Hoteliers have see it all, heard it all, and dealt with it all. It would be hard to find a hotel manager or owner who hasn’t had to ask a guest to leave due to bad habits or behavior. But what happens once you clear the hotel of the bad guest can you breathe that sigh of relief?

If you’re smart, your hotel will have a process in place, and in use, for reporting the incident. It’s a litigious world we live in, and a strong policy, consistently enforced, can go a long way to avoiding or lessening any claims against the hotel.

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Hoteliers whose hotel businesses work with online booking agencies understand all too well the dilemma. Hotel booking sites like Expedia and Hotels.com sell hotel reservations to customers, hand over a discounted price to the hotels, and pocket their profits – all good business. But the dilemma arises when the booking companies go to pay taxes on the hotel rooms they’ve sold. And that’s where the local and state governments are getting involved.

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It’s the news no hotelier wants to hear – union staff have voted to walk out. Not only do you have to find interim help that’s willing to cross picket lines; you have to find guests who are also willing to do so.

 A work strike could cost your company more than just dollars. As with the case of the downtown Chicago Sheraton hotel locations facing such a strike the last week of October 2009, staffing shortages could seriously impede your business as usual. In the case of the Sheraton unionized workers, over 1,000 staffers were set to vote on whether to walk. Finding replacement help – adequate replacement help – is a crippling task. What’s more, interim staff have a higher risk associated with them. Because they’re not familiar with your business model, there’s a good chance your guest relations ratings could suffer. Not to mention the variables you can’t control – temporary employee unreliability, theft, and the chance that these employees weren’t vetted properly. Inefficient performance is one thing – guest safety, entirely another.

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Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you already know that real estate values have taken a mighty hit. What once was up has indeed come down, which may not be all bad news for your hotel business. At a time when occupancy is lagging and costs are increasing, wouldn’t it be nice to catch a break?

That break could be in the form of a tax reassessment. In general, local governments (usually county entities) assess taxes on a set schedule. The last time your hotel received an assessment could have been prior to the dip in the real estate market. In essence, you could be paying more than you’re hotel is worth.

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Of all the risks a hotelier faces, who would have ever considered the risk of a guest tampering with another guest’s room? Yet that’s exactly what happened to ESPN’s Erin Andrews, who was the victim of an alleged peeping tom – a man who reportedly stalked the woman in a most unusual way. The case against the man states he tampered with the peep hole in Ms. Andrews’ hotel door, then proceeded to watch her movements in her hotel room.

What’s equally disturbing is the alleged perpetrator’s actions prior to the incident and the hotel’s response. According to police records, the man requested a room adjacent to the victim’s room, a request the hotel chain honored. That move has turned the industry upside down in an effort to redefine hotel policies and guest security procedures.

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