. Any respectable hotel with a good set of workers at Front Desk, In Management & Housekeeping who takes pride in their work and dealing with guests, even the asshole ones, doesn’t do this.

    And it’s not just the hotels with ‘dirt cheap rates’ that are getting their salaries frozen, or losing raises and other perks. It’s EVERY industry. Hospitality, Sales, Food.. Everything’s been hit. Too bad you chose to focus on Hospitality.

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  • http://turkishtravelblog.com/ Natalie – Turkish Travel Blog

    An excellent post and oh so true. One lady I knew accused hotel staff of stealing her jewelry. She had forgot that she had put it in the safety deposit box.

    After it was discovered, she never apologized. Just laughed off the fact that she had called them thieves.

    Any other request after that by all hotel staff was ignored.

  • Jamie

    This Post Actually Made Me Laugh Out Loud, As Did All The Comments..Yeah It’s Kinda Old & I’m Late Reading It.

    I’m The Front Office Manager For A Large Brand Hotel Chain, I’ve Been In The Industry For 10 Years So I Know This Business. Debit Card Holds Are A Tough One, The System Auto Authorizes The Card And If A Clerk Added Extra Amounts To That Hold Then Yes That Clerk Would Be In DEEP Trouble!

    The Early Check In Thing, Yes If the Room Is Ready, Reguardless If The Guest Is Rude…Just Check Them In Already, Why Do You Want a Rude Guest Sitting In The Lobby Bugging You Adding More Stress To Your Day?

    What Upsets Me Is When A Guest Shows Up At 8am To Check In, I Was Sold Out The Night Before & They Demand a Room…Look, Check Out Time Isnt Until Noon…I Cant And Wont Ask Them To Check Out Early Because YOU Were TOO Cheap To Pay for 2 Nights. I Clearly Cant Say That to the Guest But I Try To Explain That As Soon As The Departing Guests Check Out, We Have The Housekeeping Manager Check the Rooms To Make Sure Nothing Was Left Behind And Then We Have The Girls Clean Your Room…You Dont Want Them Rushing To Clean The Room & Miss Anything Do You? No, They Need To Take Their Time. They Usually Agree w/ Me At That Point and Stop Acting Like A Jerk. Of Course Everyone Has Dealt w/ the Upset Guest That Will Not Be Pleased At Any Point

  • Front Desk Clerk

    I have been working full time plus in the motel/hotel industry and this is the advice I have to offer you:

    Early check in is extremely hard to garuntee, especially depending if the hotel fills the night before. Most housekeeping staff does not arrive until 9pm. Depending on hotel operations, they may have laundry to finish up from the previous day. They also have to get their carts re-stocked for cleaning of the day. I have come to learn it doesn’t matter what size property it is, housekeeping takes some time to set up in the morning! Some chains have the front desk create cleaning lists while others leave it to the head housekeepers. If there are vacant rooms to check, they will be re-checked in the morning.

    That being said, housekeepers have extremely long days and if people DON’T call in to request for early check ins, it gets a) tiring and b) annoying for my housekeepers to be told “Ok I need you to go to this first floor because it’s our 1 of 2 smoking rooms and they want it now, then to 228 on the complete opposite side because it’s a double reservation and they’re here now…,” especially because depending on property size it means lugging their stuff all over the dang place. Believe it or not, you want to keep your housekeepers as happy as you can because no matter what the circumstance, it is a crappy job (I’ve had to do it WHILE working the front desk).

    I’ve had situations where room a and b came to check in. They staggered their arrivals (not knowing each other) by about 1/2hr. Both two beds, smoking. Neither one of them called and it was noon (our CHECK OUT TIME). Check in is not until 2pm. So I ask them to come back in about an hour and a half. These two rooms are in one housekeepers section, so I politely ask her to clean these two rooms in the mean time. While the a and b guests leave, guests c and d come in a different housekeepers section (still NOON). Of course their rooms were not ready to go and our housekeeper only had one more room to finish on his upstairs section. I apologize profusely (even though I honestly have no need to because it’s CHECK OUT TIME) and ask them to come back around two. So, after about an hour (not even an hour and a half per the request) the guests A AND B come back! I am baffled at how to give out the room because they literally were so close to arriving at the same time, the second time. So I put it into the guests hands. “Look, guys, I am not sure who to give the room to because you guys showed up literally at the same time. She is done with room A and is onto room B next. If you guys can decide who is willing to wait I am okay with that.” Guests C and D were nice and didn’t come back until about an hour and a half, of which their rooms were ready.

    See, no matter how much the desk clerk / head housekeeping plans to be prepared for early check ins, it can always get ridiculously busy. I think I can speak for all front desk clerks when I say it gets annoying having 6 + early check ins everyday before check out time has arrived! What the guests don’t realize is technically we could be charging them for the extra time in the room because they aren’t slotted to be in it until check in time (different times depending on the different properties) but my property doesn’t since we are smaller and don’t have the amenities as a larger chain.

    I think the general consensus of a front desk clerk is you want to keep your housekeeping staff happy with you and to have to tell them to bounce all over the place (because sometimes you really can’t switch rooms for different reasons…maybe a team placed together, parties staying together, handicapped, ect) and it’s not the management’s fault 6 guests are here before noon expecting rooms.

    Now, there could be some truth to the attitude giving way to early check in, but I think what the writer probably means is IT’S REALLY HARD TO ACCOMMODATE TO RUDE GUESTS!!! The front desk clerk is feeling pressure to have the rooms ready in general, housekeeping is feeling the strain of the day, and it gets to be like a madhouse by the end of my shift.

    Most front desk clerks will do what we can (and housekeeping too. Honestly you can’t be thankful for an early check in without thanking Housekeeping too!) to get you into your room early. However if there is a waiting period, there is a waiting period. Who are you to know hotel operations? In all honesty questioning the front desk clerk of the policy in place is only going to make it more frustrating because he/she can’t do much about it until the room is available to be cleaned. And if the room is vacant, as said, sometimes you can’t switch it BECAUSE of a reservation coming in’s request made at the time of the reservation.

    Please keep these things in mind. Early check in should usually be an hour or so prior. But when it’s 3-4 hours (check out time or earlier) that is unfair to put that strain on any hotel staff, especially when you’re not even paying for the time to be in that room early.

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