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after "black myth" became popular, in order to welcome the first national day, our entire small county was moved by the news.

in mid-september, our hotel also received a call from the town leaders. as the ceiling of local landmark buildings, services and hardware facilities, the scenic spot chartered us a booth to promote the hotel and provide services to customers with high quality needs. so we set up a promotional booth between the steamed cold skin and fried pancake stalls at the entrance of the scenic spot, which became "an important force supporting the development of the county's tourism industry."

i applied for a vehicle from the supervisor in charge of vehicles and went to the entrance of the scenic spot to greet tourists directly. i was nervous about using the car during the national day, and the supervisor looked embarrassed, so i had to bring out the "big protector" and emphasize to her that this was a special call from the town leader to general manager kevin. "now our province is making every effort to focus on cultural tourism. taking advantage of this wave of black myth traffic, no matter how many people want to take advantage of the popularity, they are still coy about it." i added, "not to mention the land. how much direct revenue can the promotion bring to the hotel? how much publicity does it bring to our hotel just based on the flow of foreign tourists during the holidays?

the vehicle supervisor thought for a while and immediately signed a 7-day right to use the vehicle to me. a seven-seater buick commercial vehicle worth more than 300,000 yuan is parked at the head of the village where the scenic spot is located, and it takes passengers to the county's luxury hotels for free. it is quite attractive when you think about it. thanks to the popularity of "black myth: wukong", our little-known small county has welcomed the largest number of outsiders in its history, and this five-star hotel, which is incompatible with the character of the county, has room to play.

in fact, as early as the day the "black myth: wukong" game was launched, i saw the overwhelming discussion on the internet, and i was keenly aware that the song dynasty temple in our county, which was one of the filming locations, might become famous. before going to bed at night, i checked douyin again. the popularity of black myth has not diminished at all. players began to focus on offline holy land tours and real-life game experiences. they also rushed into the comment area of ​​our province’s cultural tourism to come up with crazy ideas. i felt no sleepiness at all in an instant, so i sat up and sent a message to my boss: the hotel should do something with the temple to attract tourists to stay.

early the next morning, i cut a few popular short videos, integrating the ancient buildings of our county with game scenes. at the end of the short videos, i introduced the hotel introduction; i felt that it was not enough, so i turned the introduction of local attractions into i posted it all over the internet in moments, tweets, and xiaohongshu notes; my colleagues in the design department also cooperated and produced several posters; it would be insincere to just say it but not do it. my colleagues in the sales department reminded me that i could propose "stay in a hotel and get xx temple as a gift" tickets" slogan. anyway, tickets only cost about 20 yuan, and the marketing expense budget is sufficient. the lobby manager also stepped forward and simply changed the souvenirs for customers into sunhou hou's refrigerator magnets.

we moved very quickly and completed everything we could think of and do, and then the provincial bureau of culture and tourism launched the ancient building tour check-in route. sure enough, we have this stop, and because another check-in place in the city is under renovation and closed to the public, the traffic naturally concentrates on our county. the effect is obvious. i took my friends to play during the mid-autumn festival. the parking lot of the mountain temple, which used to be sparse, was full; people rushed to take photos with wukong's pedestrian riser and to cover the "wukong" pedestrian platform.customs clearance documents"; several vendors with keen sense of smell have gathered at the door.

▲ black myth market. picture/provided by the narrator

there were no queues at that time, and a brand-new tourist notice had even been erected at the door. local villagers sat leisurely playing cards in front of the supermarket, indifferent to the curious tourists. just over half a month later, the street in front of the scenic spot has changed a lot. both sides of the road are decorated with welcome flags. catering vendors have come from all over to "support" the national day, and even people selling hanfu have come.

the mayor contacted major performance groups to perform for free, opened up volunteer registration channels, and even created a black mythology-themed market so that tourists could directly experience the levels in the game offline. heavily armedsun wukongshort videos of him dancing with everyone and looking for keys on iphones were spread everywhere. even the locals who had not been there for ten thousand years were attracted by the sound and gathered together to watch the fun. there were as many drones in the sky as flies. just as noisy...

