housekeeper

guest service agent

front desk agent

laundry attendant

general manager

Extended Stay Hotels

There are few points may help you to make the right decision and keep you away from this job, I will go star by star so you understand why One Star for each category and then you decide the overall.

1-Life balance/Job work:
There is no time balance, you will be called anytime including middle of the night, and they will do anything, and I mean absolutely anything to avoid paying you overtime.
No matter what position you are, you will be doing everything.
For example if you thought front desk is a classy simple office job, you are wrong, at least about in this company.
You will be washing dishes, removing guest trash from 40 Gal trash can, picking up dishes from front of the guest rooms, doing laundry cause night laundry chose to sleep during their shift because there is no manager on duty or to be fair most of the time its too much work for one person not to forget maintenance job you will be doing fixing thing and if you don't have enough luck you will end up cleaning rooms.
There is One maintanance, 3-4 Housekeepers and 3-4 front desk for Over 120 rooms.
Every staff are overloaded with work, managers work extended hours over 12-15 hours pay on salary which under pay so you will always struggle with bills.

2- Compensation:
Front desk, housekeeper and night laundry makes 25 cents over the minimum pay.
Managers make as much as a front desk supervisor makes in any other brand. which is minimum salary pay.

**Benefits : Managers are good, rest are screwed!

3- Job security: 
during training they tell managers "Change the people or Change the people".
There was a HR training, teaching managers how to fire employee and they ensured managers they will not be investigated.
Matter of fact, this company has a great reputation to fire employee unfair and being sued all the time. Just google this and point will be proven "extended stay america being sued by employees".

*** Advancement : They promote you when they want,not when you worked hard for it or when you deserve it.
Do not count on fair raise, there is none!
Favoritism and sexisem is runnig this company and if you say the truth they will find the way to fire you.

4-Management: 
 If you are lucky to have a good general manager, your life is lot easier(I had few) from district manager and above they are full of it, Pay difference between you and and your District manager is $30-$35 per hour and guess what, you do more work than them suddenly Regional director make double what district manager makes, so go figure it out why staff are overloaded with work and why being fired easily, they do anything to keep their job and pay.
District manager and above are just preacher, they say things they don't even follow themselves and thats all about it.

5- Job Culture:
They give you somthing called vision statement on a laminated poster, its great point of view if they really follow it.
If they just stop treating employee like slave, that would be appropriate start.
They are keep changing the format of the company which shows company is headed to failure.
Recently they change the hotel managers to general managers, promised improvement and raise, they even did a survey about how company treating the employee and nothing changed.
last week they demoted group of regional directors and cut their pay.
Company COO just disappeared, they fired him without any announcement and he was just hired year ago and made the company for employee lot worse.
Many of the top corporate people that were working hard for this company for 15-18 years and helped it to get through bankruptcy and transition quite in since all this terrible changes and Jim Donald, the fired CEO from starbucks took over.

You might be wondering why I am still with this company then?

Once you work for such a terrible company you don't qualify for any good management position  in better brands unless you start from beginning, but who is going to pay the bills?
Once I found a same or better paying job I will walk out.
And no, if you tell yourself it will get better, YOU ARE WRONG! ( I told that to myself for first 2 years, its just getting worse.)

Extended Stay America, like any company, has its good and bad areas. It's a great place to start in management for sure.

As a General Manager you will experience highs and lows in you job. One of the lows is the constant fight for the company to pay more money to your employees so they will stick around. As a whole, the company has not come to the understanding that if you give your employees low pay, you are just training them to go somewhere else. 

ESA has a reputation for being just a little better than Motel 6, but this is something they are trying to overcome and I applaud them for that.
Believe me, this isn't a Motel 6.

One of the things that I loved about ESA is it wasn't a franchise. In places like Montana where K-Diamond, which loves to buy franchising companies and treats their customers and employees badly, you will appreciate a company structure.

With that being said, ESA seems to pass around hotels that aren't in a huge market like Kansas City, California, etc. And in that, is where the problem lies from my perspective. 

In the almost four years that I was with ESA, I had 4 Regional Mangers and 5 District Managers. Of the District Managers, I learned that all had different personalities as well as the Regional Managers. Of those Regional and District Managers I only found one Regional and two District Managers that really cared about you. They listened to the people at the sight instead of dictating policy to you from their perspective.

