I’ve had the good fortune to have worked a number of different jobs in my life. They all come with their share of learning curves and you’re just going to have to believe me when I tell you ice cream jockey at the local Baskin-Robbins next to Big Al’s video arcade had the steepest one of all, but the jobs I’ve had that really taught me about customer service were the ones that required me to get out from behind the counter/desk/Muppet costume (another story for another day) and experience my job from the vantage point of the customers I was serving. Buy something from your store. Order your own pizza. Ride your own ride (that was at Walt Disney World, so it may be a little job-specific). Try to understand what the people you’re serving are experiencing.
As we plowed through a driving rainstorm the dimly lit streets of Napier, New Zealand were doing very little to make the night on Hawke’s Bay magical in any way. The travel fates seemed completely indifferent to our level of weariness, hunger and need for a restroom. We were looking for a hotel that should have been right in front of us but wasn’t, despite the insistence of he hotel’s desk clerk, who was only taking the time to guide us in by phone during the spare moments she wasn’t taking to snog her boyfriend… we could hear it on the phone, for the love of all that was good and holy…… it was very clear this person had never followed or been within six blocks of the advice to be a customer of your own business.
The hotel was clearly existing in a dimension adjacent but not actually contained within the one in which we were trundling. The address did not correspond with any numbers or signage we could make out in the rain. Every multistory building we looked at did not resemble in any way a hotel. The desk clerk on the phone was on the other side of helpful, explaining in broken English that the neon sign should be right in front of us, but no amount of wishing or willpower was making it so. My shooting partner and I wondered if perhaps we had been entered without our knowledge into a popular but unknown to us New Zealand reality television show, perhaps one called Hide the Hotel.
Here’s what had happened.
We had made reservations at a hotel called the VR Hotel Napier. Suspecting this may be short for something, we had done a Google search on the hotel’s address before leaving the United States, but every listing for the hotel on every site had the identical name. Since I’ve stayed at hotels like The Good Hotel in San Francisco… places with unique names… I had to figure this was part of the local vernacular. Turned out the VR was a temporary name… short for Viceroy. The hotel had been sold a few months prior and was under new management, but the new owners had decided “VR” was a cooler name than “Viceroy,” at least until they could come up with something better.
They had not, however, changed the signage, or had even kept it in decent working order. In the rainy Napier night, all we could see was the word “roy” sputtering sullenly above us. Worse, the only lighted entrance to the hotel was a narrow set of double doors down an alley. The hotel was presenting its unmarked bare concrete side to the street, giving us no clue that it was a hotel. Of course, there was no parking lot to speak of. Natch. So even though we knew this hotel had more than seventy rooms, we didn’t see any signs of mass quantities of people calling it home for the night.
There are two ways of thinking about the hotel rooms you book on a trip. The first is utilitarian – the “every room looks the same in the dark” philosophy. Get some sleep, get moving in the morning and just be grateful most of the outside world is kept at bay for a few hours. The other way of looking at it is the way I look at it. Your hotel, even if only for one night, is your home base. It’s where you recharge your mental batteries for the next day. It doesn’t have to be the Four Seasons, but it should, in my opinion, be a place that doesn’t add more stress than it relieves, so comfort should at least be a factor in your decision. Personally, I feel better if I can wake up to a view like this:
Or going to sleep with this view:
We got the hotel rooms that resulted in these views by doing our homework, and by following some essential hotel reservation tips. Granted, by the time we finally hauled ourselves into the chilly confines of the VR Napier, I would have taken a pup tent by the bay as long as this night could have been over, but I have to admit this was because I had broken my own rules… rules any production coordinator for a shoot should know and follow. There are five rules that are pretty golden when it comes to handling hotels on the road, unhelpful desk clerks notwithstanding. Let’s get these down:
1. The broken record resumes…
I use this refrain constantly, and you should, too – carry hard copies of everything. This applies to the information about your hotel. Cell service cuts out. Batteries die. GPS fails or goes out of date. If you are on the road for more than a few days, there will be at least one occasion where you will be thanking whatever gods you happen to pray to that you have printed a copy of the map of your hotels surrounding area, not to mention printed directions. Not just from your last departure point on your itinerary, but also from a few obvious landmarks nearby. Sooner or later, you will be wandering through an unfamiliar city and have an “Oh, there’s the Ball Of Twine Museum! Now I know where we are!” moment, and be able to cross reference where you are, relative to where you’re going.
