Many of you know my long running frustration with Holiday Inn and affiliated properties. Those of you from my marching band days will remember the meltdown that I had in New Orleans with the Poydras Street property over the vanishing pillow. I'm still baffled at how a HOTEL can't have pillows! Others will have heard more recent stories of the many unclean, disheveled, and disorganized Holiday Inns and Crowne Plazas that I stay in on a regular basis. Unfortunately nwa gets a great deal with them so I'm continually punished with them. Last week I had yet another incident at the Crowne Plaza in Billings MT with a room that didn't have its bathroom cleaned. Their response was to give me a COUPON for 50% a meal THE NEXT TIME I'm there. As I point out in the letter below...offering me a chance to spend money at your business after screwing up isn't exactly a gem of an offer. Furthermore, if the bathroom in my room isn't clean I dare not even imagine how a restaurant kitchen that I can't see would look like.
Anyway, below is the original letter I sent to the manager of the property in Billings and when no response came from that the additional part of the letter I sent to Priority Club. Enjoy!
Dear Sir or Maam,
I sent the email below to the email address on the property website in hopes that the issues listed in it would be addressed and a response would be sent. Unfortunately after a week I have received no response or an indication that the email was ever received.
As a regular stayer at Intercontinental hotels I find it very disappointing that the company does such a poor job in responding to issues that have been brought to your attention.
My employer contracts with several of your properties so I'm forced to use them when I travel for work but after several complaints have been seemingly pushed aside I have decided that I will be actively working to avoid Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza hotels on my personal travel in the future.
Furthermore, this email will be posted on my blog for all to read. I don't take this move lightly but as a member of several hotel frequent stayer clubs and a person who spends about 150 nights a year in a hotel it is important that I have a pleasant experience and repeatedly HI and CP have failed to provide that or even a response that issues have been addressed.
I stayed at your Crowne Plaza property in Billings, MT on July 2nd and would like to bring to your attention a couple of unfortunate issues that I encountered.
First, I would like to compliment the staff who was friendly and helpful at check in and check out and the van drivers were also very friendly and helpful. My issues however were with the room itself, more specifically the bathroom.
I arrived late at night and went directly to bed and got up the next morning and prepared to get ready for my day. In the bathroom I discovered stale urine on the toilet seat and on the rim of the toilet, one of the toilet paper rolls was completely empty and in the shower I discovered the bar of soap from the previous guest. I am with one of your airline contracts so my stay wasn't significantly long nor did I have the time to change rooms and still make my van pick up. In order to shower and prepare to go to work I was forced to use the dirty bathroom. Upon check out I informed the person at the desk who did apologize and offered me 50% off the restaurant the next time I visit. While the gesture was genuine I'm pretty sure that I'd have to question the cleanliness of your restaurant with my experience with your bathroom upkeep. Furthermore I'm disappointed that the solution to the problem was an offer for me to spend money with you. Somehow the thought of giving a corporation money as their apology to me seems a bit backward.
While I am not sure what compensation I should expect I'm sure that it is more than a chance to spend money at a property that I have no control over getting to stay in again. I do understand the long standing policy that hotels have taken toward crews in regards to their frequent stayer programs, in your case Priority Club. As a member of the club and a frequent stayer at Holiday Inn affiliated properties I've always been more than frustrated that I'm treated as a second class customer when I have come across situations at hotels. Policies that restrict compensation to crew members make us far less willing to consider hotels when we travel for pleasure. I might point out that service failures at programs at airlines, an industry that has a reputation for not being customer friendly, regularly compensate the individual involved no matter if the ticket was bought by him/her or the employer.
These might be two separate issues but the result is that one situation (the dirty bathroom) cannot be resolved because of the second situation (policy toward rewards members with company paid rooms)
I hope that you will take the information provided and work with your team to develop appropriate responses to service failures and also reconsider policies that feel punitive for guests staying on corporate contracts.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely
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