"The truth is, it's really hard to work in the hotel business now," BWH Hotel Group President and CEO David Kong told HNN's Sean McCracken at the ALIS conference in July. "You think about the difficult guests that we all encounter on a daily basis. People are just more difficult these days. And if you're working on the front desk, you get yelled at left and right, and you're not going to find it to be too much fun working in that kind of environment."
Yes. David Kong himself said that — the CEO of a major international hotel company.
I've covered the hotel industry for nearly 15 years now, and never have I ever heard hotel operators — and even CEOs — so frustrated with guests. So absolutely justifiably frustrated with guests.
The loosening of restrictions here in the U.S. this summer unleashed a wave of travel, which is a double-edged sword. The business is great. But the wear and tear on hotels — and most importantly, on your souls — is not so good.
Last month when I was in Nashville, I looked down from a balcony on a hotel nearby. Someone had taken the mattress off the bed and thrown it up against the window, so all I saw from my perch higher up were the buttons of a bare mattress. I can't even imagine what the rest of the room looked like if that was the state of the mattress.
On that same trip, I saw bachelorettes just drop cocktail glasses right on the floor of the hotel lobby. Someone left an uneaten roll in the ladies' room, balanced on the Kleenex box. Someone else left a single slice of bacon in an elevator. And that was just one 24-hour period in one hotel!
I've heard hotel operators talk about crying daily in back stairwells. Drowning their frustrations in booze and other vices.
This isn't good! This is all sorts of bad! Hoteliers: I don't know how you do this every day and don't just run home crying, never to come back again.
As Kong himself said, this is a big reason why hiring is so difficult for hotel jobs — nobody wants to deal with this mess.
Is the solution to ride it out and wait for the return of the boring, relatively clean business traveler who remembers how to flush toilets after himself?
At this point, that may be the case, because based on what I've seen of this summer's traveling public, there is no way to tame that beast at this point — or even reteach him or her how to flush a public toilet.
I'm sure many of you right now are heralding the unofficial end of summer. Again, yes, the business was great. But at what cost? Eh, at whatever cost, your owners will say it was worth it.
But I hope all of the operators and your teams out there can take care of yourselves and each other. Yeah, pizza parties and random gift cards are nice, but therapy may be better. Y'all have seen some stuff.
Feel free to vent your frustrations and solutions to me, no strings attached. Email me, or find me on Twitter or LinkedIn to let me know.
The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Hotel News Now or CoStar Group and its affiliated companies. Bloggers published on this site are given the freedom to express views that may be controversial, but our goal is to provoke thought and constructive discussion within our reader community. Please feel free to contact an editor with any questions or concern.