the entire county is unworthy of it.

even though it has just been opened for a year, when talking about our hotel, many locals will say with emotion, "you watched me grow up."more than ten years ago, it stood as a local landmark at the core of the county. you can see it as soon as you enter the county. although only the main body has been built and the exterior facade has been painted over the years, and no one knows what is inside, it still stands out.

my colleague xiao xiao is a local. she said that this building was there when she was in junior high school. she heard that it was built by a powerful local energy boss. it was rumored that an office building was going to be built, but it was abandoned for some reason. it was abandoned. just for years. the year before last, when she came back from out of town, she unexpectedly discovered that there was an iron fence around the outside of the building. she occasionally saw construction trucks coming in and out. "it seemed like there was some movement." when the fence was demolished to open up wasteland, many local cleaners were hired, and some reserve cadres and employees were hired from major hotels. only then did people gradually spread that the most luxurious hotel in the county would be opened here.

on the day when the hotel was lit up, the people in the county were as happy as if they were celebrating the new year. many people posted on douyin, saying that the building had finally come to life. some people recalled its past and present lives in the comment area and told stories about it and themselves. and the legendary life experience of its owner. since there is a night view of a square, a small garden and a fountain in front of the hotel, residents living nearby also bring their families to see what’s new, and some internet celebrities live-stream and sing with it as the background. for a time, it became a public entertainment place for people in the county.

▲ overlooking the county town from the hotel. picture/provided by the narrator

compared with the bustle outside, the luxury of the inner hall makes it seem "cold", which makes many people stay away.

as soon as you enter the door, the entire empty hall is decorated with black marble, which is calm and high-end. you have never seen this style in the county or even the city. there are not only various luxurious and stylish theme banquet halls, but also solemn and grand banquet halls. conference and lecture room; all the bedding in the guest rooms are from five-star hotels, and even the toiletries are from american brands, which local people have never heard of or read correctly; the restaurant also serves chinese cuisine, which is famous for being exquisite and expensive. for the cantonese cuisine, the chef is specially invited from guangdong to "speak cantonese"; all the service staff are young and handsome men and women, wearing uniforms, which looks very "expensive" at first glance.

▲ “cantonese” chef. picture/movie "the god of cookery"

it is no exaggeration to say that our hotel has brought the county's consumption level to a new level. as soon as it opened, it naturally hosted all the activities of local enterprises and institutions - only public institutions were willing to pay for such a high-end environment; the more sophisticated people in the county also put weddings, birthdays, birthdays and other banquets in it we are here; the private rooms that specialize in business banquets are often full, which makes people surprised by the spending power of local guests. having said that, in terms of price alone, per capita consumption of 100 yuan for dining and 300 yuan for hotel accommodation is not so high. but since it is a county town after all, the cost is still too high for many people.

▲the hotel’s luxurious interior and exquisite dining. picture/provided by the narrator

the most unexpected thing is that all our services, products, and prices have become the objects of imitation by other hotels in the county. in the past, the banquet table package price in the county was 799 yuan, which included 8 cold, 8 hot, drinks and dried fruits. after cost accounting, we changed it to 6 cold, 10 hot and nothing. within a few days of the menu change, other hotels in the county started to change.

during the interview, i heard that this hotel brand was ranked second in the county seat. i told the general manager in a regretful tone: a good girl married the wrong person. how could this place (the county seat) be worthy of such a gorgeous hotel? the general manager welcomed us. that's why we need people like you to help us promote it.

