November 27th, 2006

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Blogosphere, Travel, Vancouver
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A Refreshingly Frank Blog by a Hotel GM

Tonight Kris Krug and I are participating in a panel on blogging for a meeting of the Society of American Travel Writers here in Vancouver. Don’t ask me where the Society of Canadian Travel Writers is–it’s not the first time I’ve spoken to the Canadian arm of an organization with American in the title. But I digress…

One of our fellow panelists is Daniel Craig (different guy, but still posh), the general manager of the swish Opus Hotel. It’s a cool hotel, and as it turns out, he writes a nice, forthright blog about his work. His latest post discusses late night parties, drag queens and prostitutes. What more could you ask for?

Another challenging guest this weekend was a drag queen. I passed him in the lobby on Friday night and he looked fabulous – tall, thin and glamorous, with big blonde hair and lots of makeup. It was cool having a drag queen in residence, I thought at the time; added some colour to Opus. Unfortunately, it added a bit too much colour. I guess he didn’t like the colour of his room, because he repainted it – with his makeup. It was everywhere: carpet, walls, doors and bedding, resulting in a large cleaning bill. Bad drag queen, bad.

When talking about corporate blogs, I often say that, given the choice, I’d rather read a blog by the McDonalds employee who works the drive-in window on Friday nights than by McDonald’s CEO. I guess if the CEO told stories like this, I’d read their blog too.

The other panelist on tonight’s agenda is from Urbandiner.ca.

Comments: 4 Responses so far

Laura
November 27th, 2006
1:29 pm

Errr, fun to read and all, but doesn’t it strike you as a bad idea to write negative comments about specific guests in the hotel where you are a GM, and not blogging anonymously? I don’t know, maybe it’s just me… strikes me as an odd way to generate goodwill with your customers though. Even if you don’t want them back, that can’t possibly generate good word of mouth

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darren
November 27th, 2006
1:36 pm

Laura: For me, this kind of thing really humanizes an organization. It shows that there are thinking, reasonable people across the check-in desk.

As for word of mouth, the hotel doesn’t want the misbehaving guests back, so what’s the down side?

Additionally, these stories reassure me that if I’m staying at the hotel, possibly issues (loud parties, for example) will be dealt with in a timely and professional fashion.

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Roland Tanglao
November 27th, 2006
2:18 pm

Please make sure to give Andrew of urbandiner a hard time for not having RSS (or at least not having an obvious RSS feed)

his tech friend who set him up should fix that once and for all

I know Andrew and love his content but making your RSS feed obscure in 2006 is ridiculous!

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Andrew Morrison
November 28th, 2006
12:56 pm

For the record, I have no “tech friends” who set me up. UD is a home job, built by me with zero expertise. There is an RSS feed, but I prefer not to use it.

In my ignorant, no good, terrible opinion, it would take away from the pretty presentation of the site (read: you wouldn’t see the ads, ;-).

Nice to meet you Darren.

[Reply]

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