Originally Posted by
RichardInSF
You called it, Mike. I got into a "discussion" with a hostess at the NY Bar over available seating on my last trip. Fortunately, it was resolved in a few minutes but it was mildly annoying just to have it happen.
Overall, the NY Bar/Grill is probably one of the areas where the hotel should invest a little more TLC. We have found service in the bar to be particularly slow and impersonal. This is just my personal observation, but I feel that Japanese customers tend to be looked after better.
As I noted in an earlier post, we did complain recently and since then every visit has been flawless both last weekend when we raised the issue with management and again this weekend. But clearly, we were given special treatment as they always recognized me and addressed me by name. Looking around us we noticed other customers waiting for extended periods of time etc. A Diamond friend was recently told he would have to wait 2 hours to have a drink. I find that unacceptable for a hotel bar, even one with a lot of outside traffic.
Originally Posted by
MikeFromTokyo
It always amazes me that even high-end hotels under foreign management seem to have difficulty training waitstaff to be more flexible and adaptive to guests' needs. It is ridiculous that a simple request for an avocado topping on a hamburger should be such an ordeal. Avocado is a relatively common hamburger topping in Japan.
I would agree and have had a surprising number of simple requests refused (some of which I attribute to a language barrier issue, as saying "no" obviously is not culturally acceptable in Japan). However, we stayed in a high end ryokan last week and that stay made me remember how differently Japanese luxury lodging establishments operate from their Western counterparts. We had to commit to a dinner time at check-in, specify what beverages we wanted, and then do the same for breakfast. The earliest breakfast option was 7:30 and it was absolutely impossible to even get coffee or tea served before that time. Everything was rule governed and there was definitely no focus on fulfilling guests' whims and wishes as one would expect at, say, a Park Hyatt. And that seemed just fine for Japanese guests. As it seems that the PH Tokyo is perhaps catering more to Japanese guests these days, it at least seems understandable why some of the staff might exhibit the inflexibility observed by some on this thread. However, clearly it is not acceptable at an international luxury property.
We just returned from another very pleasant stay at the property today and I would still highly recommend it. By the way, it seems that the Japanese breakfast no longer needs to be pre-ordered the night before.