uapremier

I unfortunately begin the first trip report with a letter to corporate customer service. As you will see, I was extremely upset with our experience. I'm happy to answer questions too if people have them. As experienced travellers, your reactions to my letter would be most interesting.


January 1, 2009


Dear Starwood Customer Service,

It gives me no pleasure to write to you about a recent stay at the St. Regis Punta Mita Mexico from December X- Y, 2008 (Confirmation Numbers X and Y). The stay at this resort was entirely unsatisfactory, indeed the stay was nothing short of abysmal. As a Starwood Platinum member who at last count logged 70 nights in your hotels this past year, I believe I am familiar with service at many of your hotels. Our stay costing almost $10,000 for two rooms at the St. Regis Punta Mita recently was simply unacceptable by any standard, let alone what is supposed to be one of the finest resorts in the world.
While the resort itself is inredibly beatiful, the hotel’s service and staff are virtually dysfunctional. Below is a list of significant issues and problems with the resort in our 4 night stay:

1) We arrived at the hotel on December 26th and room rates had been adjusted significantly upwards. It took the greater part of an hour, despite the presentation of Starwood confirmations showing the correct room rates to rectify the situation.
2) The hotel placed us in rooms that were not the category of room that we booked. One of the rooms was a Junior Suite Ocean view room. The room we were initially placed into had no such view. When I contacted the manager about this, he insisted this was an ocean view room. In all of my travels, I have never been offered an ocean view room that did not have a view of the ocean. How this was even contested by the management was simply ridiculous. It took another hour before he even agreed to make some effort to look into a true ocean view room.
3) The hotel made absolutely no effort to do any kind of platinum upgrade. In fact, it was unclear to me if the hotel and its management even understood the Starwood program and the fact that the hotel was supposed to make some effort to recognize the company’s best customers. Even if the hotel could not upgrade us to a better room category, some effort to at least put us in the correct category room or a nice location on the property in the category of room booked , would seem to be the minimum a hotel could do for a platinum member.
4) Wake-up calls were not given despite requests 3 days in a row. The Butler’s response was that the hotel would “look into it.” How non-receipt of wake-up calls on even one day was acceptable to a 5-star hotel, simply baffled me. The hotel was never able to give us a wake-up call during our entire stay, nor was any apology issued by the mangement.
5) The rooms included a butler service which typically brought morning tea or coffee. Despite repeated requests to deliver the tea or coffee promptly, the hotel’s average time to deliver the coffee was 42 minutes over the course of our stay. I note the exact average because the service was so abysmal that it became a frequent joke in our family to record the time for any request made from the butler service.
6) Furthermore, despite the advertised benefit of morning coffee or tea being included with the butler service, the hotel charged us every time for the service.
7) Ordering lunches by the pool frequently took 1-1.5 hours to get food. How this is deemed acceptable by any hotel is beyond me. We received nothing more than a brief apology for these long waits which happened with frequency.
8) Spa appointments were made on the first day we arrived. These appointments frequently went missing. That is, I would show up at the spa at the designated time and the hotel would have no record of my appointment.
9) The hotel’s phone system violates privacy and confidentiality. From any phone in the hotel one can dial another room number which immediately lists the occupant (first and last name) of the person in that room. This is simply unacceptable.
10) The hot-tub in the men’s spa was luke-warm on two of the days we stayed there. The other two it was freezing cold. Alerted to the lack of heat in the tub the first day I arrived, the hotel was apparently unable to remedy the issue in the 4 days I was there.
11) Misinformation was provided by the concierge about events going in town. The concierge sent us to an event on a particular day, when in fact the meeting was to be held the following day.
12) The concierge charges a 15% premium on any service it books. It DOES NOT inform its guests of such. For instance, if you book the tennis courts for an hour use, the concierge chages 15% on top of the quoted rate without telling the patron. This is entirely unacceptable.
13) The bathroom in the men’s spa has no lock. When I commented on this, the spa attendant indicated that many guests had this same complaint. How the hotel in its 2 months of existence has been unable to hire a locksmith to attend to this minor issue is beyond me.
14) Room service food was presented in the room with used bottles of jam and other items. The food was frequently incorrect (the wrong item) or cold. It was unclear to me if the hotel staff understood basic hygene. This was also evident in the men’s spa where a 1 liter bottle of listerine was present without cups. Were guests supposed to share the bottle with each other?
15) The hotel’s bill format is simply unacceptable. The charges are not nearly specific enough. For instance, a swedish massage given to one member of my family was simply listed as “health club.” The bill did not list the patron, nor the type of service offered. This was a significant issue as the hotel charged us almost $700 for services that some other person had requested. Until I requested that the hotel pull every receipt for services rendered, the hotel staff believed I was lying to them about these extra charges. It was only once they had pulled the bill and learned that the services had not been provided to me, that they finally removed these charges fro m the bill. Again, the hotel must detail the type of service and individual receiving the service on the final bill.
16) There are also significant safety issues with the night lighting at the resort. Even for those of us with perfect vision, the resort is so dark that I tripped and fell several times. Let me reiterate that it was so dark, I could not see where I was going. This is a major issue which needs to be addressed.

In summary, the resort was nothing of the sort anticipated for the sum of money paid. The hotel felt like it was run dysfunctionally. Clearly what is needed is for management to send several individual’s as guests into the hotel to see the errors and problems associated with a patron’s stay. Furthermore, despite many of these issues that I have mentioned being brought to the hotel’s attention, the mangement, butler service, and the concierge made simply no effort to do anything about them. Furthermore, nothing was done to acknowledge this abysmal stay. Nor was any compensation offered despite my repeated efforts to explain the issues to various individuals at the hotel. My expectation is that the hotel will provide significant compensation given this terrible vacation and the ruining of what would have been a positive family vacation.
I hope not only to receive some compensation, but that Starwood and the hotel management will make every effort to remedy these serious problems.



Sincerely,
UAPREMIER