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Marina Go Hotel
During our 18 years in the travel agency
business my wife and I talked a number of times about
the possibility of
adding a small hotel to our tourism business. In October
2013 the dream became a reality with the acquisition of
a run-down [but relatively new] apartment complex in
Bodrum. A Year Has Passed We are very encouraged by the support we received from an expanding guest-base, we were full almost every weekend during our first winter season. In fact our first year was much busier than expected.
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The Only Downside Chronic Hotel Complainer Syndrome or CHCS But in real life, nothing is ever perfect and it's an unfortunate fact that there are some people who go through their whole life constantly complaining and looking for fault where there is either none or very little. During our limited time in the hotel business, it seems that for around every 100 guests, 99 are nice and 1 is not-so-nice, a ratio that is acceptable, certainly one we can live with. We quickly learned not to be disheartened or to get angry as a result of their unjustified complaints. We discovered it is impossible to satisfy the needs of the CHCS sufferer, for each minor complaint you deal with, they will find another. Our solution is to suffer them for the duration of their visit and to blacklist them as an unwelcome future guest. Indeed, we feel genuinely sad for this very small minority of miserable people who it seems lack the ability to enjoy life. Unless of course they actually take delight in seeing the discomfort of others. Included in the 1% of CHCS sufferers are those equally not-so-nice people who feign CHCS in the vain hope that their complaints will get them a room upgrade or a significant discount, fortunately these people are as easy to spot as an email from a Nigerian scammer. One More Downside Now that we've completed our first year we've unfortunately discovered one more downside, STAFF, or to be more precise, the chronic lack of qualified hotel workers here in Turkey. It is perhaps a bit ambitious to expect any personnel that you can call 'qualified' in Turkey, the education system just does not produce many people that you can really call qualified. What the system does seem to be producing however is a new 'breed' of so called 'workers' whose only goal in life is to do as little as possible for as much money as possible. School leavers and even green 'graduates' [sic], want to be the 'Boss' within months of getting a job. Their first day on the 'job' is spent checking the security vulnerabilities of their employer in order to maximize 'stealing' opportunities. Computer systems are checked and ways of diverting cash into their pockets are set up. And at least 50% of their time is spent doing their own private business on mobile phones that seem to have become a permanent attachment to their hand. Every task that needs to be carried out has to be an instruction, just like winding up a clockwork device, when the task is complete they stop, just like a clockwork spring that's unwound and then, out comes the mobile phone and they lapse back into nuetral. If there is any reason we would ditch this business will be because of the dishonest, corrupt, deceitful, embezzling, fraudulent, sneaky, untrustworthy, lazy, indifferent, lethargic, apathetic, stealing, objectionable hotel staff. [There are of course the odd exceptions]. As a direct result of the chronic staff situation the amount of time and effort we have had to commit to the hotel is disproportionate to the pleasurable aspects of the project, so much so that we are seriously considering either renting our or selling the hotel. The shitty staff win I guess. |
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