I’ve had a very good string of luck this year and only encountered minor, minor issues at hotels that weren’t even worth complaining about. However, this week, I found myself over-complaining because I ran into real issues and challenges with a hotel stay. I found myself complaining more because the hotel staff didn’t seem to be able to fix my issues and, beyond that, didn’t seem to care.
The first impression a hotel, or any company for that matter, makes is usually the one that sets the tone for a visit. It’s really hard to flip a negative impression around. Once you’re annoyed and upset, it’s so much easier to find every little issue and they always seem magnified, don’t they?
Well, when I arrived at the Westin Maui this week my stay got off on the wrong foot. It took multiple tweets, direct messages, phone calls, visits to the front desk and finally DMs with the hotel’s social media team to get the main issue fixed. The more and more people I talked with the more and more frustrated I got.
Overall all, my stay has been very mixed. I feel bad that I had to be so vocal and complain so much, but in the end, it was only the social media team that was able to get things moving. The hotel was able to fix the biggest issue – my inability to connect to wifi (which is sort of critical if you run a blog) and so I’m satisfied.
The question is, when hotels get things wrong, how should you go about getting them fixed when no one seems to care? Well, in my case, it seemed that social media was the most effective method.
So how do you deal with things when a hotel really gets it wrong?
Oh, and yes, I’ll have a full review of the Westin Maui soon.
I had a similar situation recently with a hotel and a dysfunctional room lock that took 4(!) days to fix. I’m not blogging it because it was my in-laws’ room (creating some family fun, let me tell you!), but I had to turn to twitter as well to finally get things moving.