Originally Posted by
ftrichard
What, really? They're calling this a resort to deny us a late check out?
Look, I appreciate that currently there are many HK families booking here at the weekend for staycations and entrance to Ocean Park itself isn't a given but to designate this a resort is a bit much. Maximum, this gets around a problem of people checking in Friday and leaving Saturday at 4pm. Better, IMO, to mandate that you must stay two nights if you check in Friday and want late checkout rather than inflict a fictitious resort designation on everyone staying every night.
I kinda understand why they chose to change to resort. In Apr till early July, before the outbreak again, there are only a few or even none confirmed cases, while kids didn’t need to back to school. Therefore, lots of families chose to have staycation in local hotels. Ocean Park Marriott, with highly-rated buffets as well as three swimming pools, became a hot place among HKers here. Not even in weekends, it was packed in weekdays too. It attracted numerous non-member families. While we members have checkout at 4pm, those non-member guests arrived at 3pm and found out no rooms were available, for sure they would complain and then front desk faced huge pressure to settle the cases. But if turning to resort, we have to checkout before noon, and they still have three hours to do cleaning and provide rooms to new guests. Problem settled.
Of course, it is a pity to see such a nice hotel turning to resort. Therefore, I have not been to there for a few months already. Mainly because I cannot accept to have checkout at 11am. The hotel has the rights to change to resort, while I have my freedom to choose the hotel I wanna stay to relax. There are a lot more hotels I have never stayed, and I will give them a try!
