Everything Is Negotiable
ok, I'm going to hold off on the time stamping until I've caught up to the current time period in my re-telling of the last month.
My job is frustrating in that I really don't have any authority whatso ever to do little extra things, customer service wise. So if someone isnt satisfied with their stay, I basically have to apologize and wish them a safe drive home.
I think this stems from several factors.
Firstly, there is very little real competition in the area and therefore we can charge the somewhat exorbitant prices that we do. We also demand a 2 night stay on weekends. This is often problematic and results in us losing out on one night's room rent in favour of waiting for someone who wants to stay 2 nights. Unless we decide we are too dead, then you can stay one night. But there are no real guidelines for deciding this, we are just expected to make the decision on our own.
The other thing we just pull out of thin air is how much to charge people. This may be a revelation to some of you. There is a standard rate that we want for the room, that's called "rack". This is the price we tell you on the phone. But if you join our loyalty program, which is free to join, you save 20%. We can sign you up right over the phone. But we won't do it if youre a dick about it.
And if we do it, we don't make our commission (which is 5% of any rack reservations). There's also probably a discount if you're staying 3 days or more. But unless you ask, we dont volunteer that kind of information.
The way to get the best deal is just to walk in a few hours after check in and hope they have a room. At that point it is so unlikely that anyone else will want the room they'll drastically cut the price. 100$ is better than no $.
The other issue is seasonality. Since the resort is basically dead in the winter they need to jack up the prices in the summer and also from weekdays to weekends to make up for the lack of income in the winter. This is the kind of thing that took them a whole year to teach us in "financial management systems in hospitality".
moi at
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