I am a Marriott Ambassador member, which means I spend 100+ nights and $20,000+ at Marriott properties in a year. I have been at that level for three years, so I have significant experience across the Marriott brands. One of the trademarks that Marriott teaches their employees across all of their brands is to thank and acknowledge the status level of Bonvoy members. That never happened at this hotel. When it doesn't happen, from my experiences, the chance that there are going to be major issues with my stay skyrockets. If management can't even get their staff to do something that simple, there is a good chance that major things also fall through the fact.
When I arrived, the front door was locked and required the front desk attendant to come unlock the door. She didn't say "welcome," "are you checking in," or a single word. She just walked back behind her desk until I said something.
Shortly after getting to my room, I noticed that the wifi didn't work. I called the front desk, and the employee acted like she wasn't aware of the issue. She gave me a phone number to their help desk, which I called. After a long wait, the help desk employee told me that they were aware of this issue at this hotel and had been working on it for the past week. He didn't know when it would be fixed but that the wifi was out for about 80% of the hotel. The next day, the same thing: no wifi. I asked a new front desk employee, and she acted like she wasn't aware of the issue. Later, I called and spoke to another front desk employee. She connected me to the voicemail of the GM, Thomas. I left a voicemail. I gave it all day, never heard back, then emailed the GM. I stayed until the following day. Upon leaving, I mentioned it to yet another front desk employee. She said she was aware of the problem over the last couple of weeks, but she thought they may have fixed the issue.
A couple of days later, the GM finally responded via email. There are major issues with this: for a business traveler, if I can't access wifi, my stay is useless at the hotel. More, most employees played dumb about the issue, but one admitted to knowing it had been an issue. The help desk also confirmed it was an issue they were aware of for at least a week,. How can front desk attendants not know of the wifi being out for 80% of the hotel unless they're told not to tell people about it upon check-in, because ya' know, money. That appears what this hotel is coaching its employees to do. Had they informed me of the wifi not working, I would have canceled and gone elsewhere.
But it gets worse: After my stay, I received an email that the hotel sends to rate my stay. If I click that my stay was good, it pushes the user to Trip Advisor so that the public can read the positive review. However, if I click that the stay was poor, instead of pushing me to Trip Advisor, it pushes me to an internal website where only the hotel sees it. In other words, the hotel in manipulating guests to have their positive reviews go on a publicly facing website while the negative reviews only get pushed to the hotel. It's a lack of business ethics. When I asked the GM about this and showed him the video of his hotel doing this (which I am sure he is aware of), he refused to answer. Ambassador customer support put in writing to me that they were having trouble getting that GM to respond to even them. When he finally did, he also ignored their inquiry into his hotel greatly manipulating reviews that guests leave. Considering I stayed at this hotel due to high reviews on Trip Advisor (which we now know are greatly manipulated) and under the assumption that they would have wifi, I was defrauded into this stay. Go elsewhere - the hotel utilizes deceit in its guest reviews, and the GM lacks basic customer service abilities and refuses to answer to the deceptive strategy his hotel employs. read more
