During university, I worked part-time as the telephone operator at a suite-based hotel (suites being little apartment-style hotel rooms with kitchens, living rooms, etc). It wasn’t super-bougie, but it was an interesting job that taught me a lot about the kind of traveller I wanted to be, and it gave me some insider knowledge about hotel life, including:

We legally can’t tell you if your partner is cheating. Angry spouses calling up to yell about suspicions of cheating wasn’t unusual. Whether they pretended to be sweet or were cussing me out on the phone, we were instructed to tell people there was no way of verifying a hotel guest was staying with us (and this is true for a lot of reasons; if a guest is trying to escape an abusive relationship, giving their abuser their location is hugely irresponsible).

A few times the only way I could get the person off the phone was to pretend to check, and then say that they weren’t at the hotel. But if you’ve been told I’m here for you, I’ll check quickly—and then get the negative answer, it means nothing. Sorry!

Hotel staff can do a lot more than you’d expect. It’s not just about local services or attractions; I’m convinced that all the at-home app services have modelled themselves after hotel services. You might expect room service (Doordash), or getting a taxi (Uber), but most hotels can sort laundry (Laundrapp), get your dog treats, hook you up with local amenities for discount rates, or help you navigate local systems (like police or doctors if you’re having an emergency). Hotel staff are knowledgeable and resourceful, and usually more than happy to help!

The small business we’re recommending for in-hotel services is giving us a kickback. A “kickback” sounds like a very fancy word considering I was sitting in a small back room, answering the phone. But the local pizza place, whenever they got an order from a guest of ours, we’d need to accept the pizza at the front desk, and they’d always throw in a personal pizza for staff. You think we ever recommended a different pizza place when people would ask if we recommended anywhere local? Free pizza goes a long way when you’re on minimum wage!

Hotel staff can get you the best rates. Booking agents usually have hotel booking commissions based into their salaries, so they’ll try to get you the best rate. If you see a discount rate on Expedia or Booking (any third-party retailer), you can call up and say, “I saw you’ve got a room going for X amount; is that the best rate going?”. Usually third party retailers take a percentage off the top of the rate; I saw bookers get better rates to clients, and net the hotel more money because we weren’t paying a website. Plus, it’s simpler to cancel or move reservations when you’re dealing only with the hotel and not a website, and the internally-booked rooms were always first in line for surprise upgrades. It’s a win-win!

Service jobs can lead to really lucrative careers. I got into the job because a friend, who I’ll call L, got a similar job and said it was easy money to be on-call and read books when the phone wasn’t ringing (which happened regularly on night shifts). For me, it was just a means to the end of paying my tuition; but she went from answering phones, to managing a team, to becoming a general manager. 15 years later, she’s built a career as an executive director, and you can see a direct line between her time working her way up the corporate ladder in hotel management to the place she’s in now. Plus, for several years she got free stays in hotels as a perk, while her boyfriend—who worked for an airline—got free flights. To me, that was the dream!

Well, technically it still is—free flights and hotel stays? Yes, please. Follow me so I can make it happen—and as always, happy travels! x