On Hospitality and the “ART” of the Thank You.

Cartoon by Chris Wildt

Cartoon by Chris Wildt

The old saying, “you can please some of the people…” still rings true-and when you can’t please them, sometimes they still say thank you. If you run a hotel long enough you’ll encounter all manner of issues. Some are quite easy to solve and some take a little tact to convey, “there’s not much else I can do.”

Cape May in the winter has become a destination of retreats. The kind of retreat where intellectuals can disconnect from their busyness to reconnect with their business. That doesn’t sound like it makes sense. What is happening here is writers and in some cases, comics or illustrators are fleeing the city to check into a warm, inexpensive hotel room to set up a satellite office or work space and get it done.

Perhaps we have a new niche market here in Cape May, working in solitude. Get some work done, take a walk on the beach, get some more work done, take a walk on the beach-see a sunrise. Doesn’t sound too bad does it?

The illustration depicted above was the result of one such guest, still clinging to his eight year old Mac-Book. After a few hours of struggling to connect to hotel WiFi he asked for some help in the office. With a little tweaking of his settings and un-restricting his bandwidth etc. we were able to get the guest online and allow him to do what he came to Cape May for in the first place.

We may have in the process convinced the guest that it was time for a computer upgrade. Fortunately he had a sense of humor and left the above illustration as a nice thank-you note upon check out.  What’s the most creative way anyone ever thanked you? Thanks for reading.

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2 Comments

  1. February 28, 2014 / 8:19 am

    The solitude thing does work – I have been working away quite a bit recently, and found myself alone in hotels hundreds of miles from home. If you continually cut yourself off though, it starts to pull away at you like a loose thread.

    • captcooke
      Author
      February 28, 2014 / 8:26 am

      Thanks for reading and comment Jonathon. I agree although I’m happy to rent the rooms in the off season. Most of my guest do short stints of work. Some are actually syndicated writers and cartoonist. Topic of Unblogging looks interesting.