An Open Letter To Pandemic Hotel Guests

An open letter to Pandemic Hotel Guests

An open letter to Pandemic Hotel Guests: To friends and family who might be travelling or staying in hotels during this time of a pandemic

 

Dear Pandemic Hotel Guests

And to friends and family who might be travelling or staying in hotels during this time of a global pandemic.

Many hotels, resorts and restaurants may already be open to serve you.  And we are very grateful to have pandemic hotel guests. But it’s very likely that we are majorly understaffed and the hotel, resort and restaurant are being run by a skeletal workforce. This is due to pandemic and budget restrictions.

The hotel industry has been directly hit by this pandemic, so here are a few things that I would respectfully ask you to consider.

 

Check-in May Take Longer Than It Did Before The Pandemic

We are very grateful to have pandemic hotel guests but we may have extra information to collect from you now during check-in, regarding vaccinations and test results. Please extend your patience as much as you can. 

You may also have to wait a bit before you can proceed to your room. Most likely, the hotel can only afford to retain or bring back a few Housekeeping staff from furlough. So, cleaning rooms and public areas might take a bit longer.  

And some of the people who are cleaning your rooms might not even be from Housekeeping at all.  They may be Bellmen, F&B staff or even the General Manager.

Everyone is doing their part to help keep the business afloat by doing multiple jobs. So, they may be doing things slower to ensure they are doing these new duties right.  

Please know that we are still trying to maintain, and even improve, our standards of cleanliness and sanitation for your safety, as we cannot be too careful these days.

 

Some Menu Items May Not Be Available.

If you have been looking forward to our famous Breakfast Buffet, or you try to order your favorite dish, but are told it is no longer being offered, please do not take your anger out on the server.  It was not their decision to begin with.  

Due to the pandemic, and the decrease in business over the past year, some Food and Beverage outlets have been forced to review their menus and decide which items to keep, and which ones to discontinue.  

 

We really do understand that it can be very upsetting to find that our restaurants and amenities might have very limited offerings, compared to what we used to have.  We are sad about it, too. But we need to abide by certain regulations to keep you safe. Please know that we will still try our best to accommodate your requests as much as we can.

 

There Are Fewer Staff Working

If you cannot immediately find a member of staff to assist with your needs, please know that we are not hiding from you. 

With the limited staffing, employees who have managed to keep their jobs are now covering the duties of two or three people.  They are working extra hard to keep the hotel running, sometimes even doing tasks way beyond their original Job Description. 

 

Often, these people are working so hard, they don’t get to take their breaks on time and are probably physically and mentally exhausted.  And they can’t even complain, because they’re the lucky ones who got to keep their jobs, right? 

 

Please Be Kind.

When we tend to you or assist you, please find empathy in your heart.  Please refrain from yelling at us, or about a concern you have. We promise to try and help you the best that we can, within the available resources we have left.  

 

Please know that the staff you encounter during your stay are trying their very best to perform a quality service.  A quality service which used to be done by three times the amount of staffing.  They are grateful to have pandemic hotel guests, and are working hard to give you the best stay, but this is not an easy feat!  

Some of them are even carrying invisible burdens of loved ones being sick in the hospital, or recently passing away.  Or they carry the constant fear of picking up a virus while working, even though they have been vaccinated, and bringing it home to their families.  They have no choice but to work to provide food on the table, and that table of food may be feeding their extended family too.  

Please spare them the additional emotional stress of having to deal with rude or inconsiderate pandemic hotel guests, on top of everything else.

Please be kind to your hotel staff.  

Please be kind to all service providers, always. 

We all need to treat each other a little bit better, especially these days when we are all just trying to survive. 

Let us be each other’s beacon of hope during these dark times, and together look forward to better days ahead, when we can all go back to the way things used to be.

Yours faithfully

Hugot Hotelier

 

Is there anything you would like to tell Guests staying with you during the Pandemic?  Leave your thoughts in the comments.

 

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