Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast, number 87, Hotel Housekeeping.
You are listening to English as a Second Language podcast, episode 87.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
Today's podcast is going to be about staying in a hotel room and getting services from housekeeping.
Let's get started.
I'm so glad that the hotel I booked didn't turn out to be a dump.
The last time I went on vacation, I booked it online, sight unseen, and it turned out to be a run-down motel.
This hotel was completely different.
The decor was tasteful and updated, the staff was friendly, and the rooms were well maintained.
Well, that is, until my second day there.
When I left my room in the morning I had removed the Do Not Disturb sign from my door so that housekeeping would know I needed my room made up.
When I got back in the afternoon, though, it hadn't been done properly.
The maid had made the bed, cleaned the bathroom and restocked the minibar, but she hadn't vacuumed the carpet and didn't leave any soap or clean towels.
I called down to the front desk to make a complaint.
Front desk, how may I help you?
Hello.
Hello.
I'm in room 1201 and housekeeping didn't leave any soap or clean towels, and the floor still needs to be vacuumed.
Oh, I'm so sorry.
Let me connect you with housekeeping.
I waited on hold.
Housekeeping?
Yes, this is room 1201.
The maid who cleaned my room didn't leave any soap or clean towels, and the floor needs vacuuming.
Okay, I'll get someone up there right away to take care of that.
About ten minutes later, the maid knocked on the door.
I stepped out of the room, and she left the toiletries in the bathroom and vacuumed.
That was pretty quick service.
I'm glad I didn't get the runaround.
Today we are traveling and staying at a hotel.
I begin the story by talking about how I was glad that the hotel I booked was didn't turn out to be a dump.
The verb to book, B-O-O-K, has nothing to do with books that you read.
It's another word for a reservation or to reserve.
So, I reserved a room is the same as I booked a room.
We tend to use that verb particularly for hotels.
But you can also say, I booked a flight to New York, meaning I bought an airplane ticket.
I said that the hotel didn't turn out to be a dump.
To turn out means it didn't result in, it didn't end up.
End up, turn out are two verbs that mean in this case pretty much the same thing that the final result wasn't
The hotel, I said, wasn't a dump, D-U-M-P.
That's again a very particular expression, special expression we use for a house or a hotel or some building that is not very clean, that isn't very well managed or organized, not very clean.
That would be a dump.
A dump is also a place where you put garbage and trash.
Every city has a city dump where the trash and garbage that is collected is put, and that's where the expression comes from.
It's an ugly, dirty place.
I said that I booked my vacation hotel Online sight unseen.
The expression sight S-I-G-H-T unseen U-N-S-E-E-N means that I didn't look at it, that I didn't have a chance to physically go there and see what it was like before I booked it.
So if I'm going to travel to another city, such as San Francisco, and I book a hotel room and I've never seen the hotel, well then I'm booking it, sight unseen.
I said that the hotel I booked for my vacation turned out to be a run down motel.
To be run down means that it's old.
It needs repairs.
There are many things that are broken or dirty.
You can have a run-down hotel.
You could have a run-down car.
An old car doesn't look very nice.
A motel, M-O-T-E-L, is similar to a hotel, H-O-T-E-L, but usually a motel is smaller.
It comes from the expression motor hotel, I believe.
It's a hotel that usually is for people who are staying a short amount of time.
Not very luxurious, not a nice place, but often a clean place, not necessarily a rundown place.
That's a motel.
I said that the decor D-E-C-O-R, which is, I'm sure, a French word.
In English it means the decorations, how it looks.
The staff, I said, was friendly.
The staff are all the people that work at the hotel, the employees.
And the rooms were well-maintained, meaning they were clean and they didn't need repairs, and so forth.
Well, I then said that on my second day in the hotel...
I removed the do not disturb sign from my door so that housekeeping would know I needed my room made up.
A couple of expressions there.
Do not disturb.
That's the sign the hotel gives you to put outside your door so that in the morning the maid, the person who cleans the room,
It doesn't knock on your door or come into your hotel room if you're still sleeping, for example.
I like to sleep late, especially when I'm on vacation, so I always put the do not disturb.
To disturb means to bother, so you're saying, don't bother me, don't wake me up.
I use the term housekeeping, and housekeeping, of course you probably know, is the word that we give to the department in a hotel that cleans and makes the beds, changes the sheets and the towels and so forth.
That's all one word, housekeeping.
To keep house as a verb would mean to make sure everything is clean and organized and so forth.
I said I needed my room made up.
That two-word verb made up here means for a hotel that it needs to be cleaned, that the bed sheets need to be changed, that new towels need to be put in the bathroom.
