So you want to run a hotel?

[Koz]

If you don;t know, I'm the GM of a small boutique hotel. This has been an interesting week and it's only Tuesday. First, I get a call on Monday at 6:15 am from the woman who was supposed to work 7-3 and she had to call off. She's forgiven, though as she recently had surgery and was still recovering. So I pick up her shift. Then the woman who works 3-11 calls out sick and I pick up that shift as well.

 

Meanwhile, I have a delivery of new guest room lighting that is supposed to come in that day, but I get a call that it is canceled and will be here on Wednesday instead. Unfortunately, my maintenance chief's father passed away over the weekend so he is out for as long as he needs. That means I'm also picking up some maintenance duties this week.

 

Even though it's our off season, the hotel was busy and the phones were ringing off the hook. All of the work we have been putting into the hotel, the training, the goodwill tours, and the marketing is paying off. We've had 5 record revenue months in a row and even though it's only the 7th of the month I have more revenue on the books right now for this month than we did for the full month last year. Our booking pace is up 65%. So even though I was there 7am - 11 pm the hours flew by - but I didn't get any of my own work done.

 

I get in at 7:45 am on Tuesday and the delivery truck is there with our lighting. It's supposed to be here on Wednesday. But there are even more problems. They are delivering 11 palettes with 3,660 pounds of lighting and the truck shows up without a lift gate or palette jack. And yes, we paid extra in our shipping for that. I'm cursing a blue streak (not normal for me) and call our designer who arranged the shipment. She tells me to refuse delivery and she will reschedule it.

 

I do my morning rounds with my team and knock out a few minor maintenance items because my maintenance chief is still out. I get to my office, look out the window, and the delivery truck is still there. I then get a conference call from the designer and the courier and the courier is ticked at me because I refused delivery. He then tells me that it's standard for them NOT to have a lift gate when the delivery is 10 or more palettes. Really? So I then asked him why he did not call us and tell us. We're a small hotel without a loading dock and we need to bring this stuff through the front entrance. I ask him to send two trucks - but he has to eat any additional shipping costs. 

 

I go back to work and wrap up a nice $50k piece of business for us. Then I meet with a contractor to do some drywall repairs. We have cracked stucco around some of our windows and have had water intrusion. We can do drywall, but there's a lot to do as we opened up walls to trace leaks from that and some old plumbing issues from YEARS ago (old management) that were never fixed properly. I need to coordinate this contractor with the stucco guy.

 

Then I get a call from our designer and she tells me they are going to transfer the lighting from one truck to another with a lift gate, then unload in our parking lot. They won't bring the palettes into the building. But there's a problem - we rented a palette jack for tomorrow and it's not available for today. I make more calls on that - no luck.

 

Then I get a call from someone who wants to do a location shoot for a movie at our hotel - in 3 weeks. They want to shoot out at the lake and in our meeting room. But the meeting room is scheduled to remodeled (we're doing it ourselves) over that time period. So now I call another contractor to come out to see if he can get it done before then.

 

Hours have passed and the transfer truck arrive. But all of my laborer staff is home or out for the day. I offer the driver cash to bring the palettes into the hotel. No dice - he doesn't want to risk losing his job. The only other people on the clock are two ladies who are not suited to do this kind of lifting. Plus, it's a liability risk and they are far too valuable in what they do for me to risk them getting injured.

 

So I grab a bellman's cart and start hauling nearly two tons of boxes (3,660 pounds) into the hotel. Of course, because I have to load them up on a cart and unload them I'm moving nearly 4 tons of boxes by myself. I'm no spring chicken, either. So I'm pretty tired tonight and no doubt I will be sore in the morning. 

 

But you want to know something? None of this is out of the ordinary when you run a small hotel. You have to do a lot of everything. So if there's any moral to my story, if you want to run a hotel then run a big, full service hotel where you have 20 managers, 30 supervisors, and a few hundred employees so you don't have to move literal tons of boxes into the hotel.

 

We take delivery on about 100 guest room chairs in two weeks. I can hardly wait. But thanks for letting me vent.

[flatcreek]

When it rains it pours they say. Hang in there.

[Junger]

I really enjoy reading your stories, keep 'em coming! Sorry I'm just a pencil pusher and this stuff is a lot more exciting than what I do.

[BrianMDTX]

But…did you go fishing? ?

[TnRiver46]

Always something. I thought about your car yesterday, I got passed by a genesis coupe. How’s she running? 

[Koz]

32 minutes ago, BrianMDTX said:

But…did you go fishing? ?

What made yesterday worse was that it was about 70 degrees out and my original plan was to head out on my kayak and fish for a few hours late in the day. So sadly, no fishing yesterday and today I'm off site for meetings in town.

