Early Check-In This Morning

I wholeheartedly agree with your general premise and advocation for firmness but with qualifications.

These type guests probably do this every time they travel and know that we can't simply lock our doors, roll down the blinds and put a sign on the door at that time of day.

Its strategic on their part and they are counting on a couple of things. One is that other guests will be around and we're less likely to be really firm with them in front of others, that we're all a little hungry due to the times and less likely to push back and the misapplied notion that the customer is always right.

In this day and age of Facebook, TA, MySpace, Twitter, B&B.com, you name it for venues where inconsiderate people like this can get on their soapbox and trash us, it makes asserting the level of firmness you are describing as difficult to pull off without consequences.

I personally don't fear the rare bad review coming from someone like this, its an opportunity to scare off others like them, but I don't want to speak for mountaininnkeeper on what might not be a widely held perspective.

Aside from all that, these are the most fragile economic times most of us under 70 have ever witnessed, survived under, worked in, not worked in, endured, etc.

Leisure travel is one of the first things that gets sacrificed when times are this tough and many of us don't have the luxury of risking alienating even one guest that could go dump on us and potentially cost us any business coming from a much smaller pie.

I'm not advocating rolling over and letting the guests steamroll us, but the times require flexibility and tact when encountering difficult or troublesome guest relation situations.

Everybody is feeling the pinch, is feeling stressed and while its a shame these guests don't "get it" that they are putting mountaininnkeeper in a tough spot with their inconsideration, the deed is done in this case.

"So if we put the patterns together - late check-in or extremely early check-in - it seems that guests are either wanting to pay as little as possible by checking around for the best last-minute deal; or if paying full price, want to get the most for their money by coming as early as possible."

Wow! When I brought this phenonema up as a topic, all I got for my effort to explore solutions to it was being called a "bad guest magnet", so now that its obvious this happens to more than a handful of us, we finally are getting somewhere on how to deal with it.

"Neither of which are particularly good for us as innkeepers. If they come extremely early they are going to be using extra resources, water, electricity running either heat or air-conditioning, food as in cookies or other snacks they may have access to. That translates into higher expenses for us."

Case in point, our ultra orthodox Jewish guest last week, who also seemed to be suffering from a few mental disorders. Considering he didn't want to be in the same room with any guests and made several fairly paranoid accusations towards us about some missing items of HIS.

This despite him arriving at exactly 3 of the first day, pulling an entire truck full of his life's belongings in and barricading himself in his room for the better part of five days. Out of the total 120+ hours of his stay, he probably left his room for about 10 hours. And had the A/C running at 68 degrees 24/7 for five days. At a 15% discount.

The food costs were minimized considering how little he ate, but the general weirdness of his stay put us and the other guests on edge the whole time. It took him over three hours to repack his truck exactly how he wanted it and he didn't start hauling all his stuff out until 9:30am on his last day, so you can do the math on when he left. I'd say he got his money's worth.

"So just because the guest population is becoming more budget and value-conscious doesn't mean we need to drop our standards and guidelines."

No, we just have to keep in mind these are extraordinary times and unless one is independently wealthy and doesn't need the income from one's guests to survive, we have to weigh the potential consequences of taking too firm of an approach with folks.

"I think as Tim said, it requires flexibility. Perhaps we charge the late arrival less because they will be here less time and make up for it by charging the early arrival more for longer occupancy. It's just a thought."

FWIW, and there could no causal relationship to explain this but since the economy started going south last fall, our cancellations, ultra early and ultra late arrivals and late check outs have really dropped drastically. We're noticing that while business is way down for us, those who do book are honoring their reservations, mostly showing up in our 3-6pm window and generally checking out at areasonable time. We'll take it, just hope it continues once the economy picks up again.

Another factor that has to be considered is people's locations and level of competition, when choosing how hard a line to take with guests. Maybe Moosetrax is the only B&B in his area, or one of very few lodging options and attracts a type of guest who can accept frank language.

With over 125 hotels/motels, 75 B&Bs, and easily over 3,500 short term vacation rental units. condos, timeshares, etc.. within a 20 mile radius of us, every guest that is even remotely offended by finding a locked door, closed blinds, inflexible or stern refusal of entry by us is one who undoubtedly is going elsewhere the next time they come to our area.