I say their perspective, because each set of Regional and District managers saw the policy different. And each one of them looked at you funny if you told them something different. And they would act as if you were the only person that ever told them that people did things differently. This can get old quickly.

I learned something from each of the interactions I have to say. All of them had good ideas and some I learned what not to do at times. 

ESA has to remember that each state and even city has its own culture and you can't cookie cutter it out to look the same in each city. I don't think they do that to the extreme, but it needs some work. 

At ESA you will learn each aspect of your job and others because of the high turn over. In ways I appreciated knowing more than the average GM in another hotel, but remembering that you are salary and you agree to 50 hours a week while being paid for 40 right from the start. I know GM's that work 60 to 80 hours per week and have for years. Some of this might be due to micro management (which is looked highly upon for promotion), but sometimes they can't keep people and because you can't have overtime the GM must fill in. So one day you might be the front desk person. GM, and Night Laundry person with no sleep.

ESA tries to keep the least amount of employees yet want the greatest results. Many hotels with less rooms have 5 or more housekeepers working, two front desk staff per shift one night shift person per shift. They have a laundry person who finishes laundry during the day and afternoon. With a Night person doing laundry, the hotel is at more risk, because no one is minding the hotel, but back in the back doing all the laundry from the day, which can be substantial. 

Like I said, however, I do believe that ESA is a great place to begin your management career. I would no recommend for seasoned GM's. Your District managers seemed to be micro-managers and have little concern about if you are burned out or if you have a life. You get 2% raises so make sure you get what you want walking in the door. Also if you are young many of the regional and district people are as well. Like attracts like. They will help you move up into higher positions by telling you what to expect in interviews, and helping you to learn what you will be expected to know. However if you are older and younger people hold those higher positions....good luck!

A typical day at work begins with walking through the doors to find that not enough housekeepers were scheduled and you will be overloaded with rooms to clean. Management does not care if you are worked to death. The rooms at our hotel are extremely overused and left filthy and trashed by most of the guests we get. We get a lot of construction workers and other shady characters who don't care what condition they leave the room in when they leave. Management doesn't want to hear that it will take you longer than the insanely short time they expect a room to be cleaned in, which is 25 min. They want you to get that room done asap and move on to the next. It is truly all about the dollar with this company. Bonuses in the managers pockets are what dictates this place. For every dollar they save in NOT ordering what is needed, for every labor hour they save by working housekeepers to death instead of understanding why it takes longer than their allotted time they allow, they get a nice fat bonus at the end of the year, all got on the blood of their overworked employees. This place is a joke. Kaizen is a joke. The managers and those above them have no clue how their hotel really runs. It is the lower staff that make this place. We are not appreciated. We are overworked, understaffed. Again, its all about saving $$$ so they can get their bonuses. The only real upside are the coworkers. We all get along great. We understand what each of us have to deal with on a daily basis. We have each others back because the company sure doesn't. Their "change your people or change your people" is about molding them into robots and overwork them and if they don't march to your beat then change them out with new ones and pray you get ones that let you walk all over them. The hardest part of this job are the nasty guests we get that trash the rooms and that makes for a very stressful and hard job. It is very hard on the body. The most enjoyable part are the returning guests that you enjoy seeing and get to know well. Meeting so many good people from all over the US and the world. My advice to corporate is to stop cracking the whip and treating us like a slave, Appreciate us and pay us a bit more than you do. Don't  sacrifice your employees to line your wallet at the end of the year with your bonus. I say to just avoid working here. You won't be valued, you will be used and abused. If you don't march to their ridiculous beat they will toss you to the curb and find another fool who will. This place has a revolving door. They can't keep housekeepers, they quit left and right because they are overworked when they do get to work, they under paid and under appreciated. They expect housekeepers to have no life and to survive on the measly hours they schedule them for.

