M&R Hotel Management’s full- and select-service hotels occasionally host long-term guests, who may stay for weeks, months or on rare occasions even a year at a time.

Given our typical length of stay is one or two nights, hosting a guest for a month or longer is both a challenge and an opportunity. Intentionally or otherwise, long-stay guests come to expect a residential experience in what is essentially a transient environment.

Business consultants and project managers in the construction industry are typical long-term guests. They may have no other place they call home than their hotel. They typically experience one long-term hotel stay after another as their work assignments dictate.

Our job as hoteliers is to provide a level of service that best meets the needs of all our guests. At M&R, we call this “hands-on hospitality.” When long-stay guests check in, our front desk associates help familiarize them with the neighborhood, where they can find nearby restaurants and access local services from laundries and dry cleaning to movie theaters and bookstores.

Some long-stay guests request daily housekeeping. Others, mindful of their privacy, prefer housekeeping only twice a week or even weekly. But they may ask for fresh towels or extra bath amenities, notes Cathy Pascale, general manager of our Holiday Inn L.I. City – Manhattan View hotel in Long Island City, New York. “We’re happy to be flexible and provide whenever level of service they like,” she said.

Most meaningful, according to our long-stay guests, is the warm smile and genuine greeting they receive when they come and go from the hotel each day. We encourage our associates to recognize guests exactly this way and train them accordingly. Whether a guest stays one night or one year, their sense of our hotel being “a home away from home” may be the fondest memory they take from their time with us.