 

But I will sneak some time down on our docks on Thursday and Friday. At least, that's the plan.

[Koz]

12 minutes ago, TnRiver46 said:

Always something. I thought about your car yesterday, I got passed by a genesis coupe. How’s she running? 

I just hit 100k miles on it last week.

 

Last month I brought the car in for brakes, head gasket replacement, and a tune up and the dealer screwed it up somehow and now I don't trust them to fix anything. The car was pulling too many RPM's under acceleration and the red line was so bad I had to back off.  Car was perfect before they serviced it.

 

Dealer was stumped. I narrowed it down to it would happen in automatic transmission mode and not in manual transmission mode. That makes me think it's a problem with the computer. I probably need to disconnect the battery and reset it. I've reset the computer before when its automatic shift points were slightly off and that worked.

 

Other than that, the car is great. But I still plan to sell it or trade it in this year. I plan to buy a Bronco Sport and get a trailer to pull around my kayak. Or I may buy a boat. 

[TnRiver46]

1 minute ago, Koz said:

I just hit 100k miles on it last week.

 

Last month I brought the car in for brakes, head gasket replacement, and a tune up and the dealer screwed it up somehow and now I don't trust them to fix anything. The car was pulling too many RPM's under acceleration and the red line was so bad I had to back off.  Car was perfect before they serviced it.

 

Dealer was stumped. I narrowed it down to it would happen in automatic transmission mode and not in manual transmission mode. That makes me think it's a problem with the computer. I probably need to disconnect the battery and reset it. I've reset the computer before when its automatic shift points were slightly off and that worked.

 

Other than that, the car is great. But I still plan to sell it or trade it in this year. I plan to buy a Bronco Sport and get a trailer to pull around my kayak. Or I may buy a boat. 

I remember you saying it lost a little bit of power, hopefully you figured it out 

[Deleted account]

Is there a Holiday Inn Express near by?...

[BrianMDTX]

Does it have Sport mode in auto? It may be staying in lower gears which will raise your RPM’s. Sounds like a PCM issue. 

[KSanford33]

In the words of Rusty Ryan, “Hotels man…”

 

My thoughts are with you @Koz

[TOXIC]

A day in the life.  Hopefully the pay = your commitment. 

[Koz]

13 hours ago, Deleted account said:

Is there a Holiday Inn Express near by?...

Holiday Inn is THE worst major brand in the world. Terrible quality standards all the way from hotel build through service.

 

Years ago the company I worked for took over a handful of Holiday Inn Convention Centers and I was tasked with transitioning one of the hotels to our company, then moved to one of the others to take over the GM job.

 

Since the brand was new to me (a Marriott guy) one of the first things I did was familiarize myself with the HI Quality Assurance standards for their annual inspection. To my surprise, there were almost none. Hotels basically did their own thing. That accounts for why most are crappy. I'll never work for that brand again and I most definitely will not stay in any of their properties.

12 hours ago, BrianMDTX said:

Does it have Sport mode in auto? It may be staying in lower gears which will raise your RPM’s. Sounds like a PCM issue. 

No sport mode. But I have the option of bump shifting or using paddle shifters and the result is the same. I'll try the computer reset, but yes, it could be the PCM.

[Koz]

9 hours ago, TOXIC said:

A day in the life.  Hopefully the pay = your commitment. 

I'm thankful that I make a lot for the size of the hotel and the market which is about 50% above what one would expect.

 

But I've already told the owner that this is probably my last year at the hotel. I'm tired of the day to day hotel operations. My plan is to switch gears and work as Regional VP of Operations. The pay is better, although there is a lot of travel. But I know I won't have to unload shipments or work the front desk anymore!

[slonezp]

Work is work.

I was exhausted today at 1pm from brain fatigue. Slammed from the time I opened the store until the time I left. Blood pressure was up today because of it.( Had it checked after work) Spent a lot of time today trying to remember if I forgot something.

 

Life goes on and tomorrow is another day.

 

I'm not in the hotel business but I am in a critical industry. My paycheck is directly related to my sales and my sales are directly related to my service. Tomorrow is another day. Prioritize. I close the doors of my store at 4pm. A customer calls me at 3:55, after a long stressful day, wanting me to look up some old bids to requote before I leave. I tell him I'm leaving in 5 minutes...."I'll call you back".  He calls at 3:58 and we go over all the stuff he needs re-bid. Were I not on commission, I would have told him to call me in the morning. I'm not that guy. I'll be rebidding the stuff in the morning anyway. I'm not going to tell a customer looking for $50k in bids to call me in the morning. The end result will be the same. He will either go or not go with the bids. The attention/service may be the deciding factor with the bids. If sticking around an extra 10 minutes gets me a $50K sale it was well worth it. If sticking around for an extra 10 minutes get's me nothing, it was just 10 minutes of my life.