after i graduated from graduate school in july this year, i planned to return to my original employer after i returned to china. unexpectedly, something happened to the company. the leader who agreed to take me on leave without pay to study was replaced. the new leader cited the company's business transformation and no vacancies as an excuse. he asked me to wait for arrangements, and reassured me, "i will let you know as soon as there is news." i understood the meaning and planned to find another way out. while i was waiting, i accidentally checked douyin and saw that a hotel just a few minutes' drive away from my home had opened and was looking for a person in charge of the marketing and publicity position. at that time, i was still talking to my mother-in-law: "it's the same office building."

our small county has a population of only about 100,000, and its only pillar industry, coal mining, is declining, and there are basically no other economic forms. the employment channels for women are quite limited. in addition to sales, there are basic positions such as cashiers and waiters. the per capita salary is only 2,200 yuan. most people with my academic qualifications choose to take the public examination. i have a mortgage to pay for, and i have spent a lot of money studying. i urgently need a job to stabilize myself. with the idea of ​​giving it a try, i submitted my resume to the hotel and quickly got an interview opportunity.

the leader who interviewed me, kevin, is a professional manager from the south. he has worked in a well-known luxury hotel in a super tourist city for nearly 30 years. he learned that i had lived in shenzhen for six or seven years and had rich experience in the media industry. he and i hit it off and talked a lot. he also praised me for my courage to give up my job in a big city and return to the county town for love. i smiled bitterly and couldn't bear to say that my salary had plummeted in the past few years after i came back, and it was less than a fraction of what i made in shenzhen. now that we are facing the most difficult employment season in the post-epidemic era, it is difficult to say that going for further study at that time was the right choice. he comforted me that life is not a journey in vain.

within the second hour of meeting him, he took me on a tour of the hotel, and i was deeply impressed by his attention to detail and quality. for example, when he walked to the smoke-removal area at the elevator entrance, he scolded the service staff because he did not have time to print out the brand logo with a mold; the housewife folded the linen until it was bulging, and he was not satisfied, so she immediately took off her suit and demonstrated three steps. he has more than ten years of bed-making skills; when he took me to the laundry room, he proudly told me that he spent more than two million to buy these equipment, which are sterilized at more than 800 degrees. "the non-slip floor mats in our hotel are all "it's cleaner than many other people's towels." as he walked, he bent down at any time to check whether the floor was smooth and shiny...

he told me that the construction and decoration of this hotel alone cost nearly 100 million yuan. even if it was placed in beijing, shanghai, guangzhou, shenzhen, dubai, or new york, we would still be able to handle it. a five-star hotel not only has good hardware, but also has to keep up with the service. he planned to use two years to build it into a luxury hotel with the best reputation in the city and even the southern part of the province. he asked me if i was interested in working with him. i immediately agreed. hot-blooded.

i also asked him a question he had always been curious about: when will such a large investment be recouped? "in this small county, we really serve the people. even if the boss loses money, he also wants to give the best to the people in his hometown." it is indeed a loss of money. kevin said that the financial calculations were made when the hotel was first built. based on the 70% occupancy rate of more than 100 rooms per night and the price of 600 yuan, it would take 30 years to recover the capital. what's more, our spending power here is limited, and house prices can go up to 300 yuan. during the slowest season in september, only about 20 rooms were opened a night.

things will change in 30 years. let’s wait and see what the hotel industry will be like.

▲ luxurious interior of the hotel. picture/provided by the narrator

the only thing for sure is that i decided to settle here. the job is decent, the environment is high-end, and the salary is not too low. the most important thing is that it is close to home, and i can go home to see my children at noon. so after working in real estate media and home decoration media in big cities, and marketing and public relations for manufacturing companies in county towns, i became a part-time worker in a five-star hotel in the county town.

working in a hotel is different from any other job in the past. the colleagues you come into contact with are all diverse and have different backgrounds. there are highly educated young people like me, hotel seniors who have worked in the service industry for more than ten years, and more than 20 local vocational school interns who have not graduated. as for the large number of temporary helpers needed for the banquet, there are local aunts and uncles in their fifties, mothers, college students and high school students during holidays, so the human resources are very rich.