Don’t forget to add pictures to your prints. Whether it’s the most recent Google street view (if available), or the exterior shot of the hotel that most hotel owners put on their websites, print it so you can recognize the often confusing frontage when you get there. I’ve had good luck with the pictures on Trip Advisor, and you may want to include that site in your research as well. Sure, you can keep a copy on your phone, but your hard copy is your essential backup.
This also goes for the direct, local phone number to the front desk. The desk clerk may or may not be helpful, but at least you have the number to warn them of a late arrival. What, you say you’ve never arrived at a small hotel close to midnight only to find it locked tight? All I can say is… do as I say, not as I did. Or rather, didn’t do.
2. When booking a room, time is not always your friend
Unless you are absolutely wedded to a particular hotel, you do not always need to book your room months in advance in order to get the best rates. The sweet spot seems to be between forty and twenty-one days in advance of your arrival date.
That said, there are some obvious caveats. Are you hiking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon? If so, don’t expect rooms at Phantom Ranch to be available on a dime. Are you heading to the Australian outback to take in the majesty of Uluru? Know in advance that once the rooms at the Yulara hotel complex are booked, there is no amount of persuasion that will create four more walls and a ceiling. However, Las Vegas really wants you to stay there. There are rooms. Take those two extremes and plan accordingly. The room rate is a factor, but not the only factor, and the above advice is what I’ve found helps get me a good starting point for a good rate.
3. Get the lay of the land
“Near downtown,” I’ve learned is the hotel version of “charming” or “cozy” in the real estate world. It can mean anything you want, except for what it usually is, and usually not what you think. Anything can be “near downtown,” and I’ve often wondered if the people who write these descriptions of their hotels are thinking in the cosmological sense rather than the geographical one when they consider distance.
You will need to confirm information like “near downtown” or “close to major attractions” for yourself and see if these terms mean the same thing to you as they do to the people who wrote the description. Yes, hotels in Kissimmee, Florida are “close to major attractions” like Walt disney World in that they are closer than, say, the Embassy Suites in Atlanta, but you’re going to be doing a lot of driving in heavy traffic and it won’t seem very close. Perhaps the “major attractions” they mean are places like Gator World, which is, in fact, very close. Still, do your homework.
4. Credit is kind
Once again, another good reason to have good credit is that you will almost certainly want to reserve your room on your credit card. When (not if) things go sideways, it’s easier to dispute charges. Credit cards also give you more leeway and peace of mind when it comes to the deposit that many hotels put on your card against the infamous “incidentals.” You want the power in your hands if you need to dispute those incidentals, and you don’t want your debit card and your actual bank account balance in jeopardy during the interim.
5. About those incidentals…
That great deal you were quoted? Watch for smoke and mirrors. Many hotels, especially independents and resort properties, are hiding the real charge behind extra fees that show up when you leave. Housekeeping fees, breakfast charges, wifi… you name it. This is the hotel industry version of a Ticketmaster “convenience charge,” in that it’s anything but convenient to find yourself with extra charges that make the original price a mirage. Really, if you don’t want your room cleaned and can survive on the towels you started with, ask if the housekeeping fee can be waived. I’ve done this, and sometimes I was successful. Same for the newspaper on your doorstep and any other fee you think you can avoid.
The fact of the matter is that there are so many hotel rooms in so many cities that it truly is a buyer’s market. There is almost always a lower price somewhere, even for the exact same room. That means there is room to negotiate. Price should actually be the least of your worries because there will be a room at your price level… within reason. Your job should be to make your arrival, your departure and the time you actually spend sleeping in that room as stress free as possible. Proper planning will help you.
