Hilton Baltimore Inner Harbor is a Toxic Workplace and Will Sabotage Your Career Before They'll Help You Succeed
Pros
The Hilton Go Honors Program and its hotel discounts (you get 30 days at a low team member rate and 70 days at a friends & family rate). There are a lot of good people in service positions who do their jobs, care about the customers, and support their team members. They also have some directors and managers who know how to lead, but they seem to be few and far between. If you want to make money, you'll make good money here. But be careful of the cost. Fighting for your job because you care about the hotel business and want to do the right things isn't enough to keep it unfortunately. If anyone deems you as a problem or is jealous of your success, they will sabotage you by playing "run and tell that" to your boss or someone else in leadership. If you're friendly and great at customer service, you'll make a lot of friends and money here, but don't make the mistake of thinking your personality will save you. If you're a threat to anyone, you're on the short list to be outed.
Cons
HR is THE worst! This hotel is too top-heavy with directors and assistant directors to be efficient or profitable. If you're looking for a company that will treat you like a human instead of a body, they'll give you a great song and dance about Hilton caring about its employees and leading through its brand standards. But they won't follow them. It's just PR and show-boating, but in practice, if you go to them for help, be prepared for being disappointed for their lack of responsiveness after you call them, email them, and talk to them in-person yet they STILL won't resolve your need with any urgency or act like they know the answer you seek, when they are supposed to know their job, plus act like they will find out for you. From Hilton's core values to Thrive @ Work, this location thrives off of toxicity, two-faced "smile in your face, stab you in the back" drama, and will gaslight you into thinking you're the problem instead of doing their job, putting out fires, and solving problems by creating a healthy environment where everyone can reach their potential. Owned by the City of Baltimore and supported by the Unite Here 7 union, this hotel was supposed to added to the city's economic development and help fill its coffers but it's renigged on its purpose to do just that for most of its existence. How does a hotel like this bearing the cache of the Hilton name and being centrally located on primetime real estate next to the LightRail, Camden Yards, and down the street from the Inner Harbor... STILL not gain a profit? One critical reason: Their hypocritical approach towards making the employees happy is made even worse because they refuse to get rid of the bad eggs, which frustrates middle management because they get NO help from the union or upper leadership to make the work environment better for ALL. As a result, the bad eggs make management jobs harder and more stressful, tensions between employees is strained, which leads to poor customer service. All these factors contribute to profit loss and poor customer retention. However, because Maryland is an at-will state, if you're not a unionized worker, they can fire you at their leisure for whatever reason they legitimize in their heads because they legally can. Regardless if you're a competent, industrious, and dedicated employee or not. And they refuse to give you the resources that you need to do your job the RIGHT way (instead of their janky, unprofessional way). For a property like this that eats its young, doesn't train or onboard new employees with any consistency or competence (unless they've been in the role long enough that the job is muscle memory), you start to wonder why they're even in hospitality and tourism, if they not trying to do the work. One reason, Hilton's benefits are industry-leading and compared to most hotels in the area and other jobs, they can't be beat. Yet more than a few staff on the executive team rather learn and earn at the expense of everyone else to maintain the status quo without the initiative to do whatever it takes to stimulate recovery. The American Hotel and Lodging Association says that recovery in the hospitality sector isn't slated to rebound until 2024. Then, why isn't the executive team pulling out all the stops to make the hotel profitable NOW?! What are they waiting for? Under these circumstances, it's no wonder that the Hilton Baltimore Inner Harbor has struggled for YEARS and hemorrhaged money since its inception with only 2017-2019 being the exception. Yet a modest profit of $1.3 million wasn't due to the hotel changing for the better and earning that surplus with money-making programs, increasing bookings, or improving customer retention. Hilton Baltimore Inner Harbor only made a profit after a round of cost-cutting and refinancing the hotel in order to lower interest rates and its tax burden. If that doesn't wreak of chronic mismanagement and abysmal leadership, then I don't know what does.