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.
Of course! You can definitely ask for a specific location, but due to the nature of the hotel business, and by law, if a guest continues to pay the asking rate on a room, they can extend indefinitely. This law may vary from state to state and country to country, but in California, if you booked a specific suite, but the person staying there before you decides to extend, unfortunately the hotel will have to give you another room or suite that is comparable or greater, IF available. If no other rooms are available at all? We have to "walk" or relocate you at our expense to another comparable hotel, at least until we can provide you nights at our hotel that you have booked. (A side note: if you are walked to a NICER hotel, we are not legally obligated to keep paying for your nights there if your original, comparable, or better room opens back up at our hotel). Sold out weekend, and the person who is supposed to leave is trying to extend in the room that YOU booked? We will make it as difficult as possible for them to stay, as in, the rate will be at a premium and we certainly will explain to them that there's a guest or guests booked for arrival into their room, but believe me, some people just don't care, and that's the risk we run when operating at full capacity. As regards the ability to place you out of reach of noise or any other sometimes natural occurence at a hotel, we will try our best, but it's almost like your asking if you can stay only on days when the sun will be shining. It's very hard to predict occupancy (what block of the hotel will be empty) or to predict whether there will be an all-night party that unexpectedly pops up in the room next to you. The best rule for a quiet stay? Bring earplugs or ask for them from the front desk, so you can control the noise yourself, do your research so that you know if the hotel is a known party or nightlife spot, and ask if you can be located away from pools, bars, elevators, ice machines, street-facing location, or other typically louder areas of the hotel. With any of these special requests, at least at our property, they are always requests, never guaranteed.
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At larger, corporate, branded hotels, there may be one person dedicated completely to reputation management and even sometimes a PR agency as well. Then again, there are companies you can outsource to, like reputation.com whose entire purpose is online reputation management. However, what I've seen is that usually someone not involved in the front office operations, like a Director of Sales, Revenue Manager, Assistant General Manager, or even General Manager might be responding to the most negative (but also the most positive) reviews. Trash-talking another competing hotel by writing false negative reviews might get some short term advantage over the competition, however in the long run, as a hotelier you would want to differentiate your property by having a better (and different) product than your competitive "set" of hotels nearby. In the end you will more than likely need a favor from your neighboring hotel, so having a good relationship on the back end is to your advantage. Plus, you'd need some extra time on your hands to write those fake reviews!
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Oh my gosh, too many that I have seen and have really irked me. As professionals, we should not be gossiping (especially in earshot of guests), drinking, eating, chewing gum, filing our nails, checking our cell phones (technically any good hotel bans their possession when on duty), checking our personal emails, flirting with non-guests when we should be paying attention to actual hotel guests, door attendants not opening the door because they are spacing out, using or being under the influence of drugs or alcohol, sleeping, bringing non-staff members into hotel staff-only areas, saying room numbers out loud at check-in, giving the wrong recommendations for food and entertainment options (not asking the right questions to narrow it down) and bringing our pets to work and trying to hide them in a closet because we couldn't figure out a way to have them taken care of on our own time. Those are just a choice few, but they happen way too often!
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That sounds like a terrible hotel, and I would say that is definitely not okay. I would try to proceed past the on-site management if the management theirselves are not able to help you, and definitely reach out to regional or corporate management if it is a chain. You could file a corporate or at worst, criminal complaint.
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Make sure you mention that by working in one department at a hotel it's allowed you to have a unique understanding of how all departments work together. in this case, you'd be a valuable asset, because you will know more about housekeeping operations and standards than the average newbie candidate for a front desk agent position.
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woulid read your employee handbook very carefully to see if there's a rule against this. If there isn't, then you're fine, if there is, then do that second job at your own risk.
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Let's put it this way, the laws of the public street also apply to hotels. If someone is okay with something such as a sexual encounter, then yes, it's probably legal, but there are usually restrictions and rules in the employee handbook regarding fraternizing with guests. Generally, most of our co-workers do not like to mix work with personal life, such as this.
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