Hotel Managers

If Camarillo decides to limit the amount of time guests may stay in a hotel, the city will drive away business, hotel managers say. The Planning Commission has recommended that the City Council limit the number of days visitors can stay in a hotel to 60 in order to collect additional hotel taxes, Mayor Charlotte Craven said Tuesday. The City Council voted 4 to 1 Feb. 25 to approve the ordinance, with Craven dissenting. Tonight, the City Council will decide whether to adopt the ordinance.

A week before a new minimum wage for Long Beach hotels goes into effect, a large, marina-area hotel has told all of its employees - 75 people - that they will be laid off, according to union representatives. But in a confrontation with union activists at the hotel Friday, a man who identified himself as the manager of the 175-room Best Western Golden Sails denied that the ballot measure triggered the cuts, saying bad economic conditions were to blame. When he walked away, the protesters followed him through the hotel chanting "Si se puede.

They rarely have to cook a meal, clean the house or iron a shirt. And when they arrive at an airport, it's often to a waiting car that whisks them to one of the city's best hotels, where they entertain lavishly and dine on international cuisine. They are the wives of hotel managers. They pay for these luxuries with lives that often lack privacy, by having husbands who are on call 24 hours a day, and sometimes with loneliness.

Downtown Los Angeles will play host to thousands of game geeks next year as part of a three-year contract for the Game Developers Conference Next to be held in the City of Angels, pumping an estimated $18.8 million into the local economy. GDC Next represents the latest coup for the Los Angeles Convention Center, which is scheduled for 24 conventions this year - the most since 2001. The show has attracted more than 3,000 attendees each year in Austin, Texas, where it has been held for the last eight years, said Simon Carless, executive vice president of UBM TechWeb Game Network.

Hotels in western Ventura County are doing a brisk business as residents in hard-hit areas of the San Fernando Valley and elsewhere seek refuge from the hassles of post-quake life. The first wave of earthquake victims began piling into hotels along the Ventura Freeway within hours of Monday's quake. They drove north to escape battered homes left in shambles of broken glass and overturned furniture.

The nation's hotel industry, already struggling to pull out of its worst slump in decades, is now suffering from another loss in revenue because of the booming popularity of cellphones and laptop computers. In the past, hotel operators could expect to collect extra money by charging guests for in-room phone calls and on-demand movies. But today most guests check into a hotel packing cellphones and laptop computers that are linked to the Internet and loaded with movies, games and music.

Hoping to keep its 119 rooms filled, Hotel Erwin on Venice Beach is offering an unusual promotion for its countercultural clientele: an Ink and Stay package that includes $100 toward a tattoo and a bottle of tequila to numb the pain. Down the coast at the Hard Rock Hotel in San Diego, guests who get the Hard Rock and a Hog deal can roll through the All-American City on a Harley Davidson motorcycle that comes complimentary with a two-night stay. But for hotel perks, it's hard to beat the deal offered at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, where your stay comes with a free rental of a Mercedes, Porsche or BMW convertible.

After listening to innkeepers describe how an ordinance limiting the time guests may stay at their hotels would drive away business, the Camarillo City Council decided to reevaluate the matter. "They pointed out to the council that the action would restrict their business by not allowing people to stay longer than 60 days, because about 10% of their business came from long-term guests," Mayor Charlotte Craven said.

Free breakfasts don't cut it anymore. The nation's hotels, still in the grip of an economic downturn, are borrowing the sales strategies from the nation's retailers to woo overnight guests. If you liked Kmart's "blue light specials," you might like the limited-time bargains offered by Hilton Hotels, among others. Superstore Beverages & More throws an annual 5-cent sale, but the national hotel chain of Red Roof Inn recently launched a 1-cent sale. Fans of high-end clothier Barneys New York clamor for its "private sales."

In a pact hailed as a major labor breakthrough for L.A.'s vital tourism industry, union leaders and executives at half a dozen major hotels yesterday unveiled a new, six-year contract that includes substantial wage increases and other gains for the mostly immigrant work force. Elected officials, union chiefs and hotel managers all lauded the pact in an unusual show of solidarity for an industry long marked by contentious labor relations. "We want the world to see that L.A.

