BearX220

I'd like to know what experience you all have with Hilton properties revealing major infrastructure compromises / outages in sneaky ways.

I was at the Washington Hilton above Dupont Circle this week. Two-night stay. Checked in Tuesday evening, room fine, stay uneventful. I got back to the room Wednesday night after work and found a letter from the GM on the desk announcing that "annual maintenance to our electrical system" would be done between 1100pm and 600am, and guests should expect rooms to go dark for some or all of that period.

"If you plan to be awake during these hours... we will gladly provide you with a mini-flashlight and/or glow stick in advance."

Really? REALLY, Hilton?

I called down and was able to get moved to a relatively unaffected room, although the TV service went out for most of the night. I had to stay up and work, but that's not really the point. If I wanted to lie in darkness and isolation all night, I'd have brought a tent with me and headed for Rock Creek Park.

At checkout Thursday I got a wan apology and an insistence that "the whole hotel was affected" (incorrect), but no offer of compensation. If this had ben an HI I would have played the 100% satisfaction card, for sure.

I think it's way unacceptable to spring this kind of thing on guests after they've settled in and may be less apt to quack. They should be taking affected rooms out of inventory, pure and simple.

The GM's letter said the overnight blackouts would continue all week.

Has this ever happened to you? What did you do about it, if anything? Am I overreacting to think electricity is a baseline amenity at an alleged 4* hotel? I was pretty steamed, as much about the deceptive, grudging manner in which this was handled as by the outage itself.

IsleOfMan

If I'd been affected I would have pushed them on their "Make it right" guarantee. It's possible they considered moving your room "making it right" and to a certain degree I would agree, but the TV system being down might be enough to merrit persuiing further as well. I would contact the Diamond Desk if you don't think it was handled in a reasonable manner by the property. The most you could expect is either a refund of 1-night or a CS points deposit equal to one night at this property... I would be prepared to settle for ~1/2 of either.

arlflyer

I'm not trying to be flippant here at all, just to be literal - the way to indicate that something is unacceptable is to not accept it. If you were that put off by this, then you should probably have escalated it at the time. It's always hard to argue after the fact "I was so inconvenienced/mad/etc. that I...did nothing".

Guessing occupancies were pretty low here in DC this week; if you had pushed they might have sent you to another hhonors property in the area.

(Btw this is a line of reasoning that I've taken to heart from the WaPo food critic Tom Sietsema, who always preaches that if something is wrong, you must make it right then and there, rather than try to complain later. I'm not always great at it myself, and sometimes in the moment you're too busy/hurried/etc. to want to stop and argue, but it's at that time that you have the most leverage.)

Thunderroad

No, you're not over-reacting. You simply did not get what you paid for, and the hotel knew in advance, without telling you, that you were not going to get what you paid for.

What would bother me most about this situation is that the hotel knew in advance that this maintenance was scheduled. It should have let all potential and actual guests know, via its website, email confirmations, notices that CSRs should read to folks, etc. Then let the guests decide whether they want to stay in the hotel to begin with.

The hotel not having done that, I'd think you'd be quite right to have your room charge refunded in recognition of the hassle of having to switch rooms, not have a full service room, the uncertainty of how much service you actually were going to get, etc.

Perhaps you just want to put this behind you at this point, but I'd think you'd be in your rights to follow up with the refund request and to post a negative review at Tripadvisor.com, advising readers of this situation and that the hotel simply can't be relied on to provided the minimum in terms of service or advance notice of lack of service.

Saidoh

I stayed at this property a couple of years ago, and was told at checkin that the water would be shut off overnight until 6 am. Of course that wasn't a problem for me since I figured the water would be back on by the time I woke up. Well at 7 am the water still wasn't back on and it was a huge pain trying to get ready for work. It finally started up again around 8:15 but was absolutely filthy and muddy. Please complain to Hilton directly and write a very nasty review online, since there seems to be a pattern here.

txflyer77

I'm no lawyer, but I'm a little surprised a hotel would even be allowed by state/local law to rent a room if they knew in advance that it wouldn't have running water.

BearX220

Or lighting for emergency evacuations. Which may explain the hotel's close-mouthed tactics. Easier to apologize afterward than advertise beforehand.

I've written this up on TripAdvisor, filed a complaint via the Hilton website, and flagged Erin to this thread; we'll see what happens. Ariflyer above is quite right that I should have raised hell on the spot.

BearX220

Just a follow-up and thread bump to say the property's management has reached out to me and resolved this issue to my satisfaction. Thank you Erin.

Hilton Honors Ambassador

Happy we were able to assist! ^

Cheers,
Erin

COSPILOT

A few months ago the DT in Westminster, CO informed everyone at check in that the power would be out for 4-6 hours the following day because of the road construction on Highway 36. Having spent my past life in the construction industry, I can tell you that there is never a ideal time to have this happen, you just have to do it.

I think its unrealistic to expect the hotel to not take reservations during that time, as this work is not scheduled 12 months in advance...

gengar

Is there not a broader Hilton policy on events like this? IMO it's appalling that any management team believes it is acceptable to have guests stay in a room without power for possibly up to 7 hours.


First off, this isn't the situation in the OP - the planned power outage due to annual maintenance was fully under the control of the hotel, rather than a third-party issue.

Further, what I think you meant is that it is unrealistic for the hotel not to have already taken reservations when they learn of third-party issues like this. But that's not the problem, which is what the property decides to do after they find out. Hopefully it's more than having paying customers settle in and then just a note on the desk with a couple hours' notice.

COSPILOT

Maybe a panel was inspected and it was found that it was a FP panel (Federal Pacific) which required replacement ASAP as no one in the industry will touch one if they are smart, as they are a fire waiting to happen.

Pure speculation on my part, but my point is things happen, both planned and unplanned. I guess I'm a little more understanding of these things. To each his own.

gengar

You are now taking a hypothesis even further from the OP situation than your last example! No one is saying there are not possible unknowns that can cause reasonable disruptions. The issue is knowledge and service recovery, hence the point of my last post: What a property does after a problem is known is what's important. The OP property had full knowledge and offered nothing in terms of service recovery (unless you consider "oh, the power is going to be out for 7 hours due to our planned annual maintenance, here are some glow sticks" as service recovery).

jabbered

How many people are up between 11 PM and 6 AM that the power outage affected? How many people working late at night have to have the television system working?

It sounds like the hotel did what they thought was reasonable (moving to less affected area) that the guest agreed to without any more push back it seems.


IMO, it sounds like the hotel may have found some issues that would require ongoing blackouts to perform work that were possibly spotted on the 1st night/day of inspection.

This annual maintenance may have been done by the electrical/building commission that easily can cancel at the last minute, followed by a last minute go ahead.

gengar

Are you seriously suggesting that so long as not many guests are awake, it's reasonable for the hotel to plan a power outage between 11pm and 6am?