[Koz]

8 hours ago, slonezp said:

I close the doors of my store at 4pm. 

 

One of the big negative aspects of what I do is that we are open 24/7/365. There is no opportunity to shut off or silence my phone. Getting a call or having to go in at 3 a.m. is not uncommon. When you run a big hotel you have enough layers of managers that you don't have to worry about that. But in a small hotel it can drive you nuts, especially when you first take over a property that has been struggling. This is one of the reasons why I plan to move on to become an RVP later this year.

[slonezp]

1 hour ago, Koz said:

 

One of the big negative aspects of what I do is that we are open 24/7/365. There is no opportunity to shut off or silence my phone. Getting a call or having to go in at 3 a.m. is not uncommon. When you run a big hotel you have enough layers of managers that you don't have to worry about that. But in a small hotel it can drive you nuts, especially when you first take over a property that has been struggling. This is one of the reasons why I plan to move on to become an RVP later this year.

My hours are 7-4 M-F and we offer 24hr service although I don't volunteer for that. My customers have my personal cell number and I get calls and texts both before and after work hours which I don't mind. My customer base are regulars and all tradesmen. I would never want to run a hotel. I've seen the horrible way the staff gets treated. 

[Deleted account]

10 hours ago, slonezp said:

gets me a $50K sale...

So like 3 jugs of refrigerant?...  

[slonezp]

1 hour ago, Deleted account said:

So like 3 jugs of refrigerant?...  

The wholesale price of R22 was $30 a 30lb jug when I got into the trade in the 90's

[Deleted account]

9 minutes ago, slonezp said:

The wholesale price of R22 was $30 a 30lb jug when I got into the trade in the 90's

LOL. Yeah, It's crazy, I paid $340 about 8 years ago, and now it's like $1300, better than Crypto...  

SEER2 and the "new" refrigerants is going to be more fun than a leftie reel for a righty angler thread in January, defrost inefficiency, the next frontier, I was crunching the numbers, and it's a lot.

[slonezp]

1 hour ago, Deleted account said:

LOL. Yeah, It's crazy, I paid $340 about 8 years ago, and now it's like $1300, better than Crypto...  

SEER2 and the "new" refrigerants is going to be more fun than a leftie reel for a righty angler thread in January, defrost inefficiency, the next frontier, I was crunching the numbers, and it's a lot.

That's cheap. I'm selling it for about $1560.00 a jug. 

[Deleted account]

42 minutes ago, slonezp said:

That's cheap. I'm selling it for about $1560.00 a jug. 

I want to see the face of a home owner with a rusted through accumulator, or the neighborhood kid hit the liquid line with the lawnmower quoted on a 10 SEER split repair, "That will be twice the price of replacing it with a new unit please"...

[Jigfishn10]

4 hours ago, slonezp said:

I would never want to run a hotel. I've seen the horrible way the staff gets treated. 

I've renovated a few, all Marriots, as a field super and can attest that this is the most accurate statement. Housekeeping staff get it by both the management staff and guest. Hotel guest in all the Marriots are probably the cheapest when it comes to tipping the housekeeping staff.

[gim]

13 minutes ago, Deleted account said:

I want to see the face of a home owner with a rusted through accumulator, or the neighborhood kid hit the liquid line with the lawnmower quoted on a 10 SEER split repair, "That will be twice the price of replacing it with a new unit please"...

I experienced last May, kind of.

 

I moved in May and the AC unit/furnace were both 17 years old.  A "tune up" inspection revealed that the AC unit ran on R22 refrigerant and was low.  The tech said I could pay to fill it up, and it would probably last me another year or so...or I could upgrade to a brand new unit for basically the same cost.  So I limped through the summer with the old unit and then upgraded to a Carrier unit in September.  I also upgraded the furnace to a 2-stage Carrier unit because when you do both at the same time they offer a bundle discount of almost $4 grand.

 

Pay thousands of dollars to fill up an old AC unit with R22, or buy a new more efficient one?  No brainer.

[slonezp]

1 hour ago, gimruis said:

I experienced last May, kind of.

 

I moved in May and the AC unit/furnace were both 17 years old.  A "tune up" inspection revealed that the AC unit ran on R22 refrigerant and was low.  The tech said I could pay to fill it up, and it would probably last me another year or so...or I could upgrade to a brand new unit for basically the same cost.  So I limped through the summer with the old unit and then upgraded to a Carrier unit in September.  I also upgraded the furnace to a 2-stage Carrier unit because when you do both at the same time they offer a bundle discount of almost $4 grand.

 

Pay thousands of dollars to fill up an old AC unit with R22, or buy a new more efficient one?  No brainer.

You'll be happy to know thr R410A refrigerant in your unit is on the chopping block.