My duties as a General Manager were providing an exceptional experience to every guest, growing top line revenues, maximizing department profitability and maintaining positive owner relations at the same time. I am responsible for ensuring that all hotel operations are carried out professionally, to exceed brand standards and at the highest level of service. Effective leadership, training, coaching and motivation to engage and communicate with the hotel staff, supervisors and managers on a daily basis. As a General Manager I served as the top property leader as well as the hotel liaison to the corporate offices and ownership.
DAILY MANAGER CHECKLIST 
* Leading the effective management of all hotel functional areas to maximize financial performance while upholding quality standards and maximizing the guest experience. (Stand-up Meeting DAILY ) 
*  Responsible for ensuring that all staff and management as well as business decisions are in line with the Company, including the mission, values and guiding principles of the organization.
* Ensuring the maximization of hotel revenue by driving the sales effort and actively participating in the daily activities related to revenue generation.
* Successfully balancing the needs and expectations of guests, employees, corporate and ownership.
* Measuring the effectiveness of broad-based marketing plans and yield management efforts.
* Ensuring the development of a realistic strategic business plan that defines operational goals and profitability.
* Ensuring successful implementation of marketing programs and budgets.
* Coordinating capital improvement projects to maintain/upgrade quality standards and property image
* Reviewing and approving accounting and management reports.
* Comparing actual performance to planned performance identifies variances and initiates corrective action.
* Conducting staff and employee meetings.
* Directly facilitating open employee communications to discern grievances and to respond to these grievances in all appropriate manners including redressing those meriting correction.
* Ensuring all management positions are filled with qualified personnel.
* Ensures established procedures are followed for employment/termination of personnel.
* Ensuring that all hotel staff and management are in compliance with the training goals that are required by corporate and the brand.
* Ensuring  that the "Open Door Policy" is operative at all levels and employee morale is maintained.
* Working closely with executive committee members and department managers to develop them both personally and professionally.

Extendedstay can be a more chaotic place to work but on a day with no guest issues management would come in get an update from the staff, check data bases and reports and provide feedback to the staff on the goals and plans for the day based on observations and kpis during the morning meets. Then would be possibly 15-30 mins action on respond to emails, review payroll, complete work orders, respond to reviews. By that point you are generally dealing with interruptions, training, disruptive guests or new staff requesting help, inventory placement and vendors. Before 11 it's expected that you will up and moving spliting your time between working with staff on in rooms or at the front desk and making sure that all staff, vendors, guest and propery needs are met. This would last about 3-4 hours as it was also the general mangers responsibly to inspect the rooms and provide on the spot feedback and reporting to ensure smooth quaility and quanity of services being provided. Depending on the events in day the manager would then assist with room assignments, complete follow up emails, outline any additional task need for the oncoming shift to complete and complete training, ordering, monthly meetings, inventory or reporting as needed. There was never a dull day. There I learned a lot about how to work with and motivate others, through mental fliltering and simply honest communication. Working with and supporting my manager could be highly stressful at time as we often did not see eye to eye but she was very supportive in improving the over condition of the hotel and developing me as a leader. 

The workplace culture was full of hard working, creative people. The company promotes for a family culture that celibibrates productivity, profitablity, creativity and accountablity. As a result we did a lot with very little support. 

The hardest part of the job was reducing over all pettiness as not everyone could see the work and progress being created by individual preformance or redundancies in the processes. It was easy for many people to get catty when doing a large amount of work and getting others each individual to slow down and self reflect on there progress can be counter intuitive and confusing to them at first.

I will truly miss the people I worked with and opertunity I had to make the job my own through practicing good leadership daily. 



Worked here for over two years, saw one pay raise for 25 cents. Had three managers during my time there. Terrible corporate and the district manager....they do no care about their people, only the money that goes into their pocket books. 

I had to take care of everything by myself for over a month...played as the manager, assistant manager, full time gsr...and did misc work in other areas. No offer for promotion....not even a pay raise. "No pay raises until next year" Well...don't expect me to put in any more effort for you then....getting paid $10 to do the work of a manager, assistant manager, and gsr...70 hours per week....is not worth it. 

R4R...terrible. Corporate and sales pins sales and leads on the hotel staff...then they themselves take all credit and commissions. At one point they complained because the hotel didnt get in quality leads on time. I told them most staff doesn't see the point, what are they getting out of it. "THEY GET A JOB!!!!!" Okay...its not the front desk staffs responsibility to generate sales for your pocketbook. this is a CUSTOMER SERVICE and GUEST RELATIONS job. If you want sales, hire a PT sales employee for each hotel to generate your R4R leads. Quit pinning more work on the minimal staff that is willing to stay at ESA. 

