Category Archives for Hotels.
You’re simply not going to get a quality night sleep on a mattress that’s been used every night, by different people, for over ten years. They’ll develop bumps and pockets, and guests will complain – no matter how many times mattresses are flipped and rotated (and cleaned, though this often happens just a couple of times per year). Some hotels even keep using ripped and soiled mattresses, but an upper upscale property should not.
An ex-hotel manager tells guests they should put away their toothbrushes – don’t leave them out in the bathroom – because housekeepers may mess with them.
Maybe the housekeeper is in a bad mood, thinks the guest is rude, or isn’t tipping. The manager says that housekeepers may “clean certain areas in bathrooms with a guest’s toothbrush that you don’t want to have near your mouth.”
Many hotel chains have moved from single use plastic toiletries to bulk wall-mounted toiletries. They say it’s for the environment, but it isn’t. If they just cared about reducing plastic, they’d move to single use biodegradable packaging. Instead these refillable bottles are cheaper.
There are (3) basic problems with this for the guest.
He’d made a nonrefundable booking using Chase points to attend a wedding at what seemed like “the cheapest hotel from a reliable..brand” and found “an active construction site” with rooms covered “in plastic wrap,” constant drilling and a closed restaurant – none of which was disclosed on the property’s website. And oh that toilet.
Last month a man that wasn’t a guest entered the Ritz-Carlton Sarasota and planted himself in the hot tub. He wouldn’t leave. When police responded to a trespassing complaint from management, the man ranted about what had become of his beloved Starwood Preferred Guest program and his lifetime elite status, as captured on body cam video.
I checked into the hotel and found it overrun with teenage sports teams. There were adults out front tailgating, and downing alcohol from full sized bottles.
There was one person working the desk and a line of people. When it was my turn I learned that they’d screwed up.
The general manager of a premium Los Angeles-area chain hotel writes to me, explaining why his hotel will not offer top tier elites to suites even though the chain requires them to do so.
A reader from Montana got a new drivers license. They were given a paper printout as a temporary license, and the state takes a couple of weeks to send out plastic ones. His passport is out of his hands, getting renewed in the long priority queue at the State Department. Fortunately you can fly domestically without ID and without too much difficulty.
Away from home, he turned up at the hotel he’d booked using the American Airlines Rocketmiles site on a prepaid rate for the Loyalty Points. But they would not check him in.
The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs is an expansive luxury resort known as a top conference destination. One man stayed there on his own, for ten months, and the hotel has filed suit because they say he never paid for a single night. They’re trying to collect on a $185,000 bill. That’s over $600 per night, inclusive of tax.
I never ask for very much and I rarely ever complain. I certainly never ask for special treatment. I would rather experience hotels the same way everyone else does, at least the way other frequent travelers earning elite status do.
I am never rude to hospitality staff. When they’re having a bad day, I try to empathize and joke with them about it. I’m far more self-effacing than demanding. So I’ve never experienced this before.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
