If a hotel patron inside a deadbolted room does not answer the phone or door, how can someone get into the room to find out what's wrong?

There is an emergency keycard — kept in a sealed envelope in a very secure, undisclosed location, because it can open any room in the hotel — that someone at the management level (or an employee acting under telephoned instructions by management) can bring up to that room and use to pop that deadbolt open, electronically.

(Yes, that electronic mechanism can operate the deadbolt, too. At least, with my keycard, it can. Yours can't open it, and neither can the master keycards issued to housekeepers or other employees. This one's what they call a 'grandmaster' key. My button is bigger.)

If I bring it up, or give the order that it be taken out and brought up, you might want to be dressed and ready to move quickly, because I'm also bringing (or sending) along a couple of cops and maybe some EMTs, depending on what I've been told the situation is. Bringing up the rear of the group will be a maintenance guy with a pair of bolt cutters, in case a fastened door chain or safety latch is also a problem: I'd rather suck the $10.95 cost of replacing that than to leave the mess or repair the damage that kicking in the door can do.

Assessment Tests Often Exclude the BEST Candidates for the Worst Reasons

From LinkedIn

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This 7-Eleven has a unique way to stop loitering, panhandling

From The New York Post

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The triumph of everyday design

From Seth's Blog

The triumph of everyday design

Luxury goods used to be better. Better than the alternatives.

The best-made clothing, the best saddle, the most reliable luggage. The top of the market was the place people who cared needed to go to buy something that had the highest performance.

Today, though, a Toyota is a better car than a Bentley. More efficient, more reliable. The Vertus phone was a joke, and no one needs a $200 mouse when a $9 one is faster and easier to use.

I spent some time at a high-end hotel on a recent gig. The light switches were complicated and didn't work quite right. The door handle was awkward. The fancy faucets sprayed water on whoever was standing in front of the sink. All expensive, none of it very well-designed.

As materials have gotten cheaper and easier to find, it's design that matters. And the market is demanding better design--which is easy to copy and easy to improve.

Expensive is not the relevant metric, utility is. 

       

Can we open our own restaurant by studying hotel management?

Obviously you can, lots of people do . . . but without specific knowledge, skills and ability in the management of a food and beverage operation, you're adding a great deal of risk to what is already a risky venture. 80 to 90% of independent, non-franchised restaurants fail within the first two years.

I've actually heard human resources people talk as though middle management is middle management — if you can run a hotel, then obviously you can run a restaurant; if you can run a convenience store, then obviously you can run a movie theater; if you can manage a daycare then obviously you can run a hotel — and I've always wondered how such genius evolved on earth.

I've managed hotels for years. I've managed motion picture theaters for some 15 years in addition to that, and there isn't that much about running theaters that qualified me to manage a hotel. Even the art and science of supervision is different: with theaters, you use minimum wage teenagers; with hotels, you employ adults who have to make a living on what you pay them, who are more likely to question the legitimacy of any authority you try to assert, and with whom you cannot deal so arbitrarily. Supervising kids truly is ‘kid stuff’ (bad pun) by contrast to supervising adults. Things we associate with “management” — organizing ability, hiring, training, staffing, discipline and supervision; vigilance, marketing ability, troubleshooting and problem solving, recordkeeping, overall responsibility and accountability — are all together just one part of the required skill set; and many of those parts aren’t doable without some specific subject matter expertise. If you don't know what you're trying to manage, there's a very low limit to how well you can manage it.

It's Not All About Millennials. Why Hotels Need to Focus on Older Singles & Families

From HotelSpaces

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How halal tourism is reshaping the global tourism industry

From e-hotelier

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