Join the club

Bou moussa: We have seen international thieves who claim that they have lost their things or use other scams. When we first opened there were many; I think it happens with all the new hotels.

Upselling

Does upgrading guests boost sales or create unrealistic guest expectations? Managers have very different ideas on what works and what doesn't.

Francisco: At Fairmont we have a loyalty programme, so we take this opportunity to let our members experience the executive lounge. Our regular guests - premium and platinum guests - are the top priority when we are going to upgrade someone to our executive lounge.

Bhardwaj: We deal with it very differently; we upgrade first-time guests to give them a ‘wow' experience so they will return to the property. Our hotel is 27 years old, so 55% of our guests are regulars. The rest of them are new or first-timers.

SchwIEtert: We try to avoid upgrading as much as possible, because the minute they come back, they are disappointed if it doesn't happen again. Our upgrades are mainly related to our loyalty programme. We have a lot of upselling; the only problem is that our sales department is so motivated that they sometimes don't pay attention to what the clientele is for a club lounge.

24 hr party people

Opinions were divided on whether executive and club lounges should be open 24 hours.

Schweitert: We're not planning on doing it; we've never done it.

Francisco: We were open 24 hours, but because of the business situation right now, we have had three months where we observed that most of the executive floors were closing down at 11pm or midnight and the number of people coming into the lounge after that is quite low. So we have decided to close the lounge from midnight until 6am.

Fisher: We are open 24 hours and the traffic after midnight is mostly made up of people who are leaving at early hours of the morning. There's not a lot of movement, but we still get people who come in and like to know that we're open 24 hours. We are selling 24-hour service.

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