Hotel Management Nightmare Come True

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A New Years Eve Hotel ManagementNightmare Come True

A Hotel Wedding Story

T

he following post was inspired by a friendof mine that was recently married on New

Years Eve here in beautiful Tampa. After thewedding, a reception was held at a local well-knownhotel. Things went along well until approximatelymidnight when the guests room key cards to thehotel rooms failed.

Now this was not an ordinary room key failure,in fact all hotel rooms were affected indicating asystem failure. In most hotels, maintenance mana-gement can use a master key to open rooms but itwas reported that these keys did not work either.

To make matters worse the physical master key thatwas used to open the guest rooms did not work forall the rooms. The liability issue on this is excep-tionally high.

Multiple NYE Hotel Lock Problems

The Tampa hotel issue was not an isolated incidenton New Years Eve, MSN reported that a Denver ho-

tel that had an almost identical issue as the Tampahotel and a third hotel, the Gramercy Park Hotel inNYC had all guests locked out at midnight for 3-5hours. There probably are a few more hotels butno one has reported them yet.

on New Years Eve, at approximately mid-night, the hotel experienced a malfunction withour guestroom locks. Every lock went oineand no keys were working, including hotelmaster keys. Generally hotels have emergency

keys locked in a safe in case of a situation likethis. We did, but unfortunately these keys didnot work either. At this point we are able toconrm that there was a glitch in the system,and that we were not the only hotel impacted.

Source:Elizabeth Mao, General Manager, Gra-mercy Park Hotel

In reading the rest of the response written by Ms.Mao, I commend her for responding so well as theproblem caught the hotel completely by surprise.

Hotel Guest Impact

None of the hotels affected by the guestroom locksissues planned this to happen. Regardless of who isresponsible, the problem was that eachhotel main-tenance and management staff was immediatelyplaced into a defensive and reactive mode of ope-ration.

Some of the consequences included:

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A New Years Eve Hotel Management Nightmare Come True

Angry guests: In two of the hotels the policewere called in to handle angry guests.

Noise: Those who were the rst to be intheir rooms had to deal with noise issues

Overwhelmed bathrooms: Leaving the hotelwith an unkempt perception.

Guest locked in rooms: It is reported that inat least one hotel guest were locked in theirroom and unable to exit.

Blackened Image: Negative travel reviewsand bad memories that guest wont forget.

Lots and lots of overtime Lost Revenue: Lots of free stays and comps

given out.

Was this a Hotel MaintenanceIssue?

The answer is no one person or party is responsible.In order to better understand this one has to look

at the incident in parts. In my opinion based uponthe information available:

The actual lock malfunctions were not thehotels fault because this occurred in severalhotels in different parts of the country. Myguess is that the problem is a glitch in thesoftware that runs the computerized locksystems. The manufacturer will need tobear responsibility on this.

In two of the hotels it is reported that themaster keys did not work. This is possible ifthey too are electronically coded. In Tampa,the hotel had a physical key to unlock doors.the problem is they only had one key. Thereis no excuse for a hotel not to have a phy-sical key to unlock doors in an emergency.Responsible party Hotel Management.

Hotel master key not working on everydoor. Periodic inspections could have iden-tied this problem before guest becamefurious. Compd stays are one thing, no bedto sleep on New Years Eve after revelry or

reception drinks is never forgotten. Res-ponsible party Hotel Maintenance Mana-gement

Hotel hall noise. With guest locked out oftheir room and in the hallways or commonareas, hall noise levels exploded. Hotelnoise problems are already one of the tophotel problems. Proper carpeting, weatherstripping can mitigate noise issues. Res-

ponsible party Hotel Management andMaintenance.

Bathroom facilities overrun. With no roomaccess everyone was forced to use the fewcommon restrooms. I cannot even begin toimagine the state of the restrooms in Den-ver, Tampa or NYC. Credit maintenanceteams for doing what they could. Res-ponsible party none.

Guests locked inside their room after elec-tronic locks failed. This is another inspec-

tion issue as safety or door inspectionsshould have identied these problems.Responsibility Maintenance

Customer Care May Have Won theNight

Despite all accounts of a horrible night for guests, Ihave also heard that many of the hotel staff workedtheir tails off for guests that night. In fact, my friendwho got married that night raved that the staff wasso attentive to his and his brides needs that he wouldstill consider using them again.

This goes to show that how a hotel handles a disas-ter is just as important as the disaster itself. I nodin respect to the hotel staff who hustled to do thebest they could for guests under the circumstances.

It is easy to see that the cost of a quality compute-rized maintenance management software (CMMS)program would have paid for itself by ensuring thateach hotel regularly inspected all of its assets.

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A New Years Eve Hotel Management Nightmare Come True

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Hotel Management Nightmare Come True

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