Earlier this week, my wife went on a short trip and stayed at at a downtown boutique hotel in Victoria, B.C.
Unfortunately, on the last evening of her stay she found her door open and ajar twice.
Her room door had an electronic key without an internal physical deadbolt. Room service and turndown service had already been done earlier in the day, and my wife physcially confirmed after each visit that the door had been fully closed and locked.
So why was the door ajar? There are four possibilities for this.
- My wife left the door ajar.
- The door is broken and spontaneously opened ( twice).
- There is a hotel ghost.
- Someone with an electronic key opened the door.
Well, (1) isn’t likely. My wife—even in our own house—is meticulous about checking that the door is locked, and she is doubly careful when traveling alone.
What about (2)? Also not likely. Heavy doors don’t spontaneously open, and both my wife and hotel security also checked the door had no obvious functional problem.
And (3), a hotel ghost? It’s a nice guess—and my personal favorite—but as a rule, I don’t attribute things to ghosts (or aliens) when there are other, better explanations.
Clearly (4) is the answer. Someone had an electronic key with access to my wife’s room, and whether by accident or by intent opened the door. And in my mind, since this occurred twice and in the evening, I lean towards a bad actor wanting to enter the room intentionally.
So what happened? Well, after some discussion with security, my wife first elected to just get a new electronic key made, and then put a chair in front of the door, but it soon became apparent that neither she or I would get much sleep that night with this plan. Therefore, at 11 p.m., she checked out of the hotel and ended up staying at the Fairmont, eventually getting a good and safe night’s sleep.
Now, what’s the moral of this story?
In any business, whether a large public company or a solo entrepreneur, you first need to be very clear on what the essence of your business is, and then you need to make sure you you master it.
For boutique hotels, mints on the bed, flowers in the room, and high cotton thread counts are nice, but the essence of the hotel business is room security. The innkeepers of the the Middle Ages understood this, the barkeep of The Prancing Pony in the movie The Lord of The Rings understood this, and every Motel Six manager in Middle America understands this.
This hotel forgot the essence of its business. It should have instantly recognized that it had a security breach in one of their guests rooms, and a new room should have been offered immediately. By not doing that, we will never stay there again.