Today we're going to dive into a story that at first had me skeptical, believing it would be of people causing havoc in a hotel just for a TikTok video to go viral. However, in a pleasant turn of events, it was a feel-good story.
A group of three friends recently stayed at the La Quinta Inn & Suites by Wyndham Nashville Airport/Opryland. When they went to check in, no front-desk employee was to be found.
So what did they do? They went into "manager mode," Business Insider reports.
The friends began answering phone calls, assisting disgruntled customers, hailing shuttles and setting up breakfast items for guests at 6 a.m. They eventually told guests they didn't work there.
You can view a TikTok of them "at work" here.
An actual employee eventually arrived for their shift between 7 and 8 a.m.
Kenzie Brooks, one of the friends who "worked" the front desk, told Business Insider they searched around the hotel for a front-desk employee, tried calling the manager — who didn't know the employee left — and spoke with a housekeeper who confirmed they also hadn't seen a front-desk employee for hours.
Wyndham's statement to Business Insider confirmed that the front desk had been unstaffed the night the three friends tried to check in.
"Following conversations with the hotel's management team — this location is an independently owned and operated franchise — it's our understanding this incident occurred due to a staff member prematurely leaving an overnight shift in the early hours of the morning and not notifying management," the statement read.
A manager at a nearby hotel eventually showed up. Wyndham's statement also said the employee who was nowhere to be found during their shift is no longer working with the hotel.
Brooks added that she and her friends wanted to "just do good things with good intentions" while the hotel's front of house was unstaffed.
"Instantly we're like manager mode. We run businesses back home. Manager mode kicks in. We're like, 'Alright, let's see what we can do,'" Brooks said. "People, at the end of the day, really just need to hear that it's going to be OK. We just tried to comfort all the customers in any way that we knew how."
Heck, it even sounded like the gentleman in the Atlanta Braves jersey understood a bit about online travel agencies. From the bits and pieces seen on the TikTok, I say these folks are well-equipped to be hoteliers.
While this is a story that we can chuckle at a bit, I do want to highlight that this is a very real situation. The fact is hotels are still dealing with labor challenges.
I, myself, have checked in and out of two hotels this summer where it took a while for the front-desk agent to show up and assist customers. Both were upper-midscale, branded hotels.
I wasn't in a hurry either time — both stays were for leisure — so I wasn't upset. But it did sadden me a bit to know that hotels are still dealing with overworked and understaffed teams of employees.
Covering the hospitality business, I understand what's going on behind the scenes. Some other guests might not. I fear that hotels have no-shows from front-line employees more often than we think. And I will venture to guess that not all situations will end up as feel-good as the one at the La Quinta in Nashville.
While brands and management companies have indicated that labor is improving from the depths of the pandemic, the latest data from the U.S. Department of Labor shows leisure and hospitality job openings have increased from June to July and hires have decreased during the same period.
In August, Axios reported the leisure and hospitality sector was still 352,000 jobs shy of its pre-pandemic level.
Bharat Patel, chairman of AAHOA, said during the 2023 Lodging Conference "...for us, in our industry … hospitality leaders and front-line individuals need to step up and say, ‘We have to have a shift,’” he said.
Patel said advocacy from hotel leaders on immigration could help bring back some semblance of normalcy in staffing.
It will be interesting to see how the next few months unfold in terms of not only hiring employees but finding quality ones.
Quality is and always has been key in hospitality. I just truly hope we don't lose that level of service forever.
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