Originally Posted by
Rowyourboat
Hello, thanks for the great info in this thread. I recently completed a 3-day stay at the hotel. Overall, great rooms, service, and very friendly staff. It's a great hotel with well designed rooms and nice views.
My main complaint was with the concierge service. I emailed the concierge with restaurant requests a few days before my stay, and got no reply. I then went to the desk in person and gave a specific list of restaurants and times i.e. (restaurant X for lunch on Friday). Based on info from pocket-concierge, I had reason to believe the restaurants were available and I had asked them to make reservations. I also emailed the list.
I got no reply. I went to the concierge desk the next day and found that nobody had acted on my request despite assurance they would work on it immediately. Ok, whatever. They were then able to make a lunch booking, which was great. I had to ask the desk again about the other days requests, and they said "they will look into it." This wasn't a hard task - I literally needed them to make four phone calls and just tell me "yes/no".
I basically had to ask them every day and follow-up at least twice a day to get any bookings done. They were able to book some great restaurants (two 2* and one 1* restaurant). I know I was asking last minute so I would have NO problem if they said there's no space available, but it was very frustrating to have to keep asking. Or they'd suggest a restaurant, then I'd ask them to look into it, and then they'd tell me the restaurant isn't available at that time. If you're going to suggest 1-2 restaurants, why not check if they're available before suggesting it to me??
It was also little things like I booked a restaurant and a karaoke place, and they said they'd send me a letter with directions to the karaoke place, but instead sent a letter with directions to the restaurant. I then had to call again to get directions to the karaoke place (there are multiple, so the specific address mattered). They confirmed the karaoke place but never gave me the address over email.
Overall this was pretty frustrating and not what I expected based on previous reviews. The hotel was excellent otherwise but the bad concierge experience really put a damper on things.
I’m sorry you had a negative concierge experience here. Ours was exemplary. Three things perhaps worth noting for the future:
—It’s possible few of your emails made it to the appropriate person due to the foolish Marriott change of email servers/domains. Email addresses that had been @
luxurycollection.com suddenly are theluxurycollectionhotels.com, with extremely poor and unreliable migration and forwarding between them. Even when staff email each other, it’s been a disaster of lost emails that never are received and therefore not acted upon. Even my Ambassador had issues reaching (getting responses from) hotels via email due to this problem. I’ve had to call numerous times since Aug 18 to follow up to ensure recipients and contacts at many hotels actually received the emails I sent after not getting responses from hotels that otherwise always respond promptly; less than a quarter of those emails were ever received. If I hadn’t called, I would never have known that they didn’t even get the emails.
—It’s advisable to contact hotel concierges before a few days out for high demand cities like Tokyo. For the record, I reached out more than a few months in advance. Fortunately, the PG team still was able to get you even Michelin star options. Certainly, emailing a few days out with the likelihood that the emails weren’t received didn’t do you any favors. If you don’t get a reply in a day, I’d call. If you want better responses, email earlier.
—English is a barrier you may have encountered and not even realized. The typical attitude we experienced with the Japanese is that it’s better to pretend to understand and get it wrong than to admit they don’t understand in the first place. We learned that the hard way in China several years ago, as well, and it was just as prevalent an attitude in Japan for us this past May. We even had this issue at the Aman Tokyo and even a bit at Suiran Kyoto. We didn’t have that issue at the Mandarin Oriental Tokyo. I’m told that isn’t an issue at the Park Hyatt or Ritz Carlton in Tokyo quite as much, either, since they have more established internationally fluent staff.
—It doesn’t help you much to only share the problems you experience after the fact. It really will help you to speak to the head concierge or front office manager (who often oversees concierge) after you have your first letdown or two—at any luxury hotel, in fact. If you let the powers that be know that you are dissatisfied and want better service, it will help them to better serve you. I can’t say for sure it would have helped in this case or not, but it is good advice for any future stays at any good or luxury hotels.
Sorry again. But glad you seemed to have enjoyed a nice stay otherwise.