As a traveling consultant you would think that I would encounter this situation more often than I do. Well, one would think that if they didn’t know I usually try to take contracts long enough in length that I can move directly into a Corporate Housing unit rather than a hotel. My current contract was a phone call of desperation out of the blue. It seems that I specialize in these contracts anymore…off-shore resource brought in was a supposed OpenVMS expert…they sat at the client site sucking air for a length of time without ever actually doing anything and without bothering to buy a copy of my OpenVMS application development book in a desperate attempt to learn the platform…now project is desperately behind and off-shore consulting company is about to be thrown out on their collective asses unless they bring someone in to get the project back on track…I’m sure you guys have heard this all before. No off-shore project ever actually succeeds, they simply have success redefined to be whatever got delivered and all documentation about what was requested shredded.
The unseen downside I’m talking about today though, is the hotel industry. There have been too many commercials on television for the cheap hotel and travel sites. It worked out well when they were a secret know buy a connected few thousand business travelers. It was even OK when they were known by mom & dad planning to take that trip to spend some time with the grand kids. It’s certainly not OK now. Last night was a shining example of that.
Hotels are hard hit. Really be hotels are the hardest hit of all. They are also the hotels capable of offering the cheapest room rates via those travel sites…but…none of those travel sites make a bidder read and sign a “Code of Conduct” before allowing them to book their hotel stay. None of those hotel sites ask for driver’s license or perform a background check prior to renting someone with a “valid” credit card a room. None of that matters when they are surfing the 2 star and under bracket, but now things are tight enough you can get 3.5 stars and up for around $45/night. I know I booked this 3.5 star hotel for 21 nights at $45/night. When the hotel is selling rooms at this rate to business travelers they are getting customers who implicitly understand the code of conduct for hotels in the higher star brackets. They also tend to spend a bit more on the over priced drinks at the hotel bar and opt to purchase the $12 breakfast buffet which doesn’t come with the room. We are odd creatures we business travelers. When we spend over $50 for a room we want some kind of breakfast thrown in, but under $50 we will go ahead and buy breakfast.
What is happening now is that a lot of the “ Motel 6” crowd is finding its way into the 3 star and up hotels. I don’t begrudge anyone who knows how to behave in such a hotel getting a great room at a cheap price. The Motel 6/Red Roof Inn/frat party crowd on the other hand, I begrudge wholeheartedly. You see, they are the ones that tend to check in shit-faced drunk at 8:30pm then put one guy on the luggage cart with two pushing down the hallway screaming their heads off. Not only does it piss off the other guests (some of whom didn’t book via those hotel sites and paid near full price for their rooms) it overworks the understaffed front desk which must now send someone up to the room in question to educate the people about proper hotel etiquette and the fact that if they don’t quiet down the police will have to be brought in to haul their asses out of the building.
Like logic ever works with someone that drunk and rowdy.
Hotels need to offer two different rates to these discount sites. One rate for customers which have already provided the driver’s license of EVERY OCCUPANT and all have come back with a clean background check, and the near list price rates for those people who have a few drunk and disorderly or other arrests in their background. It’s not that those people cannot be entertaining to be around, and generally good people otherwise, it’s just that there is a higher percentage chance they end up having cart races down the hall while other guests are asleep.
