Overall, a fantastic stay here over the holiday break. But an off-experience at check-in almost caused us to walk.
We arrived around 11pm to check-in, already indicating on our reservation that we would be checking in late. Also marked the "quiet room" request. The gent manning the desk started off friendly enough, thanking us for being Diamond guests, but then started showing his ineptness by telling us that we had been "upgraded" to a 20th floor room and been granted Club access as a result.
We asked if that was the best available room, and he said the hotel was booked full (fair enough). So we head upstairs... and find out our room was literally the one next to the elevator lobby. So much for "quiet room."
We head back down to ask for a different room. Same staffer says nothing is available, and that our room (again) was "upgraded" with "club access" (he repeated this several times). I asked how that could be a quiet room, and he admits that he sees our notations, but there's nothing he can do because there are no rooms anywhere, plugging in the "upgraded/club access" one more time.
We finally ask for a manager, who comes out and is briefed on the situation. He looks at the inventory... lo and behold, there's another room available that's not by the elevator. It's just on a lower floor (not a problem) and with 2 twin beds (slight problem). First staffer interjects that taking this other room would not allow access to the lounge, and I finally had to point out to him that Diamonds have lounge access anyway, rendering his point moot.
My wife and I are now faced with deciding between two undesirable rooms. We ask the manager why a quiet room wasn't allocated, which lead to a very interesting exchange, where three things happened:
- He shifted the blame on the morning lounge crew who did the allocations early in the day (so they couldn't find an actual quiet room?);
- Then he started justifying how the first room in fact IS a quiet room, on the basis that it's on a high floor, and that it's late at night so most people are asleep and therefore it's quiet...
- He triumphantly declares that if there were any noise to call him immediately and he would personally come up and deal with the issue himself.
We just didn't want to deal with it anymore, so we took our special high-floor super-secret squirrel club-access room. Needless to say, the room was noisy throughout the night, and especially in the morning, from guests using the elevators and chatting with their companions.
The next morning we head down and ask to speak to someone about our experience the previous night, and are directed up to Mona in the lounge, who apparently was assigned specifically to take care of Diamonds that day. We told her the story, which genuinely concerned her (and she confirmed that our room was NOT a quiet room). She promised to look into it and talk to management. She also did everything she could to make up for the experience, and we were satisfied with the results. The rest of our stay was fantastic, and service was great throughout the rest of the day. We would totally come back.
Lesson learned: Try to check in early enough to avoid the clowns working the night shift.