our hotel has indeed brought many employment opportunities to local people. in the backend of the douyin account, in addition to booking rooms and food, there are also people looking for jobs. there are also people who come looking for jobs. often when we are running a good office, someone suddenly breaks into the office area and asks loudly, are you hiring here? the hr department asked me what position you were applying for, and the other person asked me bluntly: do you have any jobs that i can do, or what jobs do you think i can do? another time, kevin and i were discussing how to promote the restaurant, and two older sisters suddenly pushed in the office door. , they asked the general manager directly if they wanted to pinch their feet here. this kind of bold and primitive "direct employment from the county boss" opened my eyes and made me dumbfounded.

the monthly salary day is even more of a financial headache.

some of the colleagues in the catering department and the guest room department are old and not well educated, and they cannot figure out the complicated salary details such as basic salary, job salary, performance salary, attendance bonus, order bonus, etc., and this one hundred or ten yuan the difference was very important to them, so they queued up one by one to find reconciliation with the personnel and cashier. the office environment is small, and their voices are loud. they don't take the company's special red-line salary confidentiality system seriously at all. everyone knows how much they earn. i broke it down and talked about it for a long time, but i still couldn't understand it. i wanted to rush up and explain it to him.

in fact, kevin has very high requirements and has always wanted to position us as an international hotel and benchmark for world-class services. even though we were not qualified to receive foreign guests, we taught everyone's position in english from top to bottom, so that everyone could learn to speak daily spoken english such as "nice to meet you", and also asked each of us to give ourselves an english name. everyone was very shy. english smiled shyly.

due to limited cognition, everyone's naming is also highly concentrated on names of characters that frequently appear in primary and secondary school english textbooks, such as amy, lily, and tom. as a result, as soon as i entered the hotel, i wanted to open my mouth and ask people to find out that i had multiple names. kevin had to do one more job, giving names to new colleagues. we were like concubines who had just entered the palace and were given titles by the ministry of internal affairs. however, everyone secretly spoke the local dialect behind his back, and often forgot his english name. i once saw kevin shouting at vivian from the second floor outside the courtyard. she did not respond for a long time after calling him seven or eight times.

▲ senior hotel waiter. picture / visual china

although we are not used to the instant "high-end" self, we still love the hotel from the bottom of our hearts, cherish this job that can make a living at home, and are deeply proud of it.

coco, the barista i had a good conversation with, also felt the same way. she had worked at one of the busiest starbucks in shanghai for many years. she also spent a lot of money to learn skills at a famous coffee academy. she originally wanted to open a coffee shop back in her hometown, but after surveying the market, i felt that she was a little unwilling to do low-price products, and there was no consumer base for high-price products. the emergence of hotels gave her a platform to showcase herself. kevin gave her absolute freedom. she made the coffee corner her own style. she could do what she liked and get paid every day. she was very enthusiastic.

▲ working in a chain coffee shop in a big city is not as glamorous as imagined. picture / visual china

the same goes for front office security westbrook. because he likes nba star westbrook, he gave himself the same english name. we tease him as westbrook. westbrook works as a doorman, wearing a suit, top hat and white gloves, like zero in "the grand budapest hotel". he is required to greet each guest and pick up and drop off luggage. usually he is already nervous before the guests arrive. he doesn't know whether to say the greeting "vip, please go slowly" when he looks at the guests or when he walks up to them.

a friend from out of town came to stay at the hotel and lamented to me that the service staff in our hotel still have a simplicity that has not been deeply formatted, with non-standard mandarin, shy smiles and unfamiliar postures, and they have sincere feelings without any trace of performance.

