I know I require my room to be cold so I always ask for a guarantee in writing on or before booking that they can guarantee 67 F or cooler. I also carry a personal thermometer (given to me by the Prince de Galles Paris hotel!) to measure myself and keep eveyone honest. When a hotel doesn’t measure up (the RC Dallas, most recently), I ask for an appropriate rate reduction or a comp’d night as appropriate. I always ask a hotel to fix it the air con when I arrive and discover it to be problematic; if they cannot, I ask to be moved to a different room and/or appropriate service recovery to compensate.

I complain about the following most often:

(1) air con not working as promised
(2) air con shutting off overnight despite promises
(3) butler or guest relations phone ringing and not being answered
(4) lack of blackout shades
(5) poor housekeeping/lack of turndown for appropriate luxury hotels
(6) terrible wifi
(7) slow room service or lukewarm room service

I am never passive aggressive; if something bothers me, either I call and complain to get it resolved then and there or I tend to move on. When a hotel impresses me or generously upgrades me, I tend to let a few things go before I would call to complain about something (except for air con!); to me, a gracious or generous hotel has done well by me already and therefore deserves a chance to two to make some minor mistakes.

I always try to be fair and appropriate. But I also am of the firm belief that when a hotel really screws up, it should cost the hotel in some way as compensation—or else the hotel never really learns because there was no consequence. I call it like I see it. The RC Dallas has horrible WiFi of 0.5-1.5 Mbps, so I didn’t think twice about asking for a rate reduction. That is unworthy of any luxury hotel—and they should know that. Together with the poor air con there, I thought $125 off per night wasn’t asking that much at all.

But when a hotel offers me more than I think is fair, I ALWAYS say so and try to decline offers that might be too generous. I had an unnamed luxury hotel once offer us (without any request from us) a free 2500 euro benefit as recovery for a mistake that wasn’t nearly that bad; I had to decline. The hotel insisted, and I eventually accepted—but I had made it clear that I thought the hotel was being overly and unnecessarily generous. But I’ll stay again at that hotel without a second’s hesitation.

I also try to leave tips for hotel staff at hotels that have treated me very well. I don’t always remember to do this, but I often do. Hotel teams always appreciate that. Whether or not that goes into the commentary, I don’t know. But I still don’t care. As long as those I appreciate know that I appreciate them, I’m quite happy.