Special Stories From The Budapest Hotel Industry’s Golden Age

The period between the late 1970’s and the mid-80’s was undoubtedly a milestone in the history of Budapest hotel industry. As a consequence of economic and political openness the inbound tourism increased, international hotel chains came to life (firstly in Hungary of all the Soviet Bloc countries), then as cause of the so-called “Austrian Credit Facility”, sharp capacity expansion occurred. About this exciting period of Budapest hotels will András, the experienced and excessively versatile hotel professional talk in the following vojazs.blog.hu’s interview.

Vojazs: Regardless the technical development what is the biggest difference between the operation of a Budapest hotel today and 30 years ago from a viewpoint of an insider?
András: There are a few things, the case of bell boys for instance.
That time in the 70’s there was 20-25 bell boys only in the hall of a 300-room five star hotel. Bell boys on higher floors were another category. There was a so-called commissioner bell boy who was going about for theater tickets or other things to deal with. For instance he brought the passports and the registration forms to the KEOKH. KEOKH means Külföldieket Ellenőrző Országos Központi Hivatal (National Central Agency for Monitoring Foreign People). There was an “appointed” ashtray bell boy, whose duty was to empty out the ashtrays and clean the fingerprints from glass doors. Night shift bellboys’ duties were to clean those shoes which were put out to the doors, knock on the door to wake up those guests who didn’t wake up for the phone, and the key report, which means they had to ascertain whether the key left in the reception belongs to a guest who stays out for the night or to someone who left the hotel without paying the room.
The reception was also different: there were 10-12 receptionist, one chief receptionist and supervisor receptionists. I also started my career in this position. At that time everyone had a college or university attainment in the staff. We had two jurist doctors among us, since it was even more important than today to give multilingual information to the guests, in the absence of information forms and other cultural, transportation, foreign police and epidemiological reports.
Of course there were telephone exchange, telex and journal positions, but I’m not going to talk about them because they have been uprooted by technical development. But it’s still strange to see that among those university students who graduated 5 or 10 years ago, there are no one who knows what a telex is.

Vojazs: What were the most enviable privileges of the big Budapest hotel workers’ in the 70’s and the 80’s?
András: Obviously the gratuity, particularly the gratuity in currency. But on the other hand people had to work in three shifts, getting low salary without holidays… of course nobody envied this part of the story, mainly because average people didn’t even think about it. The opportunity to have a window to the world and meet world-famous people also nourished envy.

Vojazs: How could someone be an employee of a freshly opened, international hotel?
András: You probably predict the answer will be “with influence”. Well, of course it happened. The son of the creditor bank’s chairman, the daughter of the operator company’s director, the wife of another bank’s chairman… they all worked in the hotel. But I have to say that (with one exception) they worked well, I mean very well, and nobody of them demanded further “positive discrimination”. The exception was a girl boosted into a hostess job. The Front Office manager protested: “but this girl doesn’t speak any language”, and the answer was “no problem, she’ll learn it with time”
Another way to get in was transferring from one of the former leading groups of the profession. The first graduating students was leaving the Budapest Catering College that time (there were no academic education for professionals before), many of them made a so-called “social scholarship contract” with the operator company, which obliged both sides to employment. By the way the company’s director also supported the students himself.