I had an interesting experience yesterday as I tried to collect my car at the Hyatt Harborside Hotel in Boston. In fact, I thought I was back in the 70’s and in a video for the song Hotel California, by the Eagles. Getting into the parking lot was easy. Getting out was a whole other story.
The conference I attended at the Hyatt Harborside Hotel ended at 4:00 PM. Now imagine what the scene must have looked like with 250 people attempting to depart the hotel quickly to avoid rush hour in Boston. Little did we know that the traffic at the concierge desk (the only place where you could pay for parking) would be the one place that would jam all of us up. But that’s exactly what happened. To make matters worse, only one person was on duty at the concierge desk to handle the crowds and there were two people standing around at the front desk with nothing to do.
I’m going to go out on a limb and make some assumptions here. This hotel regularly hosts large meetings and that yesterday’s traffic jam has happened on more than one occasion. I’m also going to assume there is technology that can be used to allow others, besides the concierge, to handle the transactions related to parking.
Hyatt invests a huge amount of time and money into training their people, yet you wouldn’t know this based on yesterday’s traffic jam at the Harborside Hotel. Perhaps it’s time for the General Manager to attempt to retrieve his car at 4:00 PM on a typical Thursday afternoon. I’m betting if he dares to do so, there will be a new system in place the next time I find myself trying to exit this hotel at the conclusion of a conference.
