Originally Posted by
cordelli
I'm actually trying to remember if any hotel has ever given me anything for waiting, once they sent a wine and fruit basket up later saying "sorry for the delay" .
At the Le Meridien Bora Bora on my honeymoon (I was SPG Gold at the time), we checked in (around 12:00PM, so before the technical check-in time) and our room wasn't ready. They said it would be about 30 minutes and a representative of the hotel walked us to the bar, ordered us a drink each and then took us on a tour of the hotel. When we returned to the front desk, the room still wasn't ready, so she took us down to the restaurant and offered us a complimentary lunch. We ordered a few alcoholic beverages, expecting to pay for them, but when we asked for the bill, we were told it was complimentary--I even checked on the alcohol afterwards (again, was going to pay for that) and they came back saying it was their treat. We then finally checked in (not that I cared much at that point), and all was well.
Granted this was the only time this happened to me (Hilton in Berlin once gave me two drink coupons for my 20 minute wait, but not as dramatic). Lunch in Bora Bora is expensive, so this was a nice freebie.
Anyhow, 99/100 times, this will not happen, but it does occasionally.
To the OP, I unfortunately think that you would have needed to raise the coffee issue at the time, but it does sound like they compensated you anyway with the champagne.