I thought it was so-so. I'm not sure that Todd will pass my comments along to others responsible for staff training, which I suppose is the action that I was hoping for. I probably should have spelled that out.

Umm. I was indeed grateful for what I got, and said so. So because I was on an award stay, I should keep my grateful mouth shut and not provide any constructive feedback?

There are things about a hotel property that people can complain about which would require a ridiculous amount of capital investment in one lump sum to address; and other things that would not cost the hotel a huge amount of money to address and could be spent incrementally. Suggesting that they look at whether they have any furniture that could be placed in the suites to allow for some peaceful contemplation of the beautiful surroundings... I don't think that was out of line. The suite seemed to be set up to facilitate entertaining; I wasn't interested in using the suite to entertain. Those who do want to use a suite to entertain are welcome to share their feedback with the hotel (whether they think it's already perfect or what else they want to see added to suit their needs). I wanted to share my feedback about how the suite could better suit what I wanted to use it for.

Example of something that I expect can't be reasonably fixed: Hyatt Boston has a weird setup where there's a street level lobby opening out into the street and into the parking garage, but this lobby isn't staffed except for the valets. You take an elevator up to the third floor for the normal lobby with check-in desks, etc., and have to switch to a different bank of elevators to go up to the guest rooms. That odd setup is not fixable without tearing down the entire tower -- the floors in between the ground floor and the third floor used to be a high-end shopping center that failed and was shuttered.

Example of something that I expect can be reasonably fixed: Holiday Inn Georgetown at one point promised microwaves in all guest rooms on their Web site. Perhaps two-thirds of the rooms had them. Resolving this gap between what is promised and what is delivered doesn't require infinite capital, and the capital that can be allocated can be spent a little bit at a time to narrow the gap. Or, if no capital isn't available, the property can change the Web site to describe reality.

I haven't read through GP T&C in detail, I'll take your word that there's nothing explicit in there about waiving resort fees on an award stay. On the other hand, it leaves an little extra bad taste in one's mouth when a property says there is a mandatory resort fee on what is supposed to be a "free" stay versus a paid stay. My folio as originally handed to me had nothing but the $18 resort fee on it, pretty noticeable as compared to the same $18 added to a $300/night rate. (I spent money at various hotel facilities; I just didn't charge them to my room because I wanted to generate multiple transactions for a specific credit card promotion.) And the key inconsistency that I was trying to highlight was that one front desk staff member AT THIS PROPERTY (during check-in) told me that it would be waived, and another front desk staff member AT THIS PROPERTY (during check-out) didn't think that was the case, but, decided to handle it in accordance with smart customer service.

As for my not liking how it was done... well, a property that brags about how many diamonds it got, and describes itself as a paradise should expect its customer service to held up to the highest standards. I don't want the staff to grovel, but I want them to be well-trained and knowledgeable about this property's policies, whatever they be.

I don't like staff insinuating that I'm trying to make use of facilities that I am not entitled to use, that I don't belong somewhere. For me, that really does take some of the air out of what is supposed to be a world-class spa pampering experience. Especially when there are other guests in the waiting area who are watching and listening. "Look, he's trying to barge in and use facilities he's not entitled to, because he thinks he has some special status. The nerve of some people!"

I try not to take a DYKWIA attitude. In the actual staff interactions, I stayed pretty low key; though upon re-reading I think you're saying I'm taking a DYKWIA attitude in my email. In any case, it's always hard to spot DYKWIA attitude in oneself, so I thank you for making note that you perceived that attitude in my communication.

Sad, isn't it, that our expectations of customer service are so low that an actual non-form-letter response to customer feedback is considered to be a "kind" act?

I thought about that a bit before posting. If a moderator were to decide to edit my post to redact the domain part of his email address so that spambots can't trivially harvest the address, but FTers who want to email him to ask something specific about this property's rooms can easily figure out what email address to use, that's fine with me. In general, I'm not a big believer in the usefulness of trying to hide email addresses as an anti-spam strategy, but I shouldn't excessively force my belief in that regard on others.

(For example, this gentleman has a LinkedIn profile. If I were a spammer, I'd be generating email addresses from LinkedIn profiles' first and last names and employer email domains, given how common [email protected] is as an email address format. Easy enough to generate all reasonable variations on standard email formats... spammers don't care about generating bazillions of invalid email addresses.)