It's Friday and after a hard week of hospitality, ehotelier would like to invite you to stop for a bit and relax with a coffee and a feature we would like to call Der Schlusspunkt (meaning ‘full stop' in German). Der Schlusspunkt is a collection of hospitality snippets – some funny, some fascinating, some naughty, but all written by hospitality insiders who are in the know and have seen things you will have to read to believe. Der Schlusspunkt will feature every Friday on ehotelier and begins this week with ‘The Funny Side Up'.
Do Not Disturb: An Insider's View
Presented by Fritz Gubler
Hidden behind hotel doors, dramatic acts of love and deception, of pride, spite and rivalry, are played out. Lovers find refuge and famous personalities find a place to hide from the ever-chasing public and the relentless paparazzi.
Royals have been born, political opponents assassinated and famous personalities passed away in hotel rooms. Books have been written and state secrets passed between spies and undercover agents. Clandestine casinos have been operated and fortunes have been made and lost.
Jewellery, paintings, real estate, planes, trains and automobiles have been traded in private negotiations. Ground-breaking interviews have been recorded and major movies shot in and around hotel rooms.
Private parties for all occasions, hen and bucks' nights, birthday parties, anniversaries and successes of all kind are celebrated in hotel rooms. It is the girls nights out that have traditionally generated the most noise complaints and been a real headache for any duty manager, but girls' nights out can give them a run for their money these days.
A recent study revealed that three million Britons have damaged property when visiting hotels. Hotel guests have broken more than 300,000 beds and four out of five have taken something as a memento of their stay.
Meanwhile the guests travelling incognito, the famous, the once famous and the secret lovers, try desperately not to be seen, however their nervous, wandering eyes make them immediately noticeable, which makes them even more nervous and even more visible.
The wannabes, desperate for fame, are the most difficult guests because they will do anything to stand out from the crowd. Their usual modus operandi is to make a scene at reception, complaining loudly about the service in a bid to be noticed.
Hotel managers are in two minds about welcoming celebrities to their hotels. Many argue that the exposure the hotel may get is not worth the trouble caused. Most hoteliers have a fund of stories about their famous guests, unfortunately many with unhappy endings.
Rock stars, those notorious hotel-room trashers, are particularly troublesome. Amy Winehouse was recently banned from the Riverbank Plaza Hotel, a Burbank hotel is pressing charges against Velvet Revolver front man Scott Weiland claiming he trashed the hotel room on his recent stay, and Lindsay Lohan will not be welcome at the Shutters Hotel in future.
When Pavarotti visited Melbourne to perform as part of the Three Tenors, his hotel suite had to be renovated and a kitchen built as Pavarotti would only travel with his own Italian cook. After his departure, an insider revealed that the suite needed another overhaul, having come to smell more like an Italian restaurant than a hotel suite.
And then there are the true 'guests from hell.' They are a rare species, but when they appear they bring the full force of their bad behaviour. A major hotel group is now using the abbreviation UD (for 'undesirable') to denote guest such as in the guest histories. If a guest is marked as UD, they will be politely informed that the hotel is full next time they try to book a room. It's the opposite of having VIP next to your name.
Fortunately, most guests are neither VIP nor UD. In the main, hotel guests deserve the epithet given to them by those of us in the hospitality industry 'our honourable guests.'
