The mind of a front desk agent
 

Hello all,

I have been reading these boards for a long time but this is my first time posting. I have worked at a limited service IHG property for 2 years, and a full service Marriott for 3 years - both at the front desk. I left Marriott about 2 weeks ago.

I don't know if this has done before, but I'm willing to bet a lot of you would like to ask a front desk agent a few questions. I'd be more than happy to answer any questions you have, as long as it doesn't have to do with any private or proprietary information. If this has done before and no one has any interest, I apologize...I just thought it could be fun. :D

Welcome to Flyertalk!

Welcome -

It has been done a few times before - however typically the person still works for Marriott and then stops when asked not to post by Marriott.

My question is - are their any Marriott perks that most people don't use but you feel more people should.

So are you bitter? :)

I was hoping to avoid this by not going into too much detail on Marriott's private information. I remember how detailed the reservations agent posts were a few months ago.

As far as Marriott perks, Virtual Concierge is available to everyone but it seems only regular members use it for requests. It is one of the best ways to make sure your reservation is looked at prior to the day of your arrival. By this I mean typing in a request, not just a request for foam pillows, high floor, etc.

Only as bitter as five years in the hospitality industry can make you. :p

And what is the benefit of having a reservation looked at prior to the day of arrival?

I can't help it.

Does anyone tell the front desk staff what the difference is between a Platinum member and a Platinum Premier Member?

What is the front desk told on how to handle PP members?

We you at a Marriott owned property off franchise property?

Having a room assigned to you, essentially. I worked at a property of about 350 rooms, and only about 20 concierge level rooms. It was very hard to give out upgrades as everyone elite member wanted one. Seeing that VC e-mails go out about a week before your arrival, chances of an upgrade go up dramatically.

All Gold and Plats were pre-blocked day of arrival. Keep in mind that some properties may handle this differently, but we pre blocked day of arrival to guarantee room type requests (king bed or 2 queens). If you are silver or below it is likely that no one on property has looked at your reservation until you come to check in.

I worked at a franchised property. Marriott offers a great tool to employees for training and updates on Marriott Rewards, but it was sadly underused at my property. This is not Marriott's fault, but rather the management of the property.

I cannot speak for other properties, but we upgraded PP during our pre blocking in the morning if we could. Plats and Golds were upgrade at check in upon request only.

Okay, I'll bite and throw out a few questions...

[1] What do you wish hotel guests would do before they check in?

[2] From your perspective, what are some of the more egregious examples of elite status demands?

[3] Wife and I had this conversation some time ago. Each of us travels a couple hundred nights a year but we can count on one hand the number of times we have met a hotel GM. Do they ever come out from their office in the back or do they simply try to avoid hotel guest contact?

1. Get a credit card. Too many people show up with a debit card and do not understand that we have to put a hold on their account when they show up.

Bring their confirmation number. Some people just show up and have no idea where they are staying. Then we have to spend a lot of time calling around hotels, some outside the Marriott brand, trying to find their reservation.

2. Often times Plats and PP will ask for an upgraded room, and I was not able to give them one. They then tell me how many years they have been with Marriott and how many times they have met Mr. Marriott. They would then tell me to find them a suite at a different hotel and pay for it. This doesn't happen too often, but more often than you would think.

Every weekend was the same...being yelled at for not offering breakfast. I do think that elite members should at least get the buffet on the weekend. Some guests would be so upset that we did not offer breakfast and tell us how we are ruining their vacation. Often I would want to (but never did) tell these guests that they are on a reward stay and could maybe pony up a little cash for the breakfast considering we have regular guests paying hundreds of dollars a night and then buying breakfast.

3. I don't think GMs try to avoid guests, but rather they have a lot to do. A lot of GMs are quite removed from what is happening at the front desk as well. Our rooms director would often be around the front desk greeting elite guests, though.

... so, no request, no upgrade? I thought it was supposed to happen automagically....

Thanks very much for the information, fdguy! Here are questions I've had for a while, not that they all deserve (or have?) answers.

1. When you ask about things like business/leisure or employer name, are you just being polite, or do hotels encourage you to collect this information?
2. What's the best way (and time) to report a problem with the room that you don't need to fix during the stay? (For example, a broken alarm clock. My phone will wake me, but it could be a big problem for the next guest.)
3. How important is the estimated arrival time in the reservation (for housekeeping, other guests' late checkouts, late arrivals, or any other reason)?
4. How much of a hassle is it when someone cancels (within the rules, like before 6:00 if that's what the property does) instead of showing up? Does it happen often? Do you notice?
5. Is assigning a room complicated or do you usually just choose the next open one? (Sometimes it seems like there's a whole lot of computer work happening just to check one person into a standard room.)
6. The front desk people I talked to all seemed much happier about selling every last room in the hotel than about total revenue. Is that a thing? Or were they just weird?

+1

Should I be asking next time as a lowly Gold?

Uh-oh. ***DUCKS***

Happen automagically when?

We pretty much followed upgraded room rules according to Marriott's policy, best room available when you check in. And we did that. Gold and Plats were always blocked in "preferred view" rooms but were not always upgraded. IME, a fair number of Golds and Plats do not care about being upgraded so we did not do it unless they asked. An upgraded room is one of the best service recovery tools, and if you give them away to people who do not really want them it can make your evening quite unpleasant.

