There is guest interaction, and then there is guest interaction.
From the “in case you missed it” files comes a story out of Turkey. First reported three weeks ago, the story involves a 27-room hotel on Turkey’s southwest coast—where the turquoise Mediterranean water meets white, sandy beaches, and the locals are quick to lend a smile to the many tourists that visit. Apparently, the men at the Image Hotel in Marmaris, a popular holiday hotspot for British and Russian tourists, like to lend a little more than a smile to the hotel’s female guests.
Pelin Yucel, the manager at the hotel for the past eight years, finally got fed up with her male employees’ shenanigans with female guests and fired the lot of them for allegedly repeatedly engaging in affairs with vacationing women—while on the job.
Yucel told the local media that the final straw came after she saw one of her bartenders emerging from a restroom with a British woman.
“We had been facing the same problem every year, but after the last incident we decided to run the hotel by only female staff,” she said. “Even though it’s against the rules, we have been unable to stop our male personnel from having relationships with our customers for years.
“In the past five years, I have caught numerous male employees spending time with female tourists instead of doing their jobs at different hours of the day, including midnight and the early morning hours,” she added. “The last straw was when I saw our bartender, who was a very decent man, walk out of the bathroom with a British tourist.”
She didn’t say whether any of the offenders during the past five years were fired or even reprimanded for their antics. But it stands to reason that if there was punishment, it didn’t strike fear in the hearts—or any other part of the employees’ anatomies.
There are jokes aplenty here, but let’s not forget that the entire situation is a human-resources nightmare as well as a lawsuit waiting to happen. What if a guest claimed one of the liaisons was not consensual? What if someone was physically hurt? Not only did the manager put the hotel in peril, but her own career as well.
Depending on how you look at it, the reputation of the hotel could have been helped or hindered. Maybe the number of women guests increased. But maybe the seedy reputation hurt other potential reservations. With a name like the Image Hotel, one would think its reputation is as important as anything.
The hotel now is operated by an all-female staff. In theory, that’s the perfect way to handle it. But the manager needs to keep tabs on her employees. As has been demonstrated before at the Image Hotel, mix the sex appeal of salty air, the sun-drenched beaches of the Mediterranean Sea and a hotel that specializes in hosting guests on holiday, and anything can happen.