the best ever hotel horror stories

[figgyx]

For those of you here who have ever worked night audit at a hotel you know what it means to walk someone - and not in a good way like four balls in baseball. For those of you who don't know what walking a guest means - here is a short primer. Some hotels overbook on purpose because the dumbasses in charge think a certain percentage of guests don't show up. This is great if you are a manager hoping to sell out the hotel but it sucks like crazy for the poor auditor who has to tell someone we don't have a room for them even though they guaranteed the reservation. In cases like this we have to pay for them to stay elsewhere and we will even pay for a cab and phone call. Walking a guest is never fun. So now that you know the basics - ready for some stories of the walks?

One guest when he found out we had overbooked and we were sending him to another hotel began yelling and yelling and yelling (I don't blame him for being mad but why kill the messager?) At one point he told me he did not care if I had to shit him a room he was staying here. I kept insisting he had to go. He asked to speak with the general manager and I declined to call him at 1am. I told Mr Sucky dude that he could talk to him in the morning. He yelled some more. He asked for our GM's name and then went to the payphone and tried to call him at home (unlisted number thank god) Finally I had enough and called Jeff our security guard up to the desk. The dude looks at Jeff and says Who the Fuck are you? Jeff tells him he has to leave and the dude tells Jeff only way he was leaving iwas if the cops forced him to leave. Jeff and I look at each other and Jeff says do it. Cops come and escort him off the property.

Another time the dumbasses in charge overbooked us on a Saturday and I had to inform a newlywed couple that we no longer had their room. The wife looks at me and tells me to bend over backwards so she can fuck me up the ass the way the hotel is fucking her up the ass. WTF - she was this tiny little second grade teacher and she had quite the potty mouth. After awhile we figured out that we could use one of the airline rooms that was sitting empty for a five am arrival and we could clean an early checkout for the airline room. You would think they would have been grateful for the effort- but you would be wrong!!! She was still ranting and raving up on the floors and making such a scene that one of our security guards told the husband to quiet her down because she was this close to going to jail on her wedding night.

Now I know that the hotel management was at fault here and I always hated walking guests but it was my job. (I walked 10 people in one night - woohoo a record.) What I could never understand is why people insisted on arguing and arguing as if it would change the situation. We would even tell these people that they were free to complain to the management staff but right now we had to do this walk. Sheesh.

[PepperElf]

o boy. what a way to make an impression on hubby on their first night of marriage...

[NotMyProblem]

I dearly hope he knew that about her before then....

[thehuckster]

Jeff tells him he has to leave and the dude tells Jeff only way he was leaving iwas if the cops forced him to leave. Jeff and I look at each other and Jeff says do it. Cops come and escort him off the property.

Either you have some posh jailhouses or the hotel you were walking him to was a shithole, because that's the only reasoning I can make of this.

[Raveni]

fucking her up the ass

o boy. what a way to make an impression on hubby on their first night of marriage...

The twelve-year-old me thinks that would be fine for any man on his first night of marriage.

[Shpepper]

At my old hotel, a lot of the time when we walked people, it was to another company property down the street. I always hated walking people there because it was way less nice that the property that I worked for. I never had anyone yell at me about it, but I also called my GM at 2 am to talk to people when they were that upset. I figured that if he was going to allow us to overbook, he could deal with them.

[PatchO'Black]

Okay, yes, I can understand someone being reasonably upset to find out that a hotel has overbooked themselves, and even more so if it was knowingly overbooked. The keyword here is "reasonably". The SCs in these stories went beyond reasonable, in addition to picking the wrong target for their hostility.

[Andara Bledin]

I've been walked once. Which was extremely inconvenient since I was attending a convention at the hotel I'd actually been booked at.

Actually, what makes it worse, I had a convention room (one of the rooms guaranteed to the convention staff) and the hotel, who was undergoing renovations (those don't happen without planning), had decided to book three separate groups that weekend. >_<

There are reasons our group doesn't hold the conventions at that hotel any longer.

^-.-^

[CloserToSane]

I've been walked twice but never thought to make a big deal about it. I have emailed once but it was more the overall service, I don't mind being walked really.Then again I'm a reservations supervisor so I'm the one who's freaking out about it days before and counting each cancellations joyously

I don't like putting nights/late shift in that situation and really try hard to avoid it. If it goes right then there are benefits to overbooking, but that seems to be rare.

[AccountingDrone]

Nothing to do with the hotel industry, but hubby and I got walked once from the hotel that was the location for the sub's holiday party. We got walked next door into a suite instead of the little single we booked, and we got a fruit basket and breakfast for the trauma of being walked

Seriously, a room is a room, and though I need a handicapped modified bathroom, I am more or less willing to walk into a regular room as we have a folding shower stool in the trunk of the car for when I can't get a gimproom. All I am doing is sleeping in the damned room. All I need is a bed and a bathroom.

[PepperElf]

The twelve-year-old me thinks that would be fine for any man on his first night of marriage.

o i don't mean the act... i mean the horror of realizing his bride is a fucking bitchcunt

[mariamousie1]

When I was in a hospitality program, a teacher told us about walking customers, and whenever he is a customer with a room and sees another customer making a huge fuss about being walked, he always offers to be walked instead. He says he always gets huge discounts and free stuff because the hotel is so grateful.

[Andara Bledin]

When I was in a hospitality program, a teacher told us about walking customers, and whenever he is a customer with a room and sees another customer making a huge fuss about being walked, he always offers to be walked instead. He says he always gets huge discounts and free stuff because the hotel is so grateful.

There's a couple people at my work who are the same way about flights. Unless they really need to be back at a specific time, they're cool about being bumped, 'cause it usually comes with gifts for not fighting to be that specific flight.

^-.-^

[Mr Hero]

For those of you here who have ever worked night audit at a hotel you know what it means to walk someone - and not in a good way like four balls in baseball. For those of you who don't know what walking a guest means - here is a short primer. Some hotels overbook on purpose because the dumbasses in charge think a certain percentage of guests don't show up. This is great if you are a manager hoping to sell out the hotel but it sucks like crazy for the poor auditor who has to tell someone we don't have a room for them even though they guaranteed the reservation. In cases like this we have to pay for them to stay elsewhere and we will even pay for a cab and phone call. Walking a guest is never fun. So now that you know the basics - ready for some stories of the walks?

I HATE HATE HATE this policy with a fiery passion! My hotel does not have this policy. We do however charge our now shows, so we get paid for the rooms no matter what. It was especially bad when a couple months ago there was a Microsoft Convention and other hotels still went with this policy. You can imagine the amount of scrambling these hotels had to do.

[Moosenogger]

I can honestly understand those guests' frustration. The entire point of making a reservation is so the damn hotel has a room for you - not so the hotel can maybe have a room available. The fact that your hotel management is willing to overbook and then wish upon a prayer that they actually have enough rooms available is asinine. I wish you could give away management's personal phone numbers to these guests - maybe if the manager gets screamed at enough they'll realize their own folly.