It’s happened to all of us: You spend weeks or months getting ready for a trip. You’re packed for every eventuality. You arrive three hours early at the airport, and your flight goes without a hitch. You’ve made it all the way to your hotel. You relax. The hard part is over.
Unless it isn’t.
Despite having checked in ahead of time by filling out every possible piece of information known to man, you find yourself stranded for eons at your hotel’s reception. For some unfathomable reason, it’s taking them ages to check you in. Why?
What Happened At This Marriott Hotel?
On Apr. 19, Kyle Bartholomew, founder of airport-specific social connection app Gate F8, posed this very question on his app’s TikTok account (@gatef8). This was after he stayed at an Arizona Marriott. In his video, which has since accumulated over 50,000 views, this TikTok traveler humorously poked fun at this small but universal aspect of the traveling experience.
“Let me ask you this question,” Bartholomew begins in his video. “I booked a room. All my information is in there. I picked the room, paid for the room. Everything should be complete, right? Why is it that when you walk up to the receptionist or the check-in or whatever at the front of the hotel, they bang around on the keyboard or the computer for 10 minutes?”
Bartholomew then points out that he already gave the hotel all his information upon booking, so what gives?
“What information could possibly be being exchanged outside of who I am, which I’ve already put in on the website, the room I picked, which I’ve already picked, the credit card information, which it’s already paid for?” Bartholomew finishes. “… Genuine question. I would love to hear what is happening behind the computer when someone comes to check into the hotel.”
A fair enough question—and one that’s been asked before. So, is there an actual answer, or are we (the guests) just imagining things?
Why Does Hotel Check-In Take So Long?
While Bartholomew does seem exasperated in his TikTok, he’s hardly alone. People have long flocked to the internet, wondering what on Earth makes hotel check-in processes take so darn long. Now, hotel workers have dusted off their keyboards to explain.
One Reddit post in r/NoStupidQuestions bluntly reiterated Bartholomew’s TikTok question by asking, “People who work the desk at hotels, what the [expletive] takes so long to check people in?”
“Almost every hotel I go to, when I’m checking in the person takes my info and then types away for like 5 minutes straight, what is going on?” the Redditor asks. “I gave all my info when I made the reservation, how is it not as quick as ‘okay here’s your room, here’s your key, thanks for stopping by’?”
Hotel workers in the comments section explained that sometimes hotel systems are positively ancient and therefore run extremely slowly. Sometimes, there are “secret audits” in which workers have to fill out a private checklist to do their due diligence. If you’ve booked your stay via a third-party platform, that can apparently cause major delays as those platforms don’t always fully or accurately transfer guest information to hotel systems.
Hotel Workers Weigh In
However, Bartholomew’s viewers were also able to shed some light on this situation. In his comments section, one viewer—who said they “have a degree in hotel management and worked in hotels for 7 years”—pointed out that sometimes workers are “flagging you to see if they have any upgrades.”
“They look at your past stay history, then see if there are other rooms available,” the viewer explained. “Then it takes time to move other rooms around … especially if it’s a big hotel.”
Another commenter offered an in-depth explanation of all the moving pieces hotel receptionists are dealing with at the moment of check-in.
“Most often when a guest walks up to check in, we are still closing out another guest session … and the system is still processing it (takes a LONG time),” they wrote. “Or the room you were preassigned is not yet ready and we are rearranging inventory to get you in a room asap. Think of a hotel as a giant puzzle … Some pieces fit together perfectly, some fit okay, some don’t fit at all … It’s a constantly changing puzzle with staff always having outdated info.”
He Thanks Hotel Workers
In an email to SubPlot News, Bartholomew expressed gratitude to the hotel workers who shared their experiences in his comments section, calling their stories “illuminating.”
“I have a ton of empathy for employees who are forced to use bad software,” Bartholomew wrote. “I have a job myself that we have a plethora of software tools, and know first hand how frustrating it can be when your tools are the blocker / pain point. And that’s me as a knowledge worker (sitting in front of computer by myself).”
He continued, “I couldn’t imagine being guest-facing and dealing with struggling tech. Really makes you think, that the hotel org themselves should be investing in better technology to empower their employees.”
Bartholomew also says he “didn’t realize how many steps actually go into getting” guests into their hotel rooms, adding that it “makes total sense, that there are a lot of moving parts between … walking through the front door, and actually getting into a room that’s ready.”
He Sees The Other Perspective
Judging from the popularity of his video, it seems Bartholomew is not alone in that surprise; he himself remarked that the video likely gained so much traction because check-in frustration is likely “ just a really common shared experience.”
“It does defy logic a bit, to stand there in front of the desk, often for long long waits, when you’re thinking, ‘I’ve done my part, I’ve booked the room, picked it, paid for it, given you my information. Why are y’all not doing your part?’” Bartholomew wrote. “It can truly boggle the mind if you don’t take a second to think about the bad software the employees are dealing with. And probably the hosts of crazy ppl they see on the daily … I think main takeaway, is for the powers at be at Marriott, Hilton, etc, invest in some better software for your team!! How big’s your yacht gotta be!??!?!?!”
How big, indeed? Justice for hotel employees everywhere.
We also reached out to Marriott via email.
