SwimExpert
Gold Member
- Nov 26, 2013
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- #101
Well, you don't really know what the hell you are talking about. I've worked in hotel operations for many years, including a hotel that has hosted both Presidents Bush and Obama, various members of Congress individually, and multiple Congressional events and summits.
The President of the United States will never stay at some dinky Motel 6. Ever. And there is a very good reason for that which has nothing to do with wasting money: Security.
When the President travels there are massive security demands that must be satisfied. Access must be controlled. In order to accomplish it takes a hell of alot more than picking a room for the President and giving him some room keys. A Presidential visit will usually entail an entire floor (usually the highest floor) being secured and restricted to only authorized personnel. Now, this doesn't necessarily amount to waste, because there are plenty of other aides, Secret Service, etc, who will also need rooms, so those people end up using the other rooms on that floor. Of course, all that being said, don't expect the rest of the hotel to be available to the public. When the President stays at your hotel, the government is going to be buying you out for that time. So it can happen that there will be some rooms that go empty during the visit, which will have to be paid for as well.
Now, depending on the property design, etc, the special needs of a President will typically include the need for more than simple accommodations. Usually, if at all possible, the President will receive the highest end suite the hotel has to offer. There are practical reasons for this, like the need to have secure space for meetings. But this also is part of the security arrangement; the highest level suites in a hotel are typically at the far ends of a floor, and as such provide superior security as any would be intruder would have to traverse the entire hall before being able to reach the President's room. These suites, however, do not come cheap. At my previous hotel the highest end suites that would have been afforded for the President did indeed have a price tag of $2000-$2500 a night, depending on the particular date.
Aside from all of that, there are simple questions of billing that you fail to understand here. There are many ways to structure a contract when a hotel organizes a group event for anyone, including the government. In fact, when it comes to the government the demands are often extremely strict and require the hotel to go to greater lengths in order to accommodate the client. When it comes to major events there may be specific budgetary demands that require costs to be shifted around on paper in order to meet the client's needs. For example, food costs might have only been allocated a certain amount which might be insufficient to adequately cover the requisite costs. When this happens a hotel can reduce the overall F&B pricetag by absorbing the difference into room costs. On the hotel's side we simply redistribute that revenue back into F&B through various accounting measures. So the food costs are invoiced according to the client's needs, but are nonetheless paid in full due to the room rate partially covering part of the food costs. We might do the same basic thing for a variety of other scenarios. We might absorb parking costs into room revenue. We might absorb meeting space costs into room revenue. Unused rooms which the government had to buy in order to secure the building during the visit may be absorbed into the room rate as well if the billing needs require that each room night be invoiced for a specific individual. Why these particular budgetary restrictions end up happening I'm not 100% sure. But from what I can tell a part of it is merely for organizational purposes, while another big part is exactly because people like you who like to bitch about anything you can would get pissed if it wasn't done this way.
Not every hotel in the country would be suitable for a Presidential visit. In fact, most would never be suitable. The design of a property is often a major factor that is taken into consideration whenever at all possible, in order to maintain security. As a business, when the government approaches a hotel with interest in booking an event that will include a Presidential visit we have a business decision to make as to the market value of our accommodations, our ability to secure alternate reservations for that particular time period, etc. If we believe that we can make $250,000 in revenue over the same three day period without hosting the government's event, then the government needs to be willing to pay at least that much in order for us to be willing to accept their event. If they're only willing to pay $175,000 then it's not in our interests and we will decline.
