We stayed at the Park Hyatt Sydney recently; our visit began well but ended with great disappointment.
We stayed three nights on points for my partner's landmark birthday. They were kind enough to upgrade us to a Harbor View room. It was a room with a good view of the cruise ship terminal and CBD, and if you leaned out of the balcony you could see the Opera House - so quite nice.
The first service incident was when we came back for a meal in the Living Room. There were a fair amount of people but we managed to snag a table by the window. Once we sat down we waited...and waited...and waited for someone to come over and take our order. Subtle cues were not effective; we wound up having to call for a waiter. (This wasn't the only incident of this sort that we had in the Living Room.)
Things became more awkward a little later. The table next to ours, adjacent to the window, was vacated. It was empty for several minutes, and someone came over asking if he and his partner could sit there. They did and we had a delightful chat and they placed their order. Then one of the staffers came over and kicked him and his wife out of the table, saying the manager wanted someone else to sit there! He said another couple had been waiting for that specific window table and asked our neighbor and his partner to move to another long table with no view which they'd be sharing with other people – quite a downgrade from a romantic table for two by the window! The staff dropped the ball in a really bad way. The man who was sitting next to us kept saying, "But I'm a guest here!" and it turned into a very ugly argument. Ironically, the very next table by the window opened, but the new couple weren't willing to take it – they had to have THAT SPECIFIC table end evict our neighbors. It was an object lesson in how NOT to do hospitality.
We got our own personal lesson on poor hospitality on the morning we checked out. There had been substantial rains and there were leaks all over the hotel; we were on the 2nd floor and there were buckets in the hallway to catch the drips. Our room also sprung a leak in the WC area, a yellow, stinky and substantial drip from the ceiling that left a large puddle on the floor. (Staff later put an ice bucket there to catch the drip, and it overflowed the ice bucket in a few hours.) A tremendous member of the hotel staff came up, saw the leak and did his best to remedy the situation. He gave us keys so we could sleep in a non-harbor-view room, gave us a bottle of wine, and told us that in the morning our breakfast and transport to the airport would be comped. I called downstairs to confirm everything and asked them to put a note in our file for shift change, because I know how these things go. Sounds like a grand slam home run on how to treat a guest, right?
Not so much. The next morning I came down to the lobby and spoke to the front desk. They said they'd never heard a thing. They treated me as if I was trying to scam them and did their best to make it uncomfortable for me. I was firm and polite. I gave them the name of the staffers I'd worked with the night before – and they called those staffers AT HOME to check and see if I'd really been comped breakfast and a ride to the airport. After receiving an affirmative answer, the front desk staff said they would inform the dining room staff we were being comped breakfast. Surprise, surprise, no one in the dining room had heard a thing, and they also treated me like I was running a scam. "I'm sorry, but if you're here on points you're not allowed to have a free breakfast." I sent them back to the front desk to confirm. I say "them" because this happened THREE TIMES. As soon as I'd resolve it with one and they'd apologize for the confusion, they'd leave and I'd have to go through it all over again. Then the front desk staffer came over and said that arranging a limousine at this late time would be difficult. I said, "I thought you were just arranging a taxi to the airport?" She looked shocked, as if she'd never thought of the idea of setting up a taxi. Lo and behold, once that conversation ended the transport got sorted in five minutes.
The Park Hyatt is a beautiful property, but the staff leaves a lot to be desired. I stayed at a different hotel in Sydney earlier in the week, and though the room and facilities were not as nice, the staff was top-notch and went above and beyond to make my stay better. It was very nice of the Park Hyatt to promise me so many things to make up for the issue in my stay, but their failure at follow-through made it an even worse experience than the original leak was! Their service is not of the caliber that I would expect at a Park Hyatt.