ElectricInstinct

Hello! I also manage a hotel!

Do your guests also slowly suck out your soul, making you despise every moment you spend on this earth? Mine too!

I've had a guy fighting with me over the last two weeks because he did not receive a second free water bottle at check-in. He wants his entire stay refunded over it. Every time he emails me, he makes up another lie about his stay, some of which contradict what he said in earlier emails.

The worst part, the incompetent people in corporate will likely just end up giving him his full refund.

Oh, if only corporate thought like you, maybe things would get better.

Of course, I've started where you posted. I wouldn't have made it this far up the chain if didn't do that sort of thing. Honestly, I'm not specifically bothered about this guy as by the trend he's a part of.

The main problem I have is that someone with a fancy MBA but no idea how to actually run a hotel decided to try to copy the Hilton by implementing a 100% guest satisfaction policy, where if the guest complains about anything, they get their entire stay refunded. Sure, this is great for corporate, but it stinks here at the hotel level (franchise).

Actual example:

A guest complained to me personally about a dog barking. I called the owner, who was outside at the pool, who came in five minutes later to calm their dog. The rest of the night proceeded smoothly.

Unfortunately, this event turned into two complaints and two free rooms. Dog lover is bothered that he had to come in to take care of his dog, and silence lover complained that he heard five minutes of barking.

At the property level, we've been thrust into a no-win situation and are forced to hemorrhage money. As a franchise this is killing our profits. Worse, guests have been making up things and posting them all over social media in attempts to get their free nights. This has been killing our bookings. If not for the fact that we are along the I-95 corridor in a very traveled section of Florida, we'd be dead in the water. (In fact, corporate has already closed down many corporate-owned locations with plans to close down several more this year.)

So yeah, it's not so much this one guest, but the fact that I have to deal with so, so, so many guests like this who know that they will ultimately get their rooms for free, and a corporate office who will gladly give the guests anything they ask for.