Maybe you're staying at the wrong hotels!? In my case most front desk are usually extremely friendly. This year only 1 or 2 front desks were unfriendly and 1 was downright nasty.

That last one knew details he couldn't know unless he went through the paperwork I had left on the desk in my room. He asked me how the conference (a tiny conference with absolutely no publicity) was going. I never told him or showed him that I was participating at said conference.