FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Andaz Liverpool Street - London - REVIEW - MASTER THREAD
Old Oct 1, 2011, 9:14 pm
  #197  
limelight
 
Join Date: Oct 2006
Posts: 142
In the name of all's that's absurd... What happened, Andaz?

Three beautiful stays in the past. I love this place. I want to love this place. Victorian grandeur + gorgeous modern style + high-ceiling light-filled rooms + dreamy breakfasts + the very best bit of London for adventures. It feels perfect. It's one of the hotels that keeps me Diamond.

But stay number four, the other day....

Dinner at 1901, the hotel's flagship restaurant, with people I care about a lot. Special/unique occasion. The waiter drops the bill insistently onto the table midway through the first round of drinks, and wants me to pay. Friends (distinguished, elderly friends) feel hustled out. Staff reach in to grab their glasses. Friends leave. The staff just watch (turns out they gave the wrong table the bill). I won't get another chance to do this till 2012. I feel not happy. (And this place wants a Michelin star.)

I stay for a bit of dinner. I know the kitchen can do great things. I get unlucky. Greasy, burned scallops. Elderflower jelly that hadn't set properly. (No Jean-Georges - or even Blue Duck Tavern - this, that day.) Everything's out of focus.

The room's ready far later than the front-desk promises (second stay in a row that's happened). I wait around in the lobby, with other things to do.

No Diamond welcome amenity (I know it's miniature, here, but at least it's something).

Lobby bathrooms are in a horrible state, clearly uncleaned for hours.

I ask for the GM's email address at checkout. The agent first insists that breakfast isn't free for Diamonds. That takes a couple of minutes. Then it takes twenty minutes (yes, really) and four separate excuses, for that agent still not to find the GM's email address. I'm not believing this. I sure do have better things to do. Eventually, I send over another agent to help. Second agent looks mortified, but problem solved, 30 seconds.

Agent number 1 writes down the GM's email on a card. Gets his first name wrong, crosses it out. 'Well, I wasn't sure, he's got a funny name.' Yes, he did just say that about his boss. I remark on the time it took. Agent snaps aggressively at me: 'Well, I don't email him every day, you know.'

(One lovely Guest Services Manager tries to help, after the 1901 mess, the first night. The net result, though, as my rate already included a restaurant credit: a credit to my bill worth about one drink.)

I pay my bill in full, several hundred pounds, and leave. I feel like a schmuck. I think about One Aldwych, or the new Four Seasons, and start rearranging reservations in my head. Next Saturday will probably be the first to go elsewhere.

I write to the GM. The email address the front-desk agent gave me bounces back. Of course.

This was the hotel that was going to keep me Diamond, this year. Now it feels like the one which might make me give Diamond up. I've tried another address for the GM. I hope he can turn this around. I can excuse problems, but such wall-to-wall cluelessness seems - ridiculous. (Monday night, the cheapest King room goes for $700 with tax. That's Four Seasons territory, even in London. We're not talking about an airport Hyatt Place on a winter weekend. There are legitimate expectations.)

Seriously, Andaz - what happened that day?
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