This week on the Savvy Traveler, Rudy Returns! Welcome back!

Rudy's View: I Wanna be a Hotel Manager

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Sometimes I think that in my next life, I want to come back as a hotel general manager. So many interesting things happen under a hotel roof...and the manager gets to hear all about them.

This week, I was talking with a friend who runs one of Washington's top hotels. I asked him to tell me about his two best hotel stories. One involved a hotel he used to run overseas. A guest checked into a room and noticed the previous guest had left the room safe locked. My friend went upstairs with his head of security to see what valuables might be inside. When the safe was opened, there sat...a Big Mac. It took a few minutes before my friend realized a guest had mistaken the box-like room safe with a numbered keypad on the front for...a microwave.

Then there's the story of the executive who checked into my friend's DC hotel for a few days but didn't check out. The guest's credit card company continued to approve his charges as they climbed into the thousands of dollars. But managers eventually wondered why no one had seen the guest for a while. Some detective work revealed he'd invited a companion who was not his wife to his room on his last night. He left her asleep in the room when he left town the next morning. Apparently, she liked the digs so much, she stayed for more than a month before her ruse was discovered. She's now in jail. The man in question? Well, he quietly covered the full amount due: 25-thousand dollars! Try writing that down on your expense report!