writerguyfl

This thread is a perfect example of why there's no such thing as "appropriate compensation" in these types of situations.

I've told this story a bunch of times, so forgive me if you've read it before.

One of my past jobs was Night Manager during the soft opening of a hotel. The building was closed, gutted down to the structural walls, and rebuilt. We opened weeks too early. That fact meant our first guests experienced a huge number of inconveniences that never should have happened in a fully operational hotel.

During that period, my nights consisted of taking complaints and offering compensation. (I'd sometimes have a line!) I quickly learned that different guests reacted quite differently to the same offer of compensation to fix the same problem.

In fact, a small number some of guests viewed any offer of compensation to be offensive. Those people usually wanted a sincere apology and an explanation of how the stuff will be doing things differently to try to stop the issue from every happening again.

Once I shifted to a "What can we do for you to make up for the problem?" approach, that job got much easier. If guests were unsure, I'd respond with a "other guests have asked for X", with X being a relatively low-value item. I started low because I didn't want to give away the farm, so to speak. (It was a for-profit business, after all.)

My point behind this isn't that I don't think the OP should ask for opinions. There's nothing wrong with that. But, you're not going to find a consensus. Ask for what you want to make you whole...not what other FlyerTalkers say you should get.

Additionally, different hotels or even different managers within the same hotel will have different approaches to compensation. As such, if the OP provides the negotiated resolution, anyone reading this in the future when faced with a similar damaged item of clothing shouldn't view that resolution as what should happen for them.

TL;DR: Compensation is personal. There will be no consensus. What one guest expects might be very different for another.