I honestly don’t know if this is true for all travel professionals, but so far, everyone I’ve worked with does it: we give nicknames. Usually, they’re given to the problem travelers or the ones who get themselves in trouble, and those always come with a good story, but others are given to the nicest and sweetest people we run into simply because they’re so nice and sweet. Here are a few of my most memorable ones.
Two-tank Steve, The Fish Whisperer
First, this man’s name was not Steve. I have no idea what it was. This was the first trip I had ever done, and I was in training under my now co-worker. We were two days into the trip and had personally met each person on the trip at some point, except for two. We’d left messages on their room phone, put itineraries under their door, and knocked on their door several times.
Two hours into our usual morning hospitality desk, this rather short, nerdy-looking man comes storming down the stairs towards us, a slightly taller, pretty, blonde woman behind him, trying to keep up. Behind them was a hotel staffer holding a bunch of excursion brochures and looking nervous. Before he was halfway across the room, the short, nerdy-looking man started hurling insults, cussing, and yelling at us. My colleague waited until the man had closed the gap between us, then gave him the best customer service line I’ve ever heard. “If you keep yelling at me like that, I’m going to go into fight or flight mode, and this is not a runner’s body.”
While this did disarm him and stop his yelling, it did not make him any less mad, and we sat patiently while he explained his story.
He had booked an excursion on his own (meaning we would have no way of knowing he’d booked it) and had missed it. The reason for missing it was unclear, but it sounded like he was blaming a delayed flight that had only delayed him about 3 hours and was still more than 24 hours prior to this excursion. But somehow, he had missed the excursion and was upset with us because of it. He hadn’t been able to find us, the hotel knew nothing about his excursion, and he wanted a refund AND to be rebooked.
Well, we had nothing to do with the flight delay, him missing the excursion, or even him not being able to find us because we’d tried very hard to find him and had made sure he had the information in his room needed to find us should he wish to. But, like good little customer service agents, we went to work trying to fix the issue. My colleague had me take the lead on handling the issue. I need to learn how to deal with this stuff anyway, and this situation was as good a training opportunity as any.
He continued to stay angry while another guest offered to take him and his partner along on another excursion. Our excursion company called every provider they knew to arrange a last-minute trip for him, and I let him rant to me about all the things that had gone wrong on his trip, all of which were his own fault.
It’s during this rant that Steve got his nickname. The specific excursion Steve had booked was a two-tank night drive. He was a SCUBA-certified diver and had been diving all over the Caribbean for many years. This kind of specialty excursion is rare for group travel guests to book, and there aren’t a lot of vendors that supply it. Steve explained to me that he was an excellent diver, preferred night dives because the fish were more active, needed two tanks so he could stay underwater for a couple of hours, and was so passionate about all these things being exactly as he specified because… And I shit you not, these were the exact words that came out of this grown man’s mouth… “I’m like the horse whisperer, but with fish.”
Fortunately, the excursion company saved me from having to respond to that comment as they interrupted, needing Steve to sign a receipt.
Steve, being a reference to SCUBA Steve from that old Adam Sandler movie, became the starting point, and with all the other comedic material we had to work with for this nickname, Two-tank Steve, The Fish Whisperer, became my first and still my favorite nickname for a guest.
The Raccoon
This is actually a coworker’s story, but I’ve heard it retold many times, and I’ve had similarly drunk individuals on many trips. It’s also become a nickname we use frequently for any guest who gets drunk and hungry in the middle of the night.
A guest of a guest, meaning not the person who booked the trip, was part of a 200+ person trip in New Orleans. The actual person who books the trip tends to behave a little better than their friend, significant other, parent, sibling, etc., who shares the room with them, and this was no exception. As a good friend once put it, “New Orleans can make an armature out of an expert,” so alcohol often causes all sorts of shenanigans. She managed to get herself to an incredible level of drunkenness that led to the following situation:
The Groups Manager, Assistant Groups Manager, Sales Manager, and General Manager of the hotel walked up to the host hospitality desk.
Hotel: “We had a bit of a situation last night we wanted you to know about. Everything is fine, it’s all taken care of, and no one is getting kicked off the property, but we wanted to make sure you knew what happened.”
Host: “OK, what happened?”
Hotel: “One of the guests in room 2544 was found in the catering kitchen last night. She had been drinking… A lot… We aren’t really sure how she got to the catering kitchen, but she found it, let herself into the walk-in, and made 60 sandwiches that she intended to give to homeless people on Bourbon Street.”
Host: “……. Sandwiches….”
Hotel: “Yes, about 60 of them. We were able to reason with her. We told her that if she would go to her room immediately and not come out for the rest of the night, we would not charge her for the sandwiches, and we would let her stay on property.”
Host: “Wow. Ok. Anything you need from me?”
Hotel: “Nope, just wanted you to be aware.”
Host: “Alright then. Thanks for letting me know.”
Henceforth, she was known as The Racoon.
Baywatch
Not all nicknames are because someone did something wrong or was difficult. Many of them come from endearing characteristics we notice or something funny the guest did.
I had one trip where everyone was given a nickname. It was a very tight-knit group, and we needed to refer to people frequently. Interestingly, it’s rare that I need to talk about an individual directly, so I often don’t remember names at all. I sometimes have 1,200 people, so there’s no way I’m going to remember names, even if I tried. In this group, however, we were moving to a new hotel every night, and the staff regularly needed to refer to individuals as our couples. Instead of learning everyone’s names, we gave them all nicknames, mostly by accident.
A father-daughter duo from Georgia was called Augusta because of their thick southern accents. One guy had recently broken his leg and was using a peg leg-like device, so we called him Tripod. A family of four was always referred to as “The Fam.”
My personal favorite on this trip was Baywatch. This guy somehow always managed to have his shirt off. Most of the time I wasn’t sure why his shirt was missing but it always seemed to be. He clearly worked out, so he had plenty to show off, but it was always in the strangest places. He’d show up in a hotel lobby to meet the group for dinner with no shirt on. We started calling him Baywatch after the third time he’d done this, and within a day, we started calling him Baywatch to his face. He had a good laugh about it and was a very good sport.
In general, most guests don’t get nicknames, they aren’t used in front of any guests, and they’re all in harmless fun. It’s one of those bits of shared suffering travel professionals use to pass the time and laugh off the ridiculous situations our guests get themselves and us into. But if you’re lucky enough to get a nickname on a trip, it’s safe to say we’ll always remember you.
