Palmer House Case Study

Chapter 1

The Palmer House

I had just graduated from Iowa State University and was excited to be working downtown Chicago. I was particularly thrilled to be working at the Palmer House Hilton.

Originally I was offered a food and beverage position in the Hilton’s management training program in Oklahoma City. I had no interest in relocating to Oklahoma and I wanted to get experience in the front office so I accepted an entry level front desk job at a wage of $7 per hour. Despite missing out on a fast track opportunity, I have never regretted starting at the bottom in the front office. Besides, with four years of experience flipping burgers at McDonald’s, including two years as a grill supervisor, what more could I have possibly had left to learn about food and beverage?

During my stint at the Palmer House, I held several positions within the front office, including a few months as the room inspector. As room inspector, I would reconcile room statuses that were discrepant between the front desk, housekeeping and maintenance departments. I would spend several hours each day going into rooms to confirm if they were vacant, clean, occupied, dirty or out of order.

My skin had already begun to thicken as I performed most of the walks (relocating guests with guaranteed reservations to other hotels) on oversold nights. However, one day in the spring of 1986, I experienced a situation that was as close to being out of control as you can get. That day was a perfect storm of problems. Somehow the hotel had become over sold by 400 guest rooms on a night that the entire city was sold out. To make things worse and to add a little drama, it was forty degrees and pouring rain, traffic was terrible and everyone seemed to be in a bad mood. The result was a 10-hour shift of non-stop stress, confusion and mass guest