1. Some properties track this information to see the percentages of business to leisure travelers. As far as giving your employer's name, that is a free lead for the property's sales team.
2. If it is not a big deal to you, just write the problem down and give it to the front desk in the morning.
3. At my property, the estimated time of arrival was too underused to be of any value. Almost all guests estimated time of arrival was set to the default time.
4. It is no hassle if someone calls within the cancellation window. However, it is a huge hassle when they call outside of window and expect a refund.
5. Marriott's property management system is antiquated but still very powerful. That being said, it takes a long time to perform simple actions. The program can automatically assign a room but what you were most likely seeing is the front desk agent trying to find the best room available for you. Other times, it might be the front desk agent doing a little acting after the guest asked them to check again for an upgraded room. :p
6. Some properties give bonuses to the front desk staff when they complete a full sell (mine did not). This also has to do with management expectations - some management will want a room sold for anything above operating cost at the end of the night, while others will tell you not to go below the rack rate.

Absolutely. Every other elite member is asking for an upgrade, so you will most likely miss out if you do not ask for anyone.

Thanks for your contributions!

Cheers.

Thank you fdguy!

Great information! Thanks for sharing!

Re: Platinum arrival gifts.

Is there training on offering them on check-in, and also on how to handle it when it's not offered & the Plat requests the $$ payout? There have been reports (when it's not offered) of some handling over the $$ no problem, some saying the guest requested points (when they didn't), and some arguing with the guest & trying to get out of paying it at all.

That question should also be extrapolated to include the bed guarantee, and how that's handled.

Cheers.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9330; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.8+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0.0.706 Mobile Safari/534.8+)

Thanks fdguy ^ I learned something new today. Wish I could say that everyday.

Platinum arrival gifts are some of the first things you learn about. Everyone knows that $100 is promised if the Plat arrival gift is not offered. At my property you were given one free mistake, then every time after that it would cost you the $100 taken out of your check. Almost everyone forgot once, usually in your first month, but no one forgot to do it again. When it was forgotten, and the guest requested the cash, it would be given to them immediately without arguing.

All Gold and Plats were blocked in the guaranteed bed type selection in the morning to make sure everyone had the bed type that was requested.

Wonder if that's specific to your property? We were told by others that it wasn't taken out of an employee's paycheck & thus, if the situation arose, to not worry about asking for the $$.

Perhaps that's why some FDC fight tooth & nail re: not providing $$ or saying the guest asked for points.

Again, thanks for the feedback you've been offering in the thread. Like fireworksboy said, I learned something (and I didn't mean the mistake bit).

Cheers.

It's quite possible. I would imagine this policy varies from property to property. I agree that Plat's should get the $100 if they are not offered the arrival gift, but one could take another route if faced with resistance.

For example, the $100 would come out of my paycheck if I gave you cash but if I did a $100 adjustment to your bill, it would not. I could also give you points citing guest recovery issues.

What are guest recovery issues?

Hospitality jargon. Guest recovery issues = we screwed up and what we do to fix it.

:D :D

Cheers.

Welcome to FT fdguy!

My question is about the Buy One Night Get One Night Free Elite Certs! Did you see these a lot? Were you trained on how to process these? Who was responsible for ensuring the 2nd night was taken off? How did the hotel GM feel about Elites using these Certs?

Regards,

RIP...

Not very often. We were trained on how to process these and it was the front desk agent who checked the guest in to make sure it was taken care of properly. Sometimes guests would come down and use them at checkout - hotels much prefer you use them at check in.

Management wasn't very fond of these, only because most guests would try to use a discounted rate on the first night. I have only seen these about five times in my career, but if I recall correctly they require the first night to be a full, non discounted, rate. Some guests would try to use a corporate rate or even a rewards stay for the first night and then get the second night free.

As a point of clarification, they were required to be used with a publicly available rate. Thus, one could not use the BOGO with a government or corporate rate. However, it was perfectly acceptable to use one with a weekend rate, best available rate or any other publicly available rate that provided a discount off of the rack rate.

Just as an fyi - the Buy One/Get Ones require a publicly available rate, so if it's bookable on the Marriott website (ie, weekend, leisure, stay for breakfast, rack rate, etc), then the T&C applied. Corp rates, rewards stay, AAA rates & anything requiring a membership card were ineligible.

And part of the reason the question was being asked is that frequently we check in, hand over the cert at check-in, & then discover at check-out that it hadn't been processed properly, and charges for 2 nights rather than 1 appeared on the folio & extra time at check-out had to be taken at to get the 2nd night taken off the bill, which is a PITA and a waste of our time.

Cheers.

This type of Q&A is very valuable, and would work better over the long-term if we would better manage our end of the deal (the questions). Like... say... one question asked per day. Then we might expect the answer in a day.

Oh I know this won't happen but it seems that every time someone offers to answer questions, like our new friend has here, they become so bombarded with questions that they are overwhelmed and leave in a few days.

Just offering a fix to the insanity...

Not to mention that the certificate would mysteriously disappear once handed over at check-in and no one would claim knowledge of its existence. Many of us learned to bring an extra copy so that it could be presented at check-in and check-out.

Lots of interesting info here. Thanks to the OP for starting the thread!

Eh, I do not start my job until next Monday so I have nothing else to do until then. :cool:

On a side note, I am enjoying this. I have always been jealous of the frequent flyers/frequent travelers and envied their lifestyle. I finally went out and got a job that will have me gone five nights a week. Now we'll see if the grass really is greener on the other side! (Oh, and I'm interested in the work I'll be doing too, but who cares about that! :p)

It's not. Fun at first, then gets old quickly. But hey, unless your 5x/week job is w/ a hotel company where you won't be able to get points, you'll get elite status very quickly - and can complain like others when it's not honored :p

And it goes w/out saying, if you need a referral to the Marriott program, feel free to PM me. We both get points :D :D

Cheers.

Can't imagine this is labor law legal and there has to be an attorney out there salivating over this one...