#$&@! Hotel Guest

[Koz]

This morning one of my room attendants found a large, styrofoam bucket full of dead minnows in one of our corridors. It stunk up the entire second floor. Why do people do things like that? The fricking lake is 100 feet from the back of the hotel. Even if they were already dead, throw them out in the lake for the birds and turtles.

 

I didn't have time to do it today, but tomorrow I'm going to review the security camera footage. Someone on my team will recognize them, and that guest will get a call or letter from me telling them not to return.

 

For the third time in three months someone ripped a stairwell railing out of the wall. Unfortunately, there are no security camera there - yet.

 

I built a great new fire pit down at the lake and some jokers smashed beer bottle in and around the fire pit. Those guys were caught on camera and banned from the hotel. Their boss also told me he fired them. Good.

 

Then there's the people that smoke cigarettes or weed in the hotel rooms. Those folks don't get off easy. There's a $500 cleaning fee for that.

 

I simply don't understand why some people feel the need to destroy other people's property. We're putting in a ton of work trying to fix and turn around the hotel and these idiots ruin things for my team and the other guests.

 

If you're ever at a hotel and see some clown doing something stupid or doing damage, do us GM's a favor and take their picture and bring it to us. We'd love to be able to catch people and press charges.

[HaydenS]

Sorry to hear this has been happening.  Sucks.

 

Those vandals didn't get none of this when they were kids.

 

[Glenn]

Growing pains.  Keep enforcing the policies, and it WILL get better.  Trust me.  Cleaning out the unwantables is an unpleasant but necessary task to take your hotel to the next level.

 

Trust me, those people will run to their friends and tell them to never visit your place again, thinking they're hurting your business.  Good!  That's what you want!  Not only to keep those kind of people away, but to spread word-of-mouth that your hotel is NOT a place to screw around.

 

Believe me, people hearing that you're enforcing policies (the horror!) will either steer clear of you, or come running to you.  Both accomplish exactly what you want.

 

Stay the course. It WILL get better.

[E-rude dude]

There was a decent hotel up in Little Sturgeon Bay Wisconsin. It got trashed by ice fisherman cleaning fish in their room. ? You can still smell it. Is a shame because it’s walking distance from the ramp.

[Koz]

2 hours ago, E-rude dude said:

There was a decent hotel up in Little Sturgeon Bay Wisconsin. It got trashed by ice fisherman cleaning fish in their room. ? You can still smell it. Is a shame because it’s walking distance from the ramp.

I had heard about that happening in my hotel before I took it over. That's why I have building a fish cleaning station down by the lake on my list of projects for this fall or next spring.

[gim]

I have to say @Koz, those incidents you described in your initial post are appalling.  Destroying property, smoking in rooms, and leaving glass behind is completely unacceptable behavior.  You have a lot more patience than I do.  Keep up the good work.

[Dwight Hottle]

1 hour ago, Koz said:

I had heard about that happening in my hotel before I took it over. That's why I have building a fish cleaning station down by the lake on my list of projects for this fall or next spring.

 

Many years ago I saw guys cleaning walleyes in the bathtub at cheap motels in the western basin of lake Erie. There were no public cleaning stations & and cleaning fish in your boat on the water was not allowed. 

[TOXIC]

You need to raise your rates and get a better class of customer.  

[BassNJake]

10 hours ago, HaydenS said:

Sorry to hear this has been happening.  Sucks.

 

Those vandals didn't get none of this when they were kids.

 

I saw some study where more than 90% of the prison population had been physically disciplined as children. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

 

I got butt whippings daily and a bamboo stick across the knuckles my entire childhood.

Punishment was not a deterrent for me.

 

My brother on the other hand was smart enough to see my beatings and he did not do anything to warrant any discipline. 

[TnRiver46]

I caught a bunch of blue crabs when I was a kid at the beach. We put them in a bucket and kept them in the hotel hoping our moms would cook them. Well they were dead as tack hammers in the morning ! But we threw them back into the ocean like halfway responsible humans (because our mothers threatened harm otherwise haha)

[soflabasser]

Sounds like the people that trashed the rooms are scumbags that only care about themselves. These type of people are very common these days. Best piece of advice I can give you is enforce the rules and hope that they learn.

[Koz]

10 hours ago, TOXIC said:

You need to raise your rates and get a better class of customer.  

I have, Rates are $50 higher than when I got there, closing in on $200 a night. But when 2 or 4 people pitch in and get a room...

[DitchPanda]

Ill agree with some of the above sentiments...keep calling the cops and fining people and the riff raff will kinda taper off...plus you will attract good customers that are looking to avoid that crap. I know I'd pay $50 extra to stay somewhere I didn't feel like my truck would get broke into or some jack@$% wouldn't beat on my door at 3am just to be a punk.

[N Florida Mike]

A large mens retreat group I was with got banned from a fishing resort after some teens in the group destroyed a couple of rooms. One of them put a hose in a window and let it run all night. Another room was damaged by setting fireworks off IN THE ROOM. They also broke most of the furniture by playing tackle football . I was in my 20s but didnt know about it til the next day. These boys were about the only ones that didnt have a dad present. .and somehow got left alone in a room...

It was very humbling when our PASTOR had to pay all the damages....

[A-Jay]

22 hours ago, Koz said:

This morning one of my room attendants found a large, styrofoam bucket full of dead minnows in one of our corridors. It stunk up the entire second floor. Why do people do things like that? The fricking lake is 100 feet from the back of the hotel. Even if they were already dead, throw them out in the lake for the birds and turtles.

 

I didn't have time to do it today, but tomorrow I'm going to review the security camera footage. Someone on my team will recognize them, and that guest will get a call or letter from me telling them not to return.