This is to make up a room.
My room needed to be made up.
Now, made up can also mean invented.
Like, I made up a story means I invented a story.
I created a story that isn't true.
But here, as a verb, it means to clean and so forth in a hotel room.
The maid made my bed.
Maid, M-A-I-D, is, as we said before, the person that cleans the room.
And to make the bed means to put new sheets on and to make sure the sheets are tight and that the bed looks nice.
That's to make the bed.
So the maid... had made, make in the past tense is made, the bed.
She restocked the minibar.
The minibar is my favorite part of the hotel room.
It's that little refrigerator.
And there are usually in American hotels, little bottles of alcohol, which you can buy.
They're not free.
They'll charge you for them when you leave the hotel, when you check out of the hotel.
That's called the minibar.
And to stock or to restock means to put things in there.
So if they restock the minibar, that means that I took some things out, I drank some things and now they're putting new ones back in.
Minibars have things other than alcohol.
They have soda pop like Coke and Pepsi, that sort of thing as well.
The maid had not vacuumed the carpet.
To vacuum, of course, is to take a machine, which is called a vacuum, that lifts the dirt up from a carpet.
And so therefore I called the front desk to make a complaint.
The front desk is sometimes called a reception desk.
And that's the place where, when you first walk into the hotel, you check in and where you check out of the hotel.
In some countries, it's common for you to leave your key to your room when you leave the hotel and to pick the key back up when you come back.
But in American hotels, that's not the way it is done.
They give you a key, usually an electronic key, like a credit card, and that is your key.
You don't get a physical key to your hotel room that you leave at the front desk.
I called down and I told the housekeeping.
I asked for housekeeping and the person at the front desk said let me connect you.
In other words, let me connect you to that telephone that you need to speak to or the person you need to speak to.
And when housekeeping answered the phone, I said, yes, this is room 1201.
In other words, I am on the 12th floor of the hotel.
Notice that we don't say room 1201, or we don't say room 1201, although you could say that.
It's much more common to say 12-0-1 or even more common in the United States, 12-0-1.
We of course use 0 and 0 to mean the same thing many times and i complain, of course, about my room and about ten minutes later the maid comes up and knocks on my door and then i said i stepped out of the room.
To step out of the room means i left the room.
Sometimes that expression to step out means to go somewhere, to leave to somewhere.
I'm going to step out for a few minutes means I'm going to leave and be back in a few minutes.
The maid left the toiletries in the bathroom.
The word toiletries comes, of course, from toilet or the bathroom or the restroom.
But those are all the things that you might use in a bathroom, like mouthwash or shampoo or things for your hair like conditioner.
Those are all toiletries.
At the end of the story, I said I was glad I didn't get the runaround.
To get the runaround, and runaround is normally hyphenated, R-U-N hyphen A-R-O-U-N-D.
To get the runaround means that you are not getting a straight or an honest answer from people, or that they are not doing what they are supposed to do to help you.
So, for example, you go to a store and you complain that the I don't know iPod Nano is scratching, and they say well no, that's not really a problem.
It's okay.
That is getting the runaround when they're not giving you what you expect.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, and this time at a native rate of speech.
I'm so glad that the hotel I booked didn't turn out to be a dump.
The last time I went on vacation, I booked it online, sight unseen, and it turned out to be a run-down motel.
This hotel was completely different.
The decor was tasteful and updated, the staff was friendly, and the rooms were well-maintained.
Well, that is until my second day there.
When I left my room in the morning I had removed the Do Not Disturb sign from my door so that housekeeping would know I needed my roommate up.
When I got back in the afternoon, though, it hadn't been done properly.
The maid had made the bed, cleaned the bathroom and restocked the minibar, but she hadn't vacuumed the carpet and didn't leave any soap or clean towels.
I called down to the front desk to make a complaint.
Front desk, how may I help you?
Hello, I'm in room 1201 and the housekeeping didn't leave any soap or clean towels, and the floor still needs to be vacuumed.
Oh, I'm so sorry.
Let me connect you with housekeeping.
I waited on hold.
Housekeeping?
Yes, this is room 1201.
The maid who cleaned my room didn't leave any soap or clean towels, and the floor needs vacuuming.
Okay, I'll get someone up there right away to take care of that.
About ten minutes later, the maid knocked on the door.
I stepped out of the room and she left the toiletries in the bathroom and vacuumed.
That was pretty quick service.
I'm glad I didn't get the runaround.
Remember to email us and tell us who you are and where you're listening from.
Our email address is eslpod at eslpod.com.
From Los Angeles, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thanks for listening.
We'll see you next time on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
This podcast is copyright 2006.
