You can never really tell who is going to walk through the door of a Holiday Inn Express. With more than 13 years experience in hotel management, Grace Scott can fathom a reasonable guess, but she’s focused on the positive impacts she can have on her customers so close to the Anne Arundel Medical Center and the Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium.

“I run a nice hotel. Downtown is about four miles away, the football stadium is a five -minute drive and I haven’t had any complaints recommending Cantler’s Riverside Inn

[not far] from the Naval Academy, Scott said.

But downtown Annapolis is the biggest draw to her hotel, Scott admits — most of the year.

During football season I like to wear my Raven’s jersey when we have all the Steelers fans staying with us. It relaxes them before they even got to the event they came to us for. It’s a whole different animal from some other types of stays.

Being so close to the hospital, Scott presides over the accommodations for many positive visits and outcomes, but there’s the other thing too.

“I want the people who come into my hotel and into Annapolis to feel like they have our support. People sometimes come in here alone. Sometimes they’re waiting for family or friends; sometimes there are no family or friends to come. Sometimes they’re facing a four-hour drive alone. We need to be here for them, she explained.

Occasionally Scott gets to have a little of both.

“There was a gentleman we were joking with before he checked in,” Scott said, but then his mood darkened. Later they found out his son was sick and in the hospital.

“We now know that both he and his son are big sports fans. They keep coming back over and over again.”

And then there are the stories from different hotels in the past, where one could learn a valuable lesson in a sentence or two.

“You probably don’t want to check in a guy who has two guns strapped to his back is all I’m saying, Scott said, but quickly added that the police were called and the situation diffused very quickly indeed.

But any hotel employee faces those sorts of risks during the course of their job. It’s the ones who can rise above it that Scott said she is looking for.

“I take pride in fostering patient, friendly employees, because I know when I go somewhere I of course want a clean comfortable room but I also wanted to be treated the right way. I can get a good room — I know how — but I am also looking to be treated the right way,” she said.

It’s because of this that Grace Scott hopes you walk into her Holiday Inn Express Annapolis.