Hard times persist in European hotels

I was pushing one of those brass hotel luggage trolleys, laden with my suitcases, through the lobby of a four-star hotel at London’s Heathrow airport when an elegant Asian woman called me to carry her bags up to her room.

“I am a guest!” I shouted to her, somewhat irritated, since I was not exactly delighted at having to borrow the rickety trolley myself, and a little humiliated that she apparently thought I was a bellboy, despite the leather jacket I was wearing and what I like to think of as my naturally managerial bearing.

Was this scenario the fevered nightmare of a delirious hotel consultant? No, this is the simple reality of a ‘luxury’ airport hotel in London these days. Please don’t expect to even see a doorman or a bellboy, and for goodness’ sake, don’t expect the concierge or the front desk clerk to lift a finger to help you with anything heavy. How spoilt we are in the Gulf — alhamdulillah!

On the same trip, my wife and I also stayed at a four-star hotel in Dublin, a smart new designer property next to a major concert hall, where the same approach to staffing had been adopted.

There we were greeted with a totally empty ground floor lobby and a sign on the wall basically telling us to take the lift up to the third floor if we were to have any chance of finding a human being.

When we finally did this and suggested to the receptionist that it was unusual for a relatively expensive four-star hotel not to have a bellboy, she rather haughtily suggested that she should call the duty manager to carry our bags. Having already loaded up our bags on a hotel trolley thanks to the help of a kind taxi driver, we declined the offer, but it would have been interesting to call the receptionist’s bluff.

I realise I sound like one of those ‘grumpy old men’ who sound off on the TV about how everything used to be better in the old days, or else like someone who missed their true calling as a bellboy! But there is a serious point here — in most of Europe, and especially in countries like Ireland, whose economies almost collapsed in the world economic crisis, cost cutting not only became necessary in the worst of the recession, but has apparently now become institutionalised.

In the Dublin hotel where we stayed, for example, almost the entire F&B front of house staff was made up of casuals, mostly foreign students, working for say, 20 hours a week. The faces in the main restaurant changed every day. Predictably the service was inconsistent as a result, but I must say when we got to chatting with the waiters and waitresses, we found they all aspired to give a quality service despite a scarcity of proper guidance (isn’t that always the case?). We also learned a lot about such countries as Poland and Slovakia.

In fact, with the exception of a very pleasant night spent at a Welsh-speaking country inn, we found that the ethnic mix of the hotel staff in the UK and Ireland was not dissimilar from the wonderful variety one finds in Dubai, for example. And as in the Gulf, the locals were largely absent from the industry, at least from the ranks of the line staff. Payroll is evidently a major expense item in European hotels and even four-star hotels have had to cut staff and services in order to survive the recession (both the four-star hotels we stayed at were effectively ‘select service’ properties, by GCC standards).

Nevertheless, there are always plenty of East European and other foreign workers who are delighted to work as casuals in the UK or Ireland at a minimum wage with no benefits, because that’s still a better deal — and better for their CVs — than working in their home countries.

As I say, how lucky we are on this side of the world that traditional front office staff structures are still respected, giving jobs for those who want them and ensuring that our guests get that friendly, willing, reassuring first impression that only a good doorman or bellboy can provide.

About the Author:
Guy Wilkinson is a director of Viability, a hospitality and property consulting firm in Dubai. For more information, e-mail: guy@viability.ae