Watch out for most upper level managers. They are nice to your face, and will talk badly about you behind your back. My own district manager was bad about leaving termination papers and other personal info out for all of the staff to see... I once heard her telling somebody how wonderful and fabulous they were at their job, then two days later talking about that same employee to somebody else saying they were "horrible and not going anywhere here" She never did her own work, always had one of her GMs or AGMs doing it for her. 

There were things about this job that were enjoyable. Meeting different people, the long-term guests who would come in to chat or bring you lunch, and the co-workers who actually showed up for their shifts and did their job. But all of this was minimal compared to the amount of bad there. 

If you thoroughly enjoy hospitality and guest relations and want to make a career doing just that....Id suggest looking elsewhere. You wont find that at ESA. You wont advance unless you are brain dead, lazy, rude to people, lack common courtesy and compassion, or a mix of all of those.

A lot goes into a typical work day at Extended Stay, some days are extremely busy others are not. With my typical work day I am expected to manage all departments, this includes housekeeping, maintenance, and front desk. Along with this I also manage all guest accounts, surveys, night audit packs, sales...etc.

Accounts:
 I make it a point to check every customer account for any errors in guest information and billing.

Expedia Rejections:
 With every Expedia rejection I look for any direct billing errors that would have caused the rejection. Most of the time the account is over charged or the rate is not correct in the system. Each rejection needs to be fixed and completed within 12 days.

Sales:
 Two days a week the General Manager and I will drive by other hotels to see if any companies are lodging with our competitors. Afterwards we research these companies and reach out to them to see if we can get them interested in staying with our hotels. I also make it a point to reach out to guests and see if they are traveling with a company and see how that company booked the reservation.

Audits:
 Required to check night audit packets daily for accuracy and sign off on them daily.

Housekeeping, Maintenance:
 Periodically check on these departments to see what tasks have been completed. Rooms that have been completed by housekeeping and maintenance need to be inspected daily by a manager.

Surveys:
 Guest surveys are to be reveiwed daily, any surveys with a guest related issue needs to be completed with in 48 hours. This means reaching out to the guest, fixing the issue, and closing the alert.  

Meetings:
 Meetings are held evey morning with all departments to discuss what needs to be competed, our occupancy, and what could be improved.

Front Desk:
 I devote extra attention to this department because just like a bank, we are dealing with customer payments. Mistakes are easily made and if not careful an account can be severely messed up resulting in dissatisfied guests and a loss of money for our company. I check each guests method of payment to ensure that it is accurate. The cash drawer needs to be at a specific amount daily, I make sure that front desk have enough cash for deposits, refunds, payments..etc. 

Orders:
 Once every two weeks a breakfast order is placed by either me or the Gereral Manager. Orders for supplies and inventory checks are done about once a month.

You won't be told this going in. However, there is a more than good chance you will work all three shifts only to do it again the next day. Sleep? There is no time for sleep... we have money to make. You see, you aren't allowed to pay your staff anywhere close to industry standard and you aren't allowed to give them 40 hours a week. Where does that leave you? Well... if... and I do mean if everyone shows up, you will still have to cover a big chunk of each hourly employee's job just to stay within budget on labor. Chances are, they don't show up. Let's face it... $8 an hour for 20 hours a week jobs are easily had and your staff will leave you hanging in the wind at the first opportunity to get 30 hours somewhere else. Now you are doing your job in the morning, front desk in the evening, and doing laundry at night. The next day you might have a mandatory meeting that lasts 10 hours or a conference call that lasts 3 hours... oh and your evening front desk is a no show again. By god, though, you better not let a guest get unhappy or they will call corporate or give you a bad survey... 8 out of a 10 is a bad survey by the way. Once, I was jumped by two unruly guests who I caught urinating in the laundry room while I was just trying to get a soda from the vending machine and take a break. After I fought them off, called the police, and kicked them out, they gave the hotel a 1 on a survey. I had to answer to why it wasn't a 10. The same day, I worked the evening shift and had to cancel dinner plans with my wife. 