Maybe thats good and as our business grows and is even more visible and established, we can adopt a tougher approach, but for now, we're in the building up phase and have to work with what we have.

Actually, I think your perspective as a guest and person who didn't give the impact of an ultra early arrival much thought before you learned more about the distinctions between a B&B and a hotel is incredibly valuable.

I'm not talking about showing up at 2:45pm when a place's normal check ins start at 3pm. For the sake of this discussion, we're all mostly talking about the unannounced arrival many hours before even the start of normal check ins.

For me, there are several key impacts that make the practice of ultra early arrivals less than desirable. For those of us doing everything without staff, this is already a daunting daily challenge to get everything done and have any semblance of a normal life when we're in a busy season. For those with staff, those staff members are usually cobbling multiple housekeeping jobs together just to make what most of us would consider poverty level wages.

Anything that puts extra pressure on either the owners of small places that generally are considered a labor of love and not some huge income producing venture, or the staff of bigger places to do more, quicker at low wages is in my opinion a negative outcome.

You the guest, may not see the effects or put much importance on them, but they are there.

Another key impact is the obvious lack of respect things like this project to us. We innkeepers and hoteliers for that matter also, don't send our guests a confirmation that has all this information in it just so they can ignore one of THE most important parts of it and come whenever they like regardless of the impact on our schedule, or routine.

As mentioned by Sweetie Pie and others many times in multiple threads on anything from this subject to eating too many cookies, we all have researched how to offer the most competitive rates and still hopefully make a living at this. If a guest shows up as SW described and wolfed down more than their share of treats, used mroe than their fair share of water, electricity, etc.. it shows on the bottom line which for most small properties is incredibly thin to begin with.

Throw in a bad economy with fewer guests for most of us and more guests expecting discounts AND the freedom to check in early, check out late, etc. you spelled tough times for your favorite innkeeper.

Most of us don't generally ask much of our guests except to behave a little, don't destroy anything and show us and the other guests a little mutual respect. Its almost guaranteed as a guest, that you'll be getting it from your innkeeper automatically.

"Huh?  OK...you realize that they have to clean their rooms which is why you have to check out before noon."

Oh, they realize it plenty, its that they don't care what it does to your schedule or day.

We have some regulars who stay 20 minutes away in Santa Fe their first night every year and then come the next three nights by us. Every stinkin' year they show up at our door at 11:25am like clockwork.

Even after being politely spoken to about it each year.  This year, that morning is already scheduled for an errand run into town and I won't be back until oh, I don't know 2:58pm.

Then on their last morning every year, they make sure they have an early flight home but just won't quietly leave. They insist on getting in the dining room at the crack of dawn to eat the "to-go" breakfast we offer all early departures. Its all packaged up and meant to be taken with and eaten in the car during the 1.5 hour drive to Albuquerque, but they insist on waking everybody else in the house up and leaving us a mess to deal with before we can serve anybody else.

What kills me is that they'll hang around the competitors place until 11:01 to check out, but our place isn't quite good enough for all four of their nights in the area and we get the dawn patrol routine on their last morning every year with the car doors slamming 20 times for four suitcases, the above mentioned dining room exercise, etc.

The only reason we keep taking them back is they book in early January for mid-August and we are always more forgiving in January when we're dead in the water.

Who knows, maybe this year they'll figure it out.

"I answered that would be fine as long as no one was in the room the night before as OUR check-out time is 11 AM also and this room is large and would take quite awhile to clean."

As long as we ourselves keep condoning the behavior, the traveling public will take our good natured offer and run with it to the extreme. The old give 'em and inch routine.

This is a good point.  I really felt like we had explained to them the check-in time policy.  Unfortunately, we can't lock the door because other guests were coming and going to start their day.  When the early arrivals came back, I was in the laundry room and found them walking down the hallway as they were taking their bags towards their room.  We then said no, your room is not ready.  His reply was well, the bed's made so I don't see why I can't go ahead and put my stuff in here.  I said, well it's not ready and it's going to be at least another 30  minutes.  Then they just kept putting their stuff in there and hovered around the door of the room while I finished cleaning (Mind you, this is going on while my husband is vacuuming the hallway right by where they are standing. They never budged!)  I have never seen anything like this!