The gig : Efrem Harkham, 55, is the founder and chairman of Luxe Hotels, a Los Angeles company that owns two local hotels and Luxe Worldwide Hotels, a management firm that oversees the operation of 200 independently owned hotels. Worldwide: The company employs 315 workers and provides marketing, sales, reservations and other services for hotels in Europe, South America and the Middle East, as well as North America. Locally, it owns the Luxe Sunset Boulevard Hotel in West Los Angeles and the Luxe Rodeo Drive Hotel in Beverly Hills.

When Pilar Hamil landed a job as a Disneyland tour guide 17 years ago, her parents and friends assumed it was a temporary gig to be followed by a real career elsewhere. But Hamil didn't leave Disneyland or the tourism industry. Instead, she worked her way up from a theme park guide to a hotel desk clerk to a supervisor. "I wanted to work where people are happy," she said from behind her desk where she now manages the 481-room Disney's Paradise Pier Hotel, one of three hotels in the resort.

The nation's hotel industry, already struggling to pull out of its worst slump in decades, is now suffering from another loss in revenue because of the booming popularity of cellphones and laptop computers. In the past, hotel operators could expect to collect extra money by charging guests for in-room phone calls and on-demand movies. But today most guests check into a hotel packing cellphones and laptop computers that are linked to the Internet and loaded with movies, games and music.

Question: I recently found a notice on TripAdvisor about the hotel I manage that said TripAdvisor thinks "individuals or entities associated with or having an interest in this property may have interfered with traveler reviews and/or the popularity index for this property." Now I've received an e-mail that says this is a violation of TripAdvisor policy and in some places a violation of federal law. Neither my staff nor I did anything wrong. Now what? S. Benham San Diego Answer: This is such a tangled issue that it's best to start not at the beginning but at Step 2. Go to http://www.

Free breakfasts don't cut it anymore. The nation's hotels, still in the grip of an economic downturn, are borrowing the sales strategies from the nation's retailers to woo overnight guests. If you liked Kmart's "blue light specials," you might like the limited-time bargains offered by Hilton Hotels, among others. Superstore Beverages & More throws an annual 5-cent sale, but the national hotel chain of Red Roof Inn recently launched a 1-cent sale. Fans of high-end clothier Barneys New York clamor for its "private sales."

Hotel problems are inconvenient and annoying, but managers often will do something for you so you'll return. The best managers give their guests options. What can you expect when you complain? Here are some examples, but the sky's the limit: An upgrade to a better room Free drinks, fruit and cheese basket, wine, Champagne, flowers, candy, cookies, chocolate covered-strawberries or a hotel T-shirt Lunch, dinner, room service or an in-room movie, on the house Free airport transportation A significant discount of your bill A complementary return visit A comparable room or suite (at no charge)

A week before a new minimum wage for Long Beach hotels goes into effect, a large, marina-area hotel has told all of its employees - 75 people - that they will be laid off, according to union representatives. But in a confrontation with union activists at the hotel Friday, a man who identified himself as the manager of the 175-room Best Western Golden Sails denied that the ballot measure triggered the cuts, saying bad economic conditions were to blame. When he walked away, the protesters followed him through the hotel chanting "Si se puede.

During one frantic week last October, the posh Westin South Coast Plaza hotel surrendered its entire 12th floor to a select crew of housekeepers who scoured the rooms and halls. The newly washed walls, shampooed carpets and dry-cleaned drapes all were for the benefit of special guests: nonsmokers. "We went from top to bottom cleaning our rooms," said Catherine J. Boire, spokeswoman for the Costa Mesa hotel.

She collected old bottles for recycling and used the dollars earned to help the homeless on skid row. She was so devoted to her job that she declined her daughter's offers for vacations in Hawaii. But the one pastime she couldn't resist was watching Los Angeles Lakers games. That portrait of Hideko Oyama, a 74-year-old Japanese immigrant and manager of Little Tokyo's Chetwood Hotel who became the year's first homicide victim in downtown Los Angeles, emerged Thursday as authorities filed murder and attempted robbery charges against a Chinese man for the Jan. 5 crime.

Japanese tourist Kazuki Okabe arrived in Los Angeles this week hoping to go sightseeing and backpacking in Southern California. Instead, he said he stumbled onto the bleeding body of a Little Tokyo hotel manager Tuesday morning in what was to become the first slaying in downtown Los Angeles in 2010. The 27-year-old tourist said the woman had been slashed from her chin to the side of her neck with a sharp instrument, but she was still conscious enough to whisper a request for him to call 911. She later died at a hospital.