THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 27, 1996 TAG: 9607260058
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE ADDIS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 154 lines
THEY'RE OUT THERE somewhere, at this very moment, and they're headed your way.
They're pounding pavement on I-95, en route to the Oceanfront. They're busting the speed limits and running other cars into the guardrails in a headlong dash for seven glorious days of carping, whining and conniving on a vacation they will not enjoy and never had any hopes of enjoying.
These are the people everybody wishes would just stay home.
They'll turn a boa constrictor loose in their room and complain that the maid - who's huddled in a corner, catatonic with fear - did a sloppy cleaning job. They'll leave rotted fruit and moldy Cheetos all over the place and insist on a refund because the room has ants.
They'll demand a discount if it rains.
They are small in number but mighty in impact. Of the thousands who'll check in at Oceanfront hotels this weekend, only a handful will be jerks. But they will leave a large footprint - probably on some desk clerk's back.
Understand this from the outset: Everybody here loves tourists. They are the bright red corpuscles that feed the veins of the Virginia Beach economy. If tourists had a patron saint, every hotel owner in this beachfront town would light a candle and lay down alms. They'd send a prayer into every sunset that the throngs will keep on coming.
But if you prod enough, local hoteliers will confess that a very few of their guests are enough to drive a God-fearing human to thoughts of murder most foul.
"You get some people,'' said Dawson Sterling, who owns the Princess Anne Inn at 25th Street, ``who are so happy to be here that you could put them in the broom closet and all they'd do is smile.
``But some of the others, I'll tell you: They're not happy at home, they're not happy with their lives, and there not gonna be happy here.
``You wonder why they even bother to go on vacation.''
Sterling and three of his crew - Carolyn Conley, Cathy Pender and Sandy Jackson - were bouncing tourist-from-hell stories off the office walls with the foxhole humor of combat veterans. About one in 50 guests fits the profile, they figured.
``Some days it seems like one in every two,'' Sterling said with a weary grin. ``Seems like there's always at least one in the building.''
Like the guy who arrived a month before his reservation date. He screamed a fist-pounding fit of bloody murder, right up to when Sterling produced a letter, in the guy's wife's handwriting, proving it wasn't the hotel that was mixed up.
``I mean, this guy was going berserk,'' Sterling said. ``You shoulda seen the look on his face when I showed him that letter.''
One woman insisted that they reconfigure the furniture in her room so her head would point north while she slept.
And then there's the guest, a regular, who covers the TV and radio with blankets because he knows that all electronics are evil - and he'll preach their evils to anybody who has the patience to listen.
Just the strain of getting here can be enough to break people's hopes of having any fun.
``You'll see these people pull up,'' said Jimmy Capps, owner of the Breakers Resort Inn at 16th Street, ``and they've been in the car eight, 10 hours with a gang of kids screaming in the back, and they're really up-tight.
``At that point, if the least little thing goes wrong, they can't handle it. They're just ready to explode.
``We try to get them to calm down, relax, maybe go out on the Boardwalk and see the ocean while we get things straightened out.''
Sterling said he, too, had seen victims of white-line fever. ``We had this one couple from Ohio, they're regulars, we know them. So they're, what, eight or 12 hours in the car? They pull up and get out and they get into this incredible shouting match right there in the parking lot.
``They got right back in the car and went home. One of my people saw them. Turned right around, never even came and checked in.''
The worst, though, are the natural-born scammers. They know the hotels are vulnerable, that they have to keep people happy so the word-of-mouth stays upbeat. They'll look for any little thing that's wrong and try to chip a few bucks off the bill.
``There's some small percentage who have caught on and actually try to take advantage of you,'' said John Giattino, manager of the Clarion Hotel on Bonney Road. ``You look for patterns. You'll find people who complain and complain but they won't let you in to fix whatever it is that's bothering them.
``Then you realize that what they want is their money back.''
Room-packing is a common scheme. Usually the towels give it away.
``They check in, maybe with just two people registered,'' said Giattino. ``Then somebody will call and complain that there aren't enough towels. So you go up there and find nine people sleeping in the room, maybe three families splitting it three ways.''
``Oh, yeah,'' said Dawson Sterling, ``we see that all the time. Two of them will come to the desk, but we know they've got two vanloads out there, packed with people. We try to watch the parking lot, eye them as they come in. And they'll get really upset when you question them about it.''
Are those the same people who steal the hotel's towels?
``Towels?'' said Sterling, in mock surprise. ``Some people will steal anything. Bedspreads. Pillowcases. We've had them steal the batteries out of the TV remotes.''
Mike Andrassy, who with his son, Greg, runs the Budget Lodge at 34th Street, knows all the routines. ``I just won't allow chiseling,'' he said. ``If it's a legitimate complaint we'll do anything we can. If they're really unhappy we'll just try to find them another place to stay.
``Maybe half are legitimate complaints. But there's always somebody trying to beat you any way they can.
``You come to find that the people who complain the most don't really want to leave. They'll rant and rant, and it always boils down to one thing: It's about money. They find something to complain about and they hope we'll adjust the bill.
``Had a plumber in here one night about 9 o'clock, and he banged on some pipes for about 20 minutes. Next day, a guest comes down and he wants a full refund.''
``Then we find out,'' said Greg Andrassy, ``that he had two teen-aged sons he'd sneaked in there and he'd never paid for them.''
Giattino, whose Clarion Hotel caters to the business trade, has run a number of Florida resort hotels in his career. The difference between traveling business folks and traveling families, he said, lies in who's paying the bill.
``In the leisure trade,'' he said, ``these people are spending their own money. They don't have some company paying their expenses.''
So they'll cut any corner they can - some legitimately, others well beyond the bounds of honor.
``People will be happy with a reservation they made over the phone,'' said Mike Andrassy. ``They're willing to pay what we agreed. Say, $100 for a room on the ocean, great view. OK, then they ride down the avenue and they see a sign that says $45 or $44.50 and they want me to match it.
``They don't know what I know, that that's a room with no view and it's above the exhaust fan.''
Another ruse, especially when the weather turns sour, is as old as the first kid who skipped out on his English exam: ``My grandmother died.'' That one pops up when guests want to duck out earlier than they'd promised.
``People who leave early,'' said Greg Andrassy, ``they'll lie, they'll make up things wrong with the room, they'll tell you their grandmother died.''
``It's always on rainy days,'' his father said. ``They'll say they're sick from bad seafood, or their mother just died. Then you check and find out they had no long-distance calls. You want to ask them, `Oh yeah? How'd you find out?'
``There are no problems when it's hot and sunny. But, I'll tell you, when it's cloudy and rainy, the problems come out like . . . .'' He left that thought hanging in the air, with a woeful shake of the head.
Some don't even bother with excuses: They've booked a room at a beach resort, so constant sunshine must be part of the bargain. If the weather's lousy they'll demand a discount, or even a full refund.
Giattino said a Florida guest once waved his hotel's brochure in his face and demanded her money back. ``The brochure showed a picture of sunshine and the ocean, and they felt it was part of the guest experience when we sold them the room.
``To them, we'd promised sunshine and there was no sun, so they deserved a refund for their stay.
``A hotelier is many things to many people, and it's really interesting what people think of the powers we have. They think we can control God and the weather and the airlines and the ships at sea.
``But,'' he said with a shrug, ``there's just so much you can do.'' ILLUSTRATION: Illustration
JOHN EARLE
The Virginian-Pilot by CNB