Hotels Have Vacancies in Customer Service

Friday, August 8, 2008

Page 15

AT THE SIDEBAR (Column)

Hotels Have Vacancies in Customer Service

By J’AMY PACHECO

Generally, I enjoy staying in hotels. While I admit to being creeped out by not knowing who used the bedspread before me, I like knowing that if I hang a sign on my doorknob, somebody will take away my used towels and bring new ones every day.

Staying in a hotel should be an uncomplicated process. You tell the hotel when you’re coming, they get the digits off your credit card, and you arrive in a distant land knowing you have a place to lay your head (once you’ve removed the bedspread, of course.)

How come it doesn’t work that way anymore?

A few months ago, my family went to Las Vegas for the weekend. We decided to spring for a room in a nice hotel, made the reservation, and paid for the first night in advance.

When a delay on departure day made it clear we would arrive around midnight, I phoned the hotel to let them know we would be staggering in very late. They assured me it would not be a problem, as long as we arrived before 2 a.m.

We arrived shortly after midnight to learn our room had been given away and the hotel was sold out. The only room they had for us was a handicapped-accessible room that, it turned out, had enormous, hospital-type hoists above the beds, light switches and a shower head at wheelchair height, and no closet. It may have been a perfect room for someone in a wheelchair, but it was assuredly not a comfortable room for a family with a 6-foot, 2-inch daddy. The hotel staff seemed to feel they were doing us a huge favor by putting us in the room and promising to move us the next day.

Adding insult to injury, the room was on the second floor, and the window overlooked the garbage-strewn roof of the casino. It was a windy night, and I lay in bed for hours listening to soda cans and liquor bottles rolling around outside the window.

The next morning, I went to the front desk to find out when we would be moved. Through bleary eyes, I noted that every one of the front desk clerks – who had no customers to handle besides me – exuded a, “What’s your problem?” attitude. We sat around for hours waiting for the call that we could move. By the time we did, I was so mad that it cast a pall over the remainder of our day.

The hotel’s solution? To knock a few bucks off the hefty price of our hotel room. Honestly, I’m still mad about it.

Last week, my family returned to Las Vegas for our annual doll convention at a lower-budget hotel. We arrived around 9 p.m., and since we’d made our reservations seven months in advance, we were stunned to learn that – you guessed it – they didn’t have the non-smoking room we’d reserved. Instead, we were put on the second floor, in a room reeking of cigarette smoke and air freshener, overlooking dumpsters and a truck bay. They would, they assured us, move us the next day. Talk about déjà vu.

All night, I listened to the backup beeps of big rigs, and worried about my daughter’s lungs. The next morning, I was advised we’d be moving to the 19th floor, and was asked to retrieve the key at the front desk.

My husband called from the lobby to tell me the front desk clerks were instead putting us on the fourth floor, still above the dumpsters and truck bay. That was the straw that broke this camel’s back, and I put my foot down loud enough to be heard at the front desk. It took some serious arguing, but we got the room on the 19th floor. It was an ordinary room, and we received no credit for the night we spent breathing in other people’s cigarette residue. I was so mad that if it weren’t for the fact that the convention was taking place in the off-strip hotel, I would have left.

What’s going on? Maybe it’s just a Vegas thing. A recent one-night hotel stay in San Diego was perfect, from the guy who took my car away to the greeter who put us in the VIP line for check in, even though we were clearly part of the unwashed masses. Our room was clean, smelled nice and looked out on a beautiful fountain instead of trash.

What really gets me is this: if we had not shown up to claim our non-smoking room, my credit card would have been charged for it anyway. In the earlier case, the room charge had already been made to my card, but the paid-for room wasn’t held for our family. How is that possible?

I have another short hotel stay coming up in a few weeks. This time, I have multiple reservations – the ones made by telephone, and the ones created by the incidents described here.

At least I can be pretty sure the towels will be clean. The bedspread…well, that’s another matter…