Wednesday, December 3, 2014

So You Think You Want To Be a Hotelier, Part II


A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned the show I'd been watching with DH--Hotel Impossible. Then I travel to Chicago and stay in a budget motel and, well, I bet you can guess...

Don't get me wrong--for the price, I knew what I was getting. The bed was comfortable and the location was perfect. But...

The room had been freshly painted as evidenced by the overwhelming odor upon opening the door. Of course, the fact that the heat was blasting probably didn't help, but considering the temperatures, I'm not really complaining. As a bonus, there was a microwave and a small fridge. I was close enough to the lobby to be able to get hot water from the industrial grade coffee machine any time I needed a cup of tea.

However, despite the fresh paint job, the room and the hotel cold use some updating and work. Other rooms were being worked on and maybe timing wasn't in the management's favor, but still, this was not acceptable.



Yes, those are unfinished cable boxes behind/between the TV cabinet and desk. In fact, I could see through that box on the right into the next room.

The outdated furniture and TV were tolerable, but there was no clock, alarm or otherwise. There was one picture over the bed; the rest of the walls were bare. Not that wall art is a necessity, but with the proximity to the base, they could have gone with a Navy or nautical color scheme and decorating theme for cheap.

The thing that got me the most however was the lack of precision or cleanup in the painting...



I'm sorry but, if I were paying someone--ostensibly a professional--to do this work then I want the best job done for my money. And if I were painting this myself, I'd do the very best job I could. In fact, I love to paint and decorate the rooms in my house and I gotta say, my living room looks way better than this.

Anyway--overall, my experience was fine, but the situation was too ironic to not do a followup post on.

What about you...do you sometimes imagine yourself as the proprietor of a hotel or B&B or restaurant and think, "I could do better than this."?


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Being able to see through that hole into the next room sure gives a different meaning to 'room with a view' doesn't it. Glad you weren't cold, though.

Nancy

Regina Richards said...

We stayed at a Motel 6 once that was so filthy (despite being in a very safe neighborhood) that we had to go to the local Walmart to get scrub brushes and cleaning supplies and clean it (yep, even scrubbed the filthy bedroom floor and brought in our own blankets so we did not sleep on the sheets) ourselves before we could bear to spend the night. We would have simply left and gone to another place but everything in town that was even in our extreme-stretch price range was booked. We complained but the management seemed completely uninterested. At least the next guest to stay in that room was starting with white tile on the shower floor rather than the dark scum that was there when we arrived.

Jen FitzGerald said...

Yikes, Regina, that's awful!!!