BY DAN OKWIRI

There’s lots of cheese that the hotel business is about hospitality. Have no qualms about that, but from experience there’s lot more to it then pushing smiles.

My truth out, hospitality is about daily repairs & brushing toilets sparkling spick & span. Neat as a pin, everyone wants a toilet clean enough to dine a meal.

A moot point, if you’re not ready for constant repairs don’t blanche your spring chicken, it hots oil.

Every morning there’s something that clients will inadvertently destroy or damage.

Despite instructions & dust bins in flux, customers will flush condoms in toilets.

That’s poses a one-banana problem of blocked toilets. To plumb the depths, a new spanner in the works is the condoms ends up in septic tanks.

To pull the chestnuts out of the fire they are not biodegradable, the hotel becomes a permanent client of exhausters to empty the overflowing septic tank. Emptying it sets you back a whacking 20k per trip in rip. Not small change & you will do a minimum 2 trips to haul the lot.

There’s another animal in the room, broken taps & flushes. Despite installing press button toilets, everyone seems to twist them. It’s horrendous, replacing a twisted flush holes your pocket 10 k.

People seem to use toilets for all other purposes other than preening themselves clean. They scrabble holding onto sinks as they carry out some sort of yoga gymnastics in rain shower.

Soon the bathroom sinks begin to wiggle in squiggles. Let me honest in hornet, you have no choice but to make your plumber your best chum. You can do Jack without him. Your plumber is your most serious VIP and hardly 3 days will pass without him treating a plumbing ailment. Am sure your are beginning to understand why many hotels struggle with maintenance.

There’s a time had instant electric showers. A terrible contraption that is fret with fault. Lots of clients leave them inadvertently on but if there’s a glitch of no water, it burns out the coil in spoil.

For some reasons only known in the heavens clients always seem to forget to turn off the instant showers. A tragedy for the hotel proprietor, To replace an instant shower sets you back 3k, & it you used to happen everyday till I went solar in roller. Used to spend an arm & leg, on paying electricians.

My wisest decision was to shift gear from electric instant showers to solar. It gave me a big relief from electricians. There’s no switch to switch on if you are on solar, for swiveling the tap kicks starts the hot water shower. Naked as a jaybird, now let’s talk about cleaning. You may not be in the know, whether the room is occupied by a client or not you got to spruce it everyday. Otherwise it acquires a musty odious stench.

It’s dreary monotonous work, not for the faint hearted. Everything in a hotel is about cleanliness, have slept in swanky hotels & they fall short. I would rather spend in a spartan hotel with a clean room, then a glitzy one with 60 inch screen.

Some clients use towels for everything but to dry themselves. Blokes use it to wipe their shoes, walk on them with muddy shoes.

Why not, they feel they have license cause they have paid for board. Imagine the predicament they mete to the laundry staff? How uncouth.Hotels consume lots of water washing linen & livery. You can do nothing without it but close down. Water is scarce commodity in Kenya & this poses a problem.

A truck of water a whopping 5k. Many who invest in hotel, will put money into ritzy interiors but fail to invest in water. Have slept in snazzy hotels but it’s a snarky ordeal without water.

On matters stomach, people expect what they can’t get in their homes from hotels. Despite telling clients that the kitchen closes at 9pm hrs.

They will acquiesce to it, then suddenly kick start a storm hurling expletives in flurry waking all the residents at 2 am demanding a meal. If you can’t stomach that, forget hospitality in totality.

Sum & substance, you got to be an early riser in hospitality, to get out a buffet breakfast ready by 0700 hrs, a juggle of sorts.

If staff delay, you end up drowning in the pool deep end. Necessity is the mother of invention, multi tasking is a must, nobody working in a hotel is boss to floss. Cheese to getting your hands dirty even if you’re boss to get the breakfast out.

Prepare to wake @ 5 am or earlier everyday. You now know why Wuod Baba hardly winks! Dealing with pilferage one of the skulks in cabinet. By the way it’s not just staff who steal but some customers prey on other customers.

It’s a vicious world. Electric gadgets are today stupendously costly. If a laptop or mobile goes missing & it gets to social media or trip advisor (a website westerners use to assess hotels) your customers will flee in droves. Hotels which have a high staff turnover, come with mega theft.

The staff feel no loyalty & look for quick bucks.School of hard knocks, dealing with customers no Black Forest cake. Some customers can be awkward & rude, and request for services that they know is impossible.

A few get a thrill in frill belittling hotel staff, for they feel they are inferior. It takes effort for the staff to retain their smiles in mile. Appreciate hotel staff they go the extra mile to make you smile too.

Am not saying it’s all gloom & doom, but you got to know you require lots of passion to run a hotel. A shoo-in being in the hotel industry gives you a flood of friends.

It’s no great shakes, almost all prominent figures own hotels, people their apple pie. If you have domestic issues at home your hotel is your saving den. The nitty gritty if denied food & laundry at home, you will get these services in flood & with smile at your own hotel. Nobody can blackmail you to deny you food in subdued.

A former DC in Migori from Makueni who was retiring, in his retirement gig bubbled to me in 2012. “Wuod Baba am setting a bed and breakfast in Kitui.” I asked him why, for it won’t mint you a sea of quid but it gives you enough to get by. He cheesed.

“No brainer, want to be just like you, popping with friends and eating roast Nile Perch when I feel like.”Stumped, am still trying to figure where he would get Nile Perch in Kitui?

(The piece was first posted on Facebook, the writer reserves rights to this article)