It Starts at the Front Desk

After 16 months, I’m back on the road.?All around me, airports and roads are coming back to life. In particular, families seem to be travelling in droves.

Last week, I was having breakfast in a coffee shop at a small independent hotel in rural Alberta (yes! A real hot breakfast served to me at a table with real cutlery… #donttakethisforgranted).?Glancing through the door I witnessed a painful scene in the lobby.

A small, but belligerent, woman started berating the woman at the front desk.?

The guest was angry about every single part of her stay: housekeeping was incompetent, the lighting wasn’t good, the air conditioning wasn’t cool enough, the towels weren’t plump enough… I was waiting to find out how the poor woman behind the front desk was responsible for the Syrian refugee crisis…

As someone who has spent hundreds of nights a year (pre-COVID) in hotel rooms, and someone who admittedly has been, on occasion, curt when faced with the occasional disappointments of travel, I have seen this kind of behaviour before. And I know that the people who work in our industry see it all too often, but this petulant rant was unacceptable—to the point I almost felt the need to intervene.

I wish I had.

While this event was a single instance, the issues are indicative of the challenges faced by the whole tourism ecosystem. And there are a couple of things I hope we can all keep in mind as we go “back to normal”.

Firstly, please recognize that the hospitality sector will have enormous challenges recruiting the people needed to restart the industry and moreover, they are trying to mitigate a whole series of health and safety issues that go beyond making beds. Many employees who were laid off during COVID have changed industries or found other ways to support themselves and their families. It will take some time to hire and train skilled professionals.

Secondly, a bit of patience wouldn’t hurt. Many of us have been living cloistered lives behind screens for the last 16 months. Let’s be a bit more self aware that our capacity for social interaction may have eroded somewhat. As we all emerge back into some semblance of “real life,” please remember the people that are serving us are human beings too.

Now let’s be clear, this wasn’t a five-star hotel, but perhaps that’s my point: please let’s level-set our expectations in the short-term. Trust me, the woman at the front desk is grateful to see travellers again, and her team is trying their best to welcome you back.?

Tourism is a business of connection. And after more than a year of distancing, we have the opportunity to reconnect with all the people that make tourism possible.

Starting with the person at the front desk.