Speaking of labor.... As a consumer, how would you feel knowing that the housekeeper only spent 20 minutes cleaning the room you and your family are sleeping in when you go out of town. Imagine a guest stayed in that room for a week cooking, showering, and having relations in bed but the labor matrix only allows 20 minutes to clean that room.Gross. 

In the end, for your efforts, you will get thrown under the bus for something someone else was doing wrong and, you know what? You won't even fight it because as soon as they tell you to hand over your keys, a great weight will come off of your shoulders. 

Fast forward a week later and you land a job making 3 times what this company was paying you and you get to have dinner with your wife and kid every night. I guess I should thank ESA.

First of all, the management was great in that they stood with their employees and helped us keep company policies instead of always giving in to the angry customer. And if the employee was in the wrong, they were always great about talking to them about it and working with that person to fix it. 
There was job security in that there was very few other staff members over all, and little else. There was only one working security camera on the entire grounds, no security guard during any shift, and the manager was only present during the morning/early afternoon shift. Evening and midnight shifts, the person at the desk was the only staff person on the entire property. In a hotel full of people from all walks of life, this fact left me in some very dangerous situations at times, leaving me to deal with wild dogs (because the hotel did accept animals without proof of rabies shots or anything), drunken fist fights, and so on so forth. The only security the single employee had was a cordless phone that more often than not, did not work at all. 
The building itself was in poor repair and badly needed updating since I left there. This often attracted more difficult clients or left the more respectable ones to complain and send in complaints to their company for having booked our location. The reservation center for our company was also less than graceful when dealing with our clients when ever any issue came to them. 
Most of the staff, management aside, were sometimes also difficult to work with, assuming they worked at all. Though my job was desk check in, often I also did the work of night laundry and house keeping when rooms were marked clean but really weren't. 

Oddly enough, I've seen reviews of other locations within our company and was constantly getting updates from our management of what our CEO was doing and some of the policies he was placing, and it seemed to be smart and work through most of the company. I believe I just experienced one of the proverbial "bad eggs" in the bunch.

The only good part about the job was meeting some decent guests, getting free coffee in the mornings, and occasionally building a close relationship with a co-worker. But you can get this just about anywhere. STAY AWAY if you can help it, because the bad outweighs the good. 

Management is terrible. The District Manager would talk nicely to your face, and then badly behind your back. It wasn't just one or two people either...it was just about everybody. She would frequently leave out paperwork/documents (termination papers, social security info, etc) on the front desk for others to see. Zero respect for any of her employees, and rarely did her own work. She would flat out lie to you about promotions and raises. This is how 95% of ESA management works.....whether at the corporate level, district, or property level. The sales manager won't even do her own work. They have implemented "Reach 4 Rewards" and require the front desk staff at each hotel to hunt down sales leads and submit them so that corporate/sales division can take the credit and money. 

Unless you are just a sucker for torture and enjoy having somebody with zero work ethic and no real education "boss" you around, then stay away. There is no happiness here. No work-life balance. You will not move up, and are never compensated for the work you do. You will do the work of 5+ people by yourself, compensation is less than $10/hour for front desk. I know people who have been with the company for more than a decade and are compensated less than $11/hour. 

Also, there is never any linen. They try to keep a tight budget, and we end up with a lack of supplies for guests. Guests cuss us out at the front desk, leave a bad survey, and then managers come back around and yell at the front desk staff for not "fixing the lack of towels and sheets" issue. 


ESA is only good for very temporary work.....or for those with a lack of common sense/intelligence.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Housekeeper 358 salaries reported	$14.91 per hour
Guest service agent 241 salaries reported	$15.67 per hour
Front desk agent 134 salaries reported	$15.55 per hour
Laundry attendant 62 salaries reported	$15.60 per hour
General manager 58 salaries reported	$62,213 per year

Working at Extended Stay Hotels: Company Overview and Reviews

Extended Stay Hotels

Extended Stay Hotels Ratings

Popular jobs at Extended Stay Hotels

Salary Satisfaction

Job Seeker Tools

Employer Tools

Browse

Stay Connected