 

For the third time in three months someone ripped a stairwell railing out of the wall. Unfortunately, there are no security camera there - yet.

 

I built a great new fire pit down at the lake and some jokers smashed beer bottle in and around the fire pit. Those guys were caught on camera and banned from the hotel. Their boss also told me he fired them. Good.

 

Then there's the people that smoke cigarettes or weed in the hotel rooms. Those folks don't get off easy. There's a $500 cleaning fee for that.

 

I simply don't understand why some people feel the need to destroy other people's property. We're putting in a ton of work trying to fix and turn around the hotel and these idiots ruin things for my team and the other guests.

 

If you're ever at a hotel and see some clown doing something stupid or doing damage, do us GM's a favor and take their picture and bring it to us. We'd love to be able to catch people and press charges.

As a man with quite a bit of experience in this field, 

I would think that you'd be More surprised when people we Not Acting Crazy. 

This stuff goes on every where, all the time and it will never stop ~ ever.

In the service we had a saying  . . . 

"Choose your rate, choose your fate."

Whatever in life you choose to do, there are pluses and minuses, things you’ll love, and things you won’t love. If you choose the right job,  hopefully you’ll find more pluses than minuses. If you don’t, you should really look for something else and do something that makes you happier.

A-Jay

 

 

[Koz]

46 minutes ago, A-Jay said:

As a man with quite a bit of experience in this field, 

I would think that you'd be More surprised when people we Not Acting Crazy. 

This stuff goes on every where, all the time and it will never stop ~ ever.

In the service we had a saying  . . . 

"Choose your rate, choose your fate."

Whatever in life you choose to do, there are pluses and minuses, things you’ll love, and things you won’t love. If you choose the right job,  hopefully you’ll find more pluses than minuses. If you don’t, you should really look for something else and do something that makes you happier.

A-Jay

 

 

These are all actually tame compared to other things I have encountered. I have run hotels for over 20 years, but the stupidity and lack of respect or values of some people still amazes me.

 

I joke that for some people, once they put their key card in the slot it shorts out their brain.

[Krux5506]

At our business I always say we can have great customers all week, people that are really just great to deal with, but you get ONE guy who's the total opposite and it's enough to ruin your week and leave you dwelling on it non stop. 

[FishTank]

I would say it typical of every hotel, from cheap to expensive.  People get carried away when they leave home.  It's stupid and wrong but not uncommon. 

 

To tell a story.....  I stayed in an old but nice place in Florida (that remains nameless) where they had a wall with pictures, polaroids and stories of people that had stayed there and partied too hard and the damage they had caused.  With each picture was the cost charged to the customer or even them in handcuffs.  It did deter people from acting up but didn't stop it.  I always thought it was funny that such a wall existed. 

 

[Koz]

6 hours ago, FishTank said:

I would say it typical of every hotel, from cheap to expensive.  People get carried away when they leave home.  It's stupid and wrong but not uncommon. 

 

To tell a story.....  I stayed in an old but nice place in Florida (that remains nameless) where they had a wall with pictures, polaroids and stories of people that had stayed there and partied too hard and the damage they had caused.  With each picture was the cost charged to the customer or even them in handcuffs.  It did deter people from acting up but didn't stop it.  I always thought it was funny that such a wall existed. 

 

That is funny. But there's no way I would put up a Wall of Shame like that.

[throttleplate]

when i was in high school we got a room during the basketball tournement so we could hangout and party. I am not proud of what i did that night but i did it.

I was drinking  rum and cokes and had to many, i then ate a whopper hamburger and minutes later while gettin ice out of the hallway ice machine i hurled up that hamberger and everything else right into the ice machine. End of story.

[Ski]

On 6/16/2021 at 10:43 PM, Koz said:

I didn't have time to do it today, but tomorrow I'm going to review the security camera footage. Someone on my team will recognize them, and that guest will get a call or letter from me telling them not to return.

 

THIS ^^^^^^

 

[Koz]

We had more lousy guests this weekend. Our pedal boat and two Adirondack chairs turned up missing. I was hoping that at most someone sunk the boat and threw the chairs in the lake, so I spent part of the afternoon on my kayak running my side scan hoping to find them. No luck.

 

We did have some good news this week - we're getting ready for renovations. The new WiFi and TV service will be installed soon including pulling fiber optic cable into the building. The new RFID door locks will be installed next month.

 

We also ordered the new guest room carpet and the fabric for the sofas and chairs. Those items will be custom built here in Georgia. We did a test of the new paint colors in one guest room and it looks fantastic. There's an 8 week lead time for the mill to produce the carpet, so we hope to start painting and carpet installation after the first of the year.

 

In the meantime, my maintenance chief and I are going to tackle remodeling the front desk area and the breakfast area. One thing I will be doing is cutting our new logo on a scroll saw, adding some LED backlighting, and mounting it on the wall behind the renovated front desk. And speaking of the new logo, we'll have new outdoor signage coming as well.

[Glenn]

Definitely progress in the right direction!  Keep at it, you're making a difference!

[newbiedmv]

I recently stayed at a cheap hotel that lied about everything. But the worst was the room smelled like it was next to a paper mill. Gave me a massive headache. Oh well if I go up there again I'll stay at the lake/ski resort, $250.00 a night if your lucky. With a $50/day boat ramp and storage (DC and Pittsburgh clientele).

Your guests sound like my neighbors.

[islandbass]

On 6/17/2021 at 5:41 PM, Koz said:

I have, Rates are $50 higher than when I got there, closing in on $200 a night. But when 2 or 4 people pitch in and get a room...

Maybe you should add “extra person” fees passed two. For example, the first two are covered under the $200 and then charge like $25-$50 more per person (if they aren’t family, like 4 college buddies). They’re going to divvy the cost anyway so I don’t think people would complain.