Meet & greet sounds fairly straightforward.
Meet the guest. Show them to their apartment. Hand over the keys. Help them get settled. And most of the time, that’s exactly what happens.
But after thousands of face-to-face arrivals over more than two decades, we’ve accumulated our fair share of stories – some heartwarming, some unexpected and some that have firmly earned a place in the Astra bloopers reel.
Why do we still personally meet our guests?
Astra’s 24/7 meet & greet service dates right back to when we first started operating.
Unlike a hotel, our apartments are located in residential buildings, without a hotel reception downstairs. In the early days, before lockboxes and digital keypads became a thing, there was a simple problem to solve: how would our guests check in?
The personal meet & greet was born into our mode of operation.
For someone relocating from another country, having a friendly face waiting at the end of a long journey was particularly welcome. But we soon realised the same was true for corporate travellers generally, and that human element becomes particularly useful – or particularly memorable. Here are a few stories to share:
The taxi fare
One guest arriving from abroad discovered that her local credit card wasn’t accepted by the taxi driver dropping her at the apartment.
With the guest and the driver at something of a “stalemate”, our Astra representative simply paid the fare, much to the relief of both.
Not technically part of the check-in procedure. Very much part of looking after someone.
The late-night adapter run
A family relocating, arrived late at night after a long international flight. Two exhausted parents, a baby, and phones that were rapidly running out of charge.
Then they discovered their chargers didn’t fit Australian power points.
It was a small problem, but at the end of a very long journey, small problems can feel much bigger.
Fortunately, it was late-night shopping. While the family freshened up and settled their baby into their temporary home, our Astra director raced out to the shops to buy the travel adapters they needed and brought them back.
No searching for an open shop in an unfamiliar city. No navigating their way around with phones about to go flat. They could simply get themselves, and their baby, settled for the night.
They left us a lovely review.
Not quite the right address
Late one night, our representative was waiting for a guest arriving from the UK. He knew she was in a taxi and on her way, so everything seemed to be going to plan.
Then the phone rang.
“I’m here. Where are you?”
The only problem was, she wasn’t there.
After a few rounds of questions, directions and trying to establish exactly what she could see around her, it became clear that the taxi had dropped her in completely the wrong part of the city.
It was late. She was tired. And she was standing with her luggage in an unfamiliar street.
So our representative asked her to stay put, jumped in the car, found her and drove her to the correct apartment. What was morphing into a fairly stressful end to a long journey, instead, it became another one of those moments when being there in person really mattered.
The garbage chute
A young international graduate arrived in Sydney. When asked whether he’d visited Sydney before, he said no.
In fact, he’d never even been on a plane before. Suddenly, his world had become much bigger.
After showing him through his new apartment, our representative took him through the building orientation, including the garbage chute. And that was where things came to a halt.
He was fascinated. How did it work? Where did everything go? There was only one way to find out. Several test runs and a thorough investigation later, the mysteries of the garbage chute had been satisfactorily resolved.
For us, it was an everyday feature of an apartment building. For him, it was something completely new. And for a few minutes, we got to experience that sense of discovery with him.
That’s one of the unexpected joys of meet & greet.
The other garbage chute
Not all of our garbage chute experiences have been quite so successful.
On another meet & greet, one of our team managed to drop their mobile phone straight down one.
We’ll leave that story there for now.
The case of the mistaken guest
Late one evening, one of our team was waiting outside an apartment building for a young woman arriving on an international flight.
Armed with a broad description from her WhatsApp photo and a message confirming she’d left the airport, he waited out front.
A taxi pulled up.
A woman matching the description got out, accompanied by a considerable amount of luggage. Our representative introduced himself and immediately started helping with her bags. There was just one problem.
She wasn’t our guest.
Technology has changed considerably since we started. Our meet & greet hasn’t.
That’s deliberate.
We embrace technology where it makes things easier and more efficient, but our 24/7 personal meet & greet service is something we’re not prepared to automate. Human connection, practical support and good old-fashioned hospitality remain important to us.
Thousands of arrivals later, no two meet & greets are quite the same. Most are straightforward. Some call for a little extra help. And some leave us with a story we’re still telling years later. But behind every booking is a person arriving somewhere that may be completely unfamiliar to them. That’s why, after all these years, Astra Apartments still choose to be there in person. Because sometimes all it takes is a friendly face at the end of a long journey to make somewhere new feel a little more like home.
