We have different letters for each room saved on disk. I personalize it for each late arrival. It tells how to get to their room, binder with information, how to reach us if there is an emergency, and breakfast info.
My problem is, that if I'm here, I have a tough time leaving the late check-in info and not greeting them personally. This is something I need to work on for myself, so I can have more of a life after 6:00pm.
Most people don't mind the late check-in letter, but we did have a very unfortunate incidence once with a guest to felt "lost and abandoned". He was very upset there was no one there to greet him and he left..
NW BB said:
My problem is, that if I'm here, I have a tough time leaving the late check-in info and not greeting them personally. This is something I need to work on for myself, so I can have more of a life after 6:00pm.
Most people don't mind the late check-in letter, but we did have a very unfortunate incidence once with a guest to felt "lost and abandoned". He was very upset there was no one there to greet him and he left.
My late arrival notes go out after 9 PM. Up until that point I answer the door. I used to wait until 11 but now I know better. An 11 PM arrival will usually decide to stop and eat and become a 1 AM arrival. IF the guest calls or tells us in advance that they are arriving late, I explain to them everything we are going to do while they are on the phone. No one has ever requested that I greet them personally on check in. Most are grateful we are even letting them in after hours.
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The more I read the more I'm coming around to the idea that in certain individual cases, leaving a note and a key for the rare really late arrival whose reason for being that late is legitimate, ie. flight delays, weather, car breakdown, etc. may not be so contrary to our philosophy.
"An 11 PM arrival will usually decide to stop and eat and become a 1 AM arrival."
These are the folks that I just know can't and won't quietly find their way to their room and not wake everybody else up.
Truth be told, in an average year in what was an average economy to gauge it, we host anywhere from 250-300+ different sets of guests. I'd have to say that the average number of guests arriving even after 10pm is probably a dozen or so per year. Not exactly an epidemic or enough considering my naturally occurring sleepy time is about 11 on a daily basis for anyone to think I'm like up at all hours nearly every night waiting for guests.
Its about the same number of folks who arrive hours before check in starts. LOL How to handle them is a topic question I'll be asking in a new thread.
"IF the guest calls or tells us in advance that they are arriving late, I explain to them everything we are going to do while they are on the phone."
Its the extremely rare late arrival who doesn't at least call at some point to give me an idea of what the delay is. When taking reservations, we always ask if the guest will be traveling with a cell phone just in case, "we get cut off while we're helping you in some way." See, that way at 10pm, if I haven't heard from them, they get a call to see if everything is ok?
"No one has ever requested that I greet them personally on check in."
Well, of course most won't, but some will judge you on whether you do or not. If for example we get a guest with us for six or seven nights, do you think I want to have them copping attitude on me for the next week if they figure out I was in my space watching a movie at 7:30pm and didn't bother to come greet them. Some folks are like that.
As an example of this to anyone who has gotten a bad review somewhere from a guest. Did you KNOW you were going to get slammed, or better yet, did you even know the dissatisfied guest even was unhappy?
We've gotten like two out of 60+ on TA and in addition to the very tall tales these folks told in their reviews, they could have gotten Oscars for their performances displaying their total satisfaction to our faces while here.
"Most are grateful we are even letting them in after hours."
Yes, most are very grateful I stayed up and if they needed to call for extra help finding us, they are extra grateful that a real live person picked up the phone and guided them in safely.
Good for you to have that dynamic with your guests, some of our guests and the less considerate the more they feel totally self-entitled and that they are paying us for our service and we better be jumping through all the right hoops to cater to them and their "special needs". Caring about whether we're losing sleep over them doesn't even enter their stream of consciousness.
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We stopped letting guests check themselves in after we were here for a year. For the same reasons you mention...they just could NOT get themselves to their rooms in a peaceable manner. Most of them were repeats from the POs. They don't come here anymore.
However, by the time they hit the door, given they have yelled to each other across the parking lot, rolled 15 suitcases across the pavement and banged them up the stairs, there's no one sleeping any longer anyway! Not to mention that half of my building is 2 feet from another driveway where the same thing goes on all night...car alarms going off by mistake, the beep-beep of car alarms being set, the opening and closing of 34 car doors on a 2 door sports car and the innumerable suitcase wheels and high heels on macadam.
I haven't kept track of how many late arrivals we've had this year so far. But I am so happy I don't have to wait up for them any longer. After answering the door at 2 AM for what both you and I would consider an 'invalid' reason, I had to decide if my sanity was worth it for a guest who obviously had no regard for me or my policies. The way I looked at it after that point was that the guest who was rude, would continue to be rude and nothing I could do would change that. So why should I be awakened at 2 AM to deal with rudeness? I could sleep and get some rest and deal with rude in the morning, when I was in my best fighting form!
BTW, the invalid reason started at 5 PM when they called from 5 hours away to say they hadn't been able to get out of work on time. It got worse from there. In for a penny, in for a pound, they decided to stop and visit friends who live 2 hours from here and have dinner with them to break up the trip. In the morning, overhearing a conversation with another guest we found out that they are wildly manipulative with each other. If HE was 20 minutes late, SHE would be 30 minutes late(r). So, if they arranged to get started at 2 PM and he was late, she would drag her feet and when she was ready, he'd do the same to her until it got to the point that they were 7 hours late.
After that I decided I don't care why guests are late. Because I'm not waiting up to play games with them, they can be late because their plane got diverted, their luggage got lost, they 'forgot' they were going on vacation, they decided to go shopping, eat dinner, watch the sunset, whatever, it does not matter to me.
At 9 PM I run their card. If it doesn't go thru, no letter, they have to ring the bell to get in and I run the card no matter what time it is. If the card goes thru and they never show? Their problem, not mine. I still check the parking lot around 2 AM to see if they arrived, but I don't worry about them any longer.
The worst ones are the ones that start off arguing with the check-in time and tell me, 'Just leave the door open, what's the big deal?' Well, honey, do you leave YOUR door unlocked when you go to bed? No, I didn't think so.
If someone wants to ding me on TA because I didn't greet them at the door at 1 AM in my jammies, bad breath and wild hair, so be it. It will be a lesson for anyone else reading that I'm not their father and I'm not waiting up for them. Be on time or be prepared.
And, yes, in spite of all my best intentions, I HAVE gotten up because guests have not been able to figure out how to open the door (I had to put 'turn knob and push door' in the welcome letter because guests thought the door would open by itself) or because they were so loud they woke me up. And believe me, the last thing you want to see in the wee hours is me in my bathrobe bearing down on you in a rage.
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