I am almost done with my trip to Chicago and San Francisco and on my way back to Mumbai (via Delhi), but I am groggy and sleepy as I write this. Reason? No, I did not go out and party in town, not that the foggy overcast weather of Chicago permitted me to last night. I was also not a spent force at the Bar 151. But one good deed from the Hyatt Regency Chicago did me in.
So, i booked up my stay here a week to ten days back, and the hotel decided to put me up at the Junior Suite in the East Wing because of the Diamond status. Gracias, I said to them, although I wondered if the Regency Club Rooms in the West Wing were ‘best available’ or these suites were. But this is not about that.
At the check-in, the ever so efficient Hyatt agent in the Diamond GP line proceeded to check me in, gave me a run down of the benefits I could avail, asked me for my choice of amenities and handed me out his personalised welcome card. All great, however considering we book hotels for ‘nights’ rather than ‘days’ I was looking forward to a good night sleep before my long flight ahead. Too bad, I had a connecting room at both ends. Now, one end was quiet, but the other at the end of the bed was booked up with a loud noisy neighbor. The kid cried, ok, fine, I’ll live with that. They can’t do much about it. But what gives the occupants to slam the door multiple times? Is there no better way to handle the door?
I called up the front desk, who did not move me to another room but sent someone to get the neighbor some friendly advice. I never saw the apology note till morning, which was timed 12:15 AM, saying things were fixed, however, I do remember cribbing about it till about 3 AM at least. I tweeted, but only got a response in the morning. At the check-out, they apologised, offered a credit, but I declined.
I think in an efficient system like that, is it not now a courtesy that hotels can offer their customers at check-in to inform them and take permission to allocate them interconnecting rooms? I have a colleague who travels with kids and wife, and almost never gets confirmation from all the big hotels about interconnected rooms. And here, I get one without asking, but only to end like a bad dream.
What are your views on this? And have you got any such stories too???
i never accept a room with a connecting door- never. i always specify before arrival via email that i want quiet room with no connecting door- always works.
Jim, we live we learn. next time I won’t let this go through. Enough lessons learnt
You should remember that interconnecting rooms aren’t always available. There could be a guest who is occupying one of the rooms for a few days which can make room allocating a bit difficult with these requests. If a guest doesn’t check-out of their interconnecting room on time it makes it difficult to accommodate the request unless the guests who are checking-in are willing to wait a while for the guest to leave and have Housekeeping clean the room. This is all from experience at the FD.
I always blown away be peoples need to slam hotel doors, especially in the middle of the night. I was staying an aloft hotel recently that had really nice closing mechanisms on their doors. You actually had to put effort into making them slam, yet all night long doors kept being slammed . I don’t think ill ever understand.
aye captain, the perils of a travellers life. i am putting this right on top of my list!
I believe that hotels exist to offer people and families a place to stay at night. I don’t ever believe I’ve seen a hotel’s Mission Statement say that their goal is to put people up in every-other room.
One of minor discomforts with life on the road is that sometimes you will have noisy neighbors that are on a different sleep schedule than you are — but then, this is the cost of the lifestyle that we have chosen.
Years ago, I set a very simple set of criteria for assessing the quality of hotel stays… Did anything of mine get stolen while I was in the hotel? Did their food make me sick? Did any bugs crawl into my luggage? If I answer “NO” to all 3, then the hotel did it’s job. It’s just that simple.
definitely agree with you there. i always request non connecting rooms out of habit, but sometimes the front desk staff say all the rooms are connecting or something to that effect. 50% of the time I have noise problem.