Starwood Hotels

Most complaints have their sources in sincere mistakes, no hotel is actively trying to ruin their guests’ visit, but while some of the most common complaints are more than valid, theres always another side to the story. Believe it or not, there are reasons for hotels doing some of the things they sometimes do that drive some of their guests to irritation. Heres a list of some of the most frequent complaints made against hotels, and some reasons as to why hotels behave the way they do.
Lost Bookings:Okay, so youve booked your room on Hotwire, packed your bags, made the trip, and now that you’ve arrived at the hotel it turns out they had no idea you were coming. This mistake can have many reasons behind it.
Firstly, how long has it been since you booked your room? Keep in mind that when you book a room on a website like hotels.com, or Expedia, in many smaller hotels the booking is not instantly entered in the hotel’s database. What actually happens is a three step process where the website sends the information to the hotel in the form of an e-mail or a fax, which is then entered by hand into the system by one of the Front Desk Clerks, then a confirmation is sent from the hotel to the website. Its surprising how many people don’t realise this. I once had a guest book a room on Expedia as he was walking in our front door, and he was quite surprised that his booking wasnt immediately recorded by the time he made it to the Check-In desk.
There is also the possibility of human error. Sometimes things get entered into the system wrong, or the hotel gets overbooked. While no hotel will ever willingly admit that they’ve made this most disastrous of mistakes, it does happen. However, most hotels have a partnership with another, similar hotel in the neighbourhood that they can move unlucky guests over to, in case the unthinkable should happen.Cancellation Fees:Many hotels will charge a fee if you cancel your reservation at the last minute. While larger hotels might be able to absorb the loss, it makes good sense for small hotels to adhere to some sort of cancellation policy. In fact, we have a 24 hour cancellation policy here at Nuvo. In our defence, we only have 32 rooms and if a guest cancels the day of their booking theres a pretty decent chance that we won’t be filling that room. Since it actually represents a fair loss for us, we have a cancellation policy in place to help us break even on last minute cancellations. However, if theres a good reason for the cancellation (like a family emergency, flight cancellation due to a volcano, car breakdowns, or ninjas), we’ll likely waive any fees.Housekeeping Ignoring the “Do Not Disturb” Sign:This is one of the more greivous mistakes a hotel can make, in my opinion. Once you’ve put down your money for the stay, the room belongs to you, and you should be able to get a little bit of privacy. Not to mention that unknown people walking into your room while you’re sleeping is terribly invasive.
There are reasons why the housekeepers do it, though. Housekeeping staff normally work in shifts, and since they usually have lives outside of work, are not available to clean rooms all day. They really only have a limited amount of time to do all the cleaning for the day, and every occupied room must be cleaned. Its also quite normal for guests to leave the room without taking down the sign on the door, so if its past a certain time of the day, its standard practice for housekeepers to peek their heads into a room to check and see if anyone’s actually home. Also, in a situation where it’s the fnal day of the booking where a guest hasn’t checked out on time, or informed the hotel that they will need a late check-out, with the next guest trying to check in to the same room… Well, in that case housekeeping, after getting confirmation from management, may very well enter a room, more to try and figure out whats going on than to clean it, though.Additional Room Charges:I personally hate this one when I travel. You check into your room and eat a granola bar from a bowl on the counter, only to find out two weeks later that you were charged $4.00 for it. That kind of upselling is sneaky and, dare I say it, dishonest. There are also hotels that will charge extra for services that you have no way of opting out of. Thats just the hotel managements way of bringing in as much money per booking as possible, sometimes to the frustration of their guests.
There are some cases in which having additional charges attached to a booking can be argued as being reasonable. For example, here at Nuvo there is an extra daily fee should you require the rental of a parking stall. We do this because we don’t own the stalls ourselves, we rent them from our neighbours. Woking the cost of keeping those stalls into the standard rates for the hotel and forcing every guest to pay for them, whether they need a stall or not, seemed wrong. So, we worked out a rate that allows us to keep the stalls for our use without having to charge everyone who comes through our doorsCharging Extra for Internet:I have no reasoning for this one. Any hotel that is still charging its guests for wireless internet needs to re-evaluate its pricing. These days, a normal high-speed WiFi set-up costs very little to maintain, and theres really no excuse for not offering it to paying guests free. If Coffee Shops can do it for free, why cant $400 per night hotels? Thats right Starwood Hotels, Im looking at you.