There is zero training. If you are a manager, you are lucky if they give you a week with another manager at their hotel, but in most cases, you are introduced and thrown into the fire. They developed an online "university" while I was there, but that was more to cover their own behinds and be able to "say/prove" that you were trained in something. Really it was just videos you had to watch while you were trying to work and then answer questions about. The regional and area managers were more concerned about you and your staff showing up on a corporate list than they were if you and your staff actually understood the material.
Most hotels in my region were ALWAYS understaffed. So much so that service to the guests suffered greatly because of it. If you were a GM,there was very little assistance with this. The pay scales were fixed for the hourly associates, and so it was very difficult to get quality staff hired. The really sad part though is that even if you were fully staffed, it still wasn't enough to give the level of service that was expected. Makes it very difficult to live up to expectations when you are handcuffed from the get go.
They don't pay much. In any of the positions.
You are basically working alone most of the time. A front desk agent is required to essentially run the entire hotel after the manager goes home. They have signs at the front desk that tell you (the guest) to call zero on the lobby phone for assistance, and that one agent in the hotel carries a cordless phone and will make their way to the desk to help you as soon as they can. This one person has to check in guests, answer all the phone calls, deliver kitchen supplies, shovel the sidewalks, clean the lobby, clean the bathroom, clean the laundry room, all at the same time. Good managers will end up working non stop, because they are on salary and feel bad for their poor staff. Plus they have to be concerned with bad reviews.
There is no sales team. There is one sales person who covers like 30-40 hotels and acts more like a another manager than actual sales support. You have to do all sales activities.
There is only maintenance coverage 40 hours a week, Monday through Friday from 8-5. You have 1 maintenance person. If anything goes wrong outside those hours it is up to you to figure it out.
Housekeeping is only performed when guests check out or are staying with you for more than 8 days. So it is very difficult to schedule housekeepers, and very difficult to get good staff because you can hardly promise them any hours. Plus the guest that stays for 3 days paying $200 a night just loves hearing that they don't receive a housekeeping service. And guess who gets to deal with that? Yup. The one poor desk agent working at night after everybody else has basically gone home.
Landscapers and plow companies are terrible. Plus the company doesn't pay for them to shovel, so you, the one person working, have to shovel the sidewalks and lay down rock salt every few hours in inclement weather. Have fun.
There are mindless conference calls and go to webinars that you are required to be on regardless of what you have going on in your hotel. So if you have guests to attend to you just miss half of what is going on and then have to jump back in and try to play catch up.
There is so much more that is beyond frustration with this company. Take it from me, you want no part of it.
