Two years ago, I was “angy” about a big mess that I got stuck with at work. Today, I was angy all over again.
It’s that group again. The same one that is characterised by secretaries booking “their” people 6 months in advance, changing the personnel constantly, changing dates constantly, and the housing bureau is always about 6 or 7 change requests behind.
This year, I thought I managed to stay ahead of the wave the whole time, as I’d had to send a number of faxes and emails to the bureau just to get changes done – and some changes never did get acted on. No matter, it got to be late enough in the game that I could work directly with the hotel. The file on this deal is about an inch and a half thick, and I’m not done yet.
Strangely, it seemed that the housing bureau changed “group managers” on me at least 3 times. Problems in the company, I’m betting. I’d reached a point where I had a fairly good and trusting rapport with the previous manager, but she left.
Anyway, after I thought the worst was over, the hotel contacted me yesterday to say that their boiler had to be replaced and they were moving my entire block of rooms over to another property, about 13 miles out of town at a very pricy and fancy resort. They would pick up the tab for a shuttle van. No addtional charge, no difference in rate. I can see from checking “rack” rates that the travelers are getting at least a 50% discount rate or more.
Argh. 17 records to re-work. Secretaries called (there are two, and I don’t really have a clear idea of “who’s zoomin’ who” on this deal). They seemed resigned to telling the travelers, there was NOTHING else available for the entire group.
As soon as all were re-worked, the travelers start screaming. “Can’t they just find TWO ROOMS? Just for me and my assistant?” NO, actually, not at the hotel with no hot water. And nothing else is available in the immediate area of the convention floor. A few rooms available at a very downscale property a mile or two away, but not for everyone.
Screaming subsided. I am awaiting developments. They depart for this trip on Monday, so any more re-working has to happen tomorrow or Friday, and David and I have firm plans on Friday night, so I’d better dang well hear back from the secretaries to find out who wants to go downscale, and who wants to stay at a world-class spa for a song.
Prediction: next year, the two people screaming the loudest about being stuck out at the spa will be whining “Caaaan’t you get us into the spaaaaaaa hotel? It was soooo nice. Whaaaat? It’s triple the priiiiiice? Caaaaan’t you get the same rate we had laaaaast year?”
Oy. Oh, yeah. Oy.
Then there’s this other deal. We got a phone call today from a New York hotel from a res manager, something about “a lot of travelers from your client’s company have booked individual room reservations for the same dates, so many that we’re calling it a group. There will be porterage fees and the cancel penalty will be 7 days in advance instead of 1.” Unilaterally, they were changing the rules. It became my problem because it was thus a “hotel group” that I hadn’t booked and that should have come through me in the first place. Also, the lowest rate wasn’t even available. I asked them to send a list of all the bookings from us they’d identified, because I was hearing rumblings from several agents about “all these people going to the Chrysanthemum in March.” And then I heard people were booking new reservations as I was talking to the guy in New York, so it was gettiing out of hand. I asked the other agents to send me the records they were booking so I could tally – next thing I know, I’ve got a list of 29 rooms and no end in sight. I do not want to have to deal with this, but don’t have a lot choice but to surf on ahead of the wave again.
Many phone calls. Spoke to res manager. Spoke to the client’s hotel procurement person to alert her to the change-up action the hotel is doing, as this may affect their relationship. Spoke to the hotel’s corporate sales manager. Emailed everyone concerned as requested. Put together a namelist to fax to the hotel with the additional records we’d made, but waited to hear what the procurement person and the hotel sales rep worked out regarding the “porterage fees and more restrictive cancel policy” thing. Tomorrow, I’ll be learning how to pull an arrival-departure list to send to the hotel with arrival times, because the porterage fee is a union rule, and it kicks in when a party of 8 or more all checks in at the same time. Our folks MAY be arriving at staggered times.
Late in the day, maybe half an hour before leaving, I get flagged down by one of the agents. One of the secretaries (one I know to be pretty ditzy) was cancelling and rebooking “her” people at another property. So the problem may solve itself, because apparently my comment to this particular secretary earlier hit home: another preferred hotel was available for a lower rate and was a tenth of a mile away. However, it’s possible the problem may just migrate to a different hotel, unless this new one doesn’t kick in with the “we will be treating this as a group” angle.
The ironic thing is that no one person at the Client company was aware of all of their people that were going to New York and staying at this particular hotel these particular dates. There are at least 3 secretaries (2 ditzy ones, 1 tightly-wired one) and several individuals that made the reservations, so there’s no single point of contact.
Joy. When you put it all together, it appears that someone from Client should have set this up as a “bid process” (following their policy for when a hotel group is projected to have a total cost more than a specified amount). Oops. The procurement person had some words to say about that.
So, we’ll see what’s going on when I get in in the morning. I was on non-phone res status all day dealing with hotel issues, and in the end with both groups, felt like I’d been treading water all day. No forward movement, just keeping my head above water. And, yes, angy.
iTunes: Queen & David Bowie: Under Pressure: Grosse Pointe Blank [4:03]
