How disappointing some people can be.

I was at the Sheraton Hartford South with 50 students and chaperones for one of my group trips...right before a blizzard hit. Just as we were about to eat, the power went out. For 12 hours. The hotel managed a cold buffet for dinner and a cold buffet for breakfast, and put glow sticks throughout the hotel hallways and stairwells to provide some basic illumination. There was emergency lighting in a few places near reception and bar and a few exits, but it was a tough situation. The hotel did great...but never contacted us all--how were they supposed to contact us?

Anyone with questions went to the front desk and asked. They had someone there all night, and they obviously had people trying to wander around the property to make sure everyone was OK. Otherwise, we just hung out by the restaurant and eventually made everyone go to their rooms until morning.

in the morning, the power finally came back on after everyone had eaten breakfast. But the hotel never contacted anyone; we just checked out as we otherwise would have. Not sure what the point of contacting us would have been: "we're sorry you had to experience the power outage that obviously was beyond our control, but let us give you 5000 Marriott points by way of apology?"

The hotel handled it very well. The hotel didn't offer any "service recovery" because it wasn't the hotel's fault and the hotel did as much as could be expected.

Some people are looking to cash in on points or a refund because a hotel lost power? Puh-lease. Or because there was a fire alarm? Puh-lease. The fire alarms are code. We need to suck it up.

Sometimes, things just go wrong. Looking for blame and scapegoating a hotel doesn't help anyone.