A sign outside the New Orleans Marriott Warehouse Arts District is getting some attention because it seems to capture how little guests matter to the chain: “Benches are for Marriott employees only.”
But while I’ve certainly seen hotels see guests, and Bonvoy elite members in particular, as marks more than customers I don’t often see employees treated much better. So something else has to be going on here.
Like deadheading pilots having upgrade priority over customers now at American and United Airlines, is this a business forgetting that the customers are why it’s there? I actually don’t think so.
This sign is almost certainly not about guests. It’s in New Orleans. It’s about loitering control. They’re also flagging NO LOITERING and NO SMOKING. That says, we’ve had people hanging out here who aren’t supposed to be here and we want them gone.
Hotels (and downtown properties generally) treat lingering near entrances as a security and brand problem. It brings panhandling, sleeping, smoking clusters, intoxication, and arguments. They don’t want vagrants, and are doing it poorly.
It’s likely this is a spot where employees frequent, and saying “employees only” means ‘this is for employees and not the people we do not want.’ It’s a proxy for “no public use.” Saying ‘customers only’ invites debate over whether someone might be or become a customer (and what about a regular guest not currently staying? let them sit and enforcement becomes uneven). Employees is a bright line.
Still, this is bad framing. The problem the hotel probably wants to address here is smoking, sleeping, panhandling, drug use, and harassment. “Employees only” sounds like guests aren’t welcome (that’s how it’s being taken by many online). Instead, use benches you can sit on but not camp on, with dividers and no flat sleeping surfaces. Add more lighting. But this sign signals poor hospitality. To guests: “don’t sit.” To staff: “your break area is out on the sidewalk, under a NO LOITERING sign.”
For employees and currently registered guests only.
Yeah, because homeless people really care about following the rules. But now there’s a sign, oh my…that will surely solve the problem.
@Mantis — I’d have just gone with: ‘Nice sign. Good luck enforcing it.’ Or, fine, needlessly vilify the homeless. (Anyway, how’s Asia these days? What do they do about benches over there?)
@Mantis It isn’t that the sign will discourage them. It’s more likely that gives them a legal right to exclude them. Thankfully NAL.
@This comes to mind — Lawyer or not, based on common sense and a basic understanding of our history as a species, we should know that most businesses ‘open to the public’ can still restrict certain areas and behaviors, so long as it isn’t discriminatory.
Like, the hotel’s sign should not say, ‘No Swedes,’ because that’d be discrimination based on nationality, which is a no-no. Yet, these days, anything is on the table, because the far-right is abusing their power. (Let’s be real, if it was them, they’d probably go with… ‘No Somalis’ based on our Dear Leader’s Christmas hate-posts.)
NOLA is a crap hole city anyway and not worth the time and trouble to go there. It is hot. It is muggy. It is way over priced. The Bourbon Street area is dirty and in need of a good scrubbing. Mice run rampant in the dining room of an upscale hotel where I stayed. Sidewalks are needing a lot of repair. Drunks walk the streets, stumbling and spilling their drinks along the way. More drunks and homeless litter the sidewalks. People stand in line for 45 minutes to get a beignet at a “world famous” place. There was a gay pride parade in front of our hotel. It was colorful, well behaved and great fun to watch and clap along with the participants. It was the nude bicycle parade, escorted by the NOLA police where I drew the line. And…people bring their kids to this town? When I visited the flight deck on the way home, my captain friend asked me what was the best part of my trip. “Two words…V1, Rotate!”
Why not just hire a doorman?
@Christian
Because a sign costs less, obviously.
I regret I haven’t visited View From The Wing lately, because *I* was the one who posted the picture to the Marriott group on Facebook back on 23 December. I was exercise walking that morning and when I walked past the back side of the hotel (on Fulton St), I saw this sign and it made me laugh. And honestly, that was the only reason I stopped to take the picture—because it struck me as a bit silly.
I wasn’t trying to make any great statement; the Marriott Facebook groups frequently have complaints about diminished benefits for being a higher tier Bonvoy member, some justified and some not IMO, and it was intended mostly as a light-hearted joke related to these complaints. Truthfully there isn’t a lot of reason guests would want to loiter where these benches are at, as there’s nothing especially pleasing about the aesthetic on that part of Fulton Street. But it’s only a block away from where the street turns into a pedestrian plaza with restaurants and shops, so it isn’t out of the way either.
In any case, I don’t think the commentary from the post should be seen as anything more than banter related to the general disappointment in the direction Bonvoy has been going over the past few years.
Knew this had to be the Fulton St benches, which is confirmed in the original photographer’s comment. I stay at this hotel a few times a year & have yet to see a guest choose to sit next to a stack of pallets, beside dock entrance doors with a view of the dumpsters across the street. These benches are way down the block from the guest tables & chairs outside the hotel restaurant/bar. The main entrance (with doorman & valet) is on the opposite side of the building.