The Lost Mobile Rescue
Renaissance Shanghai Pudong Hotel, more than six years after its opening, is a place with many stories to tell. One of the more recent and exciting stories involving a taxi, an intern and a cell phone remains engraved in our memory.
June, 2011– a typical evening at the hotel - guests are coming and going as usual, some from a busy day at the company back for dinner and an evening of R&R, others just leaving the hotel after a day of meetings, and those freshly checked- out with luggage in hand on their way out to catch a plane back home.
Our Concierge intern at the time, Morris, is manning the main hotel entrance tending to his usual doorman duties when two guests ask him to arrange a taxi to the Pudong Airport. Just then, a Japanese guest arrives at the hotel; he exits his taxi and hastily enters the hotel lobby not noticing that his cell phone has fallen out on the seat behind him.
Morris then informs the two guests waiting that they can take this taxi. While he is trying to help the guests with their luggage, he suddenly discovers the lost cell phone. When he asks the taxi driver about the phone, the driver does not respond and steps on the throttle. Morris tells the driver to stop, but the driver only speeds away.
Morris, thinking fast, immediately runs and chases after the taxi through the streets of Pudong. He finally manages to catch the taxi about 200 meters later demanding that the driver stop. After repeated negotiations, the driver eventually compromises and returns the phone.
A sweaty and exhausted Morris returns back to the hotel, and with the duty manager's help, he's able to track down the cell phone's rightful owner and room number. In the meantime, this hotel guest has become very distraught as he continues to look for his lost cell phone, one which contained many important contacts for business, family and friends.
When Morris hands him the phone, the guest is very moved, and not just from recovering such a valuable possession, but upon hearing of Morris's great efforts to recover his phone, and all at the expense of his own safety.
When asked afterwards about what he was thinking, Morris says "As a doorman,t's my obligation to do my best to help my guests in any way possible - this is in line with the five-star service standards of our hotel."
When then asked if he'd taken into account the danger involved in what he had just done, he humbly replies "I just wanted to help our guest by returning his lost property; it is my job, after all."
And although the preferred company hotel of the Japanese guest is located elsewhere and much closer to his office than our hotel, this guest has since become one of our most loyal customers, always making our hotel his ‘home away from home' in Shanghai.
As the General Manager, I'm so proud of Morris's actions that day, and am proud of all of my fellow ambassadors at our hotel.
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