▲ bellman zero (left). picture/movie "the grand budapest hotel"

like this friend, many middle-class people from big cities return to their hometowns to stay in the hotel, especially during holidays. our place is not far from beijing, and many people go there to work. during the mid-autumn festival and national day, there will undoubtedly be a group of people like this. i'm bringing my girlfriend, wife and children back home to stay. it's inconvenient to use water and toilets in the old yard, so i might as well just stay in a hotel. the price of three to five hundred yuan is nothing to the middle class. a day of eating, drinking and having fun is very cost-effective.

there are also some young people in the county who will take advantage of the holidays to "luxury". for example, the steaks in our restaurant are selected from real australian air-shipped sirloins. the cost of a piece is as high as 90 yuan. the price of more than 100 yuan is already very reasonable. the general standard in the county is 49.9 yuan for self-service barbecue delivery. we couldn't sell steaks, but on chinese valentine's day, all the steaks were sold out, and the number of reservations for double rooms was more than 20 points higher.

among the guests who came were some stronger local families who wanted to show off their face in front of outsiders. the sister of my former colleague is a single mother. in order to hold a round lock banquet for her 12-year-old child, she chose our hotel. if it was an ordinary restaurant with 7 or 8 hundred tables, she would have eaten very well. she would rather choose a few fewer tables. it was a small banquet hall, and i didn’t want to embarrass the adolescent children. i felt that the living conditions would be much worse without their father. it's an honor that we actually became the support for her sense of dignity.

▲ hotel birthday party. picture/visual china

this year, taking advantage of the popularity of black myth, our county was upgraded to a tourist county for the first time. the national day occupancy rate of guest rooms was actually higher than that of many hotels in the city, and it was almost full. posters have been made and all the staff are waiting to celebrate the first victory since the opening. it's really just a little bit close. to this end, kevin, who has always advocated scientific management, took the financial general manager and other senior executives to kowtow in front of the specially designed god of wealth on the top floor. his eyes turned green with anticipation.

most of our hotel guests are very satisfied with us. less than half a year after its opening, the hotel has already topped the list of major ota platforms as kevin said. as long as there is a negative review, he will be so worried that he can't sleep, and he has to correct it. he also ordered me to contact the customer to see if i can modify the review. i also experienced first-hand how difficult it is in the service industry, with all kinds of difficult customers to deal with and all kinds of complicated and trivial matters.

now is the national day super golden week, and hotels only count on these days to get their money back throughout the year. the guest rooms are full, the banquet hall is full, the catering is full, and the sales department is getting good news every day. everyone was so busy that sales had to pass the food, logistics had to change linens, security had to help guests set up the stage in the middle of the night, i was called to turn over the stage urgently while i was at work, and even kevin had to go to the door to personally direct the guests. park the car and calm down the guests waiting for their meal. everyone was busy until midnight every day, and the cardboard boxes left over from the banquet were packed into two large flatbed trucks. a catering colleague posted on wechat moments: retirement in advance and lead a rag-picking life...

many friends asked me if i would hear a lot of hot gossip in the hotel. if i hadn't done this job, my eyes would be bright. only when i got to work did i know that the hotel would have a smooth day and i would be fine if i got off work smoothly.

on my first day at work, i encountered a guest who lost money. i checked the surveillance system and no one entered the room, but they insisted that it was lost in our hotel. it was 20,000 yuan in cash and they asked us to pay compensation. later, we called the police but nothing happened. , in order to calm down the guest’s anger, the hotel refunded the rent; we encountered a guest who drank too much and beat our waiter; some of our colleagues came over to deliberately make trouble and said the food was sour; there was a man who stayed in the hotel with his wife and children and took advantage of the time. after spending thousands of dollars on a pedicure...

having seen so many things, i am no longer surprised by anything that happens. i also realized the true meaning of life, such as "human nature is unpredictable, and one's deeds have no regard for one's heart", and my personality became more peaceful. when i go home and face my husband’s nagging, i can still patiently wait for him to finish talking before communicating. i think this is also an extra gain this job brings me. i hope our hotel will get better and better and go out of the county to new york and dubai.

(liu nian is a pseudonym in the article.)