Running a hotel takes a lot of work to ensure you always have guests and you can keep them coming back.

What would you do if you were managing a hotel, but the owner kept making changes that made life more difficult?

That is the situation the manager in this story was in, so he followed the owner’s new rules just as told, which caused many cancellations and the loss of loyal customers.

Check it out.

Call everyone, you say? Explain everything? Sure thing boss, I’m on it.

A little bit of backstory.

I used to run a medium-ish-sized (40 rooms) hotel down in Florida for a couple of years not that long ago.

The hotel was a couple of old neighboring beach apart-motels bought by a foreign investor and then extensively renovated into a single modern boutique hotel.

The location was amazing for this type of business.

Before the pandemic, it was indeed a prime piece of property.

The property manager that run it at the time had built the hotel up with the idea of a place people would be really happy to return to.

Especially considering that the person who had run the place at first, an ex-girlfriend of the owner, had chased all the old motel guests off.

Apparently, and I quote one of the former guests here: ‘we don’t want your kind here’, she told people.

Meaning – older generation mainly middle-class Americans from the Mid-West, spending their family vacations down in Florida every year for decades.

Also, backtracking a bit to a point rather important for the story.

The owner is not a nice person.

I’m sure he thinks he is an expert anyway.

Nor had he ever worked in or had run the hospitality business.

His main line of business is retail. Abroad.

Very much so. And he is a self-absorbed entitled narcissist with an attitude.

He had constantly meddled, making incredibly foolish or downright harmful decisions during the renovation and then forcing the property-manager to carry them out.

She was smart and competent enough to usually find a work-around, but sometimes he insisted further.

Things weren’t smooth.

So, fast-forward to me starting to run the actual hotel part of the business.

Which at first the owner hadn’t meddled in that much.

Our main focus groups at the time had been the Cruise-ship crowd, regular vacation-goers, the conferences nearby, and finally – the annual events.

Multiple music festivals, holidays, as well as *drum-roll* the International Boat Show.

The last one being a week long affair of yacht-building companies selling their boats to rich folks.

10 minutes walk from our hotel.

The place I managed was a bit too low-key for the rich crowd.

But guess where all those yacht-building companies wanted a room to place all their staff at?

We had 40 of them, with multiple beds and full kitchens.

And we had built the place up with regular guests in mind.

Including the festival-goers and the yachtsmen.

Especially the yachtsmen.

This type of thing will keep people coming back.

Meaning discounts, free upgrades, personalized approach, regular touch-ups, even occasional BBQ parties.

I was on the first-name basis with quite a few boat-building managers.

As well as boat captains.

Because when a boat is sold, they often stay around, get repaired, and the crew has to stay somewhere.

And our little place was known in the circles as a good place for them.

I had made it my goal to make it attractive for the target audiences.

And in some of them everyone knew each other and word got around.

I am a firm believer in the hospitality business being run with the client in mind, not the profit.

So, we had an amazing year of building up connections and making the place really nice to a few very specific circles.

And then the pandemic hit.

The hotel was almost empty for half a year.

Had to furlough most of our staff for a while.

Eventually the pandemic was sort of forgotten about.

At least in Florida.

Cruise-ships hadn’t came back, but the regular vacation-goers had.

En masse.

We got very busy very fast.

He just doesn’t want to pay anyone.

However, the owner wasn’t thrilled with me hiring a new Front Desk receptionist.

Why bother, if I myself could do this job as well, right?

Make housekeepers (we had two of them total for the entire place) do laundry as well.

Get the property manager do accounting too.

At the same time the owner had bought a yacht. Just because. And attempted to make our property manager run the boat as well.

So, after a few more months of struggle, she had finally had enough and had quit.

Good for her. We are still friends, even today.

The owner replaced the property manager with his daughter.

Like father like daughter, exactly same type.

However, in their country manager is manager, they don’t get the difference between a property manager (does the building or the property side of things) and a business manager (does the business in that building).

She immediately had decided that her job was to run the hotel.

And my job was to do what I’m told.

And the first thing they do – the father and the daughter – is look at the Boat Show just one month ahead.

As well as the festive season a couple of months later.

They had a brilliant idea of making more money.

After all, why had we sold all the rooms that cheap?

People who are already booked should have an agreement in place.

Triple-rates for the Boat Show?

We could easily make twice as much, right?

And why offer free parking when no one around does that?

Not like it’s a selling point, right?

So, they tell me to change the room rates.

On existing reservations.

And start charging for the parking on reservations that were made with the ‘free parking’ listed.

And above all – charge more for the Boat Show on the rooms that had been sold a year ago, mostly face-to-face when people were checking-out after the last show.

And it was apparently up to me to call them and let them know that we had raised the rates by 50%.

Oh, and that the parking for the show is now $100 a day per vehicle.

I was not happy with the idea, to say the least.

For whatever reason, I had assumed that this is not how things are done in the US.

Even down in Florida, despite the infamous Florida Man.

Nor I felt comfortable calling people, most of whom I knew, and tell them this banger of an idea.

So I had fought against this decision as hard as I could.

I came up with various reasons as to why we should not do it.

Pointed out how we run the place. Argued the point of the reputation.

This guy sounds awful.

The owner hadn’t listened, but said “I hear you, but trust my business acumen, after all I had made millions”.

The daughter had listened to me very carefully.

Her reply?

“Your direct superior had decided and given your instructions. It’s not your place to think and question things. Just call them all and explain everything. That’s your job”.

Sooo, a bit of malicious compliance then.

I called our guests.

And not just the boat people.

I called most regulars of ours.

Took a while.

And I explained what was happening. I told them the truth.

How things are run now, what new ideas are there, etc.

I’m sure these people appreciated the honesty.

I also told them that I was very much against these new decisions.

And that I probably won’t be there for long.

Most of them thanked me for the information and said they will be in touch.

A few local yachtsmen asked if they could come in to discuss things.

In the end, the boat people were forced to pay extra.

It’s impossible to find a good property, at any price-range, close to the Boat Show location just a month before the show itself.

The local ones who came in and met with the owner and his daughter got a great deal of ‘free parking, after the price adjustment’.

I struggled to keep a professional face.

However, when I met them on my own after their talk with the owner, or when I talked with the other regulars over the phone, almost all of them thanked me for my efforts, and told me they will not be back.

Neither would anyone they know.

Also, if I would go to a new place, would I please let them know, so they would go there too?

Well, that very week I gave the owner’s daughter my notice.

Left just before the show began.

Letting her be the one dealing with the mess since she insisted on being the boss so much.

From what I hear, she hadn’t managed at all.

Things are only going to get worse.

Right now the place is run by a shady “management company” that just don’t care, with the daughter supposedly running the front desk.

No one is answering any calls. Or checking e-mails.

Reviews plummeted.

They hadn’t even renewed their licenses. Or paid bookingcom and expedia fees so they are threatening legal action now.

And, apparently, the owner and his daughter blame me and the property manager for everything.

Since it’s our leaving that messed everything up.

Whatever.

What a mess, sometimes the owners of a company really just make things worse.

Let’s see what the people in the comments think about this situation.

Very well said.

This owner was very short sighted.

Managers can be the biggest problem with some companies.

This commenter says it was likely illegal.

This person loves the karma.

This owner ruined his own business.

Too bad for him, I guess.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.