outoftown

Zaki, you are a new post as well as this hotel management. I believe you feel (as I would) publicizing this issue as punishing the hotel for failing to respond in the manner you were expecting. I consider myself somewhat knowledgeable on bedbugs, as I have had bites and my brother seemingly content to live with them. There is a possibility the hotel did not have bed bugs. My last bites (also in the neck and shoulder area) happened after I wore a newly purchased shirt that was made in a country with known infestations. It was off a rack in a well known chain retail store in the U.S. I suspect the bedbug survived the trip to the U.S. and decided to make a meal of the first occupant of the shirt. Bedbugs can live a year between bites. They can hitchhike on luggage (I never put soft luggage on the hotel floor). I always turn down the sheets and inspect the corner piping. Bedbugs can hide in crevices, electrical receptacles and cracks in wood or plaster. You did have bedbug bites, often a clue is the three in a row bite pattern. But unless you can find them (or their poop residue) in your room, the hotel may still think and could possibly be correct that you brought them with you. I do think you over reacted with the hospital or medical demands. If the hotel comped the room, gave you a different room, gave you points or other compensation, that should be enough. A bigger fear for me would be that I might bring them home with me. If you want to punish the hotel, take your business elsewhere, but that is no guarantee you will avoid bedbugs. I know of a person paying $950 per night in a Boston hotel that got bedbug bites.

-outoftown, posting from Roanoke, VA

LFCorsten

Zaki, I am afraid I see the hotel being right in this case. It looks very much so as they have followed their protocol and followed up through out with you. They even offered you upgrades and points, which you haven´t mentioned on your post. You cannot expect a hotel, airline, train, etc. to cover your hospital and medical charges just because you believe to have been bitten by a bed bug, mosquito, spider or whatever within their premises. Specially when you have no evidence, marks in your bed nor have you seen the insects yourself. For me it looks more like you have taken a "black mailing" position to get as much benefit as you can. Just because you are not getting the compensation you wish it does not mean they are unprofessional or rude, I feel you just want to compromise their image. You should accept their offer and get on with it. I would even say you are lucky in such circumstances to have been even offered points, I know of a friend who didn´t even get a sorry in a similar case.

Zaki.awwami

Regarding the long post by the hotel management, while it certainly your right to provide your "point of view", it is certainly not your right to fabricate the events of this incident and make it seem like the hotel behaved graciously and responsibly during this incident. If your staff had only told me a few kind understanding words and offered to help in whatever they could help with, I would not have posted this to begin with, and there would have been no need for the hotel to write this misleading essay. Let me be very clear, and I said this previously in my posts and in my emails to the hotel, I am not after compensation for petty financial gain. I asked for compensation in order to expose the indifferent and ungracious behavior of the hotel staff that I was dealing with at the time. The general manager only contacted me after making this post on this web site to do damage control.

at the beginning and end of the hotel post you claim that you are posting "factual" details and findings, but saying that doesn't make what you say in between factual, it is misleading at best so let me fill you in in the facts.

So far the hotel has suggested all possible theories of how I got these bites on my neck, all except one, which is that they are bed bug bites that occurred in the hotel, which is what really happened. In the beginning you said that they may or may not be bug bites, and one of your staff suggested that it could be an allergy or a rash for all he knows. Then you said that whatever it was it did not happen at your hotel, and now you are making a twist on that by saying that it did not "originate" in your hotel. Here are the facts:

1. I arrived at your hotel with no bug bites on my neck (I came with friends and they will be more than willing to confirm that)
2. I did not leave your hotel at all during my stay. I paid for full board and did not leave the hotel at all. The only two times that I left the hotel were after the bug bites and both were to go to a hospital as I wanted to get a cream for the bites. Both times I was unsuccessful in seeing a doctor (I'll elaborate later)
3. The hospital report, which I will try to upload here if there is a way, clearly states that what I had was bed bug bites and it occurred during my stay in your hotel

The bug bites occurred at your hotel and nowhere outside. I was sleeping that night on my right side and I felt something was wrong in the same side of my neck as soon as I woke up, and when I checked it in the mirror, there it was!! I also did not do any shopping for new clothes as some reviewers have suggested the bug came from. It walks like a duck, smells like a duck, and quacks like a duck, but to the hotel it is anything but a duck....you refuse to acknowledge even the possibility that it occurred in your hotel room and accordingly you have refused to provide any help let alone just show simple courtesy in your behavior while I was interacting with you during this mess.

Now here are corrections to you are claiming facts, which are not:

When the incident happened, I was not really after any compensation at all. I already mentioned this in my post. I only asked your housekeeping manager to try and get me some cream, as I was very itchy and I was afraid it will get infected when I scratch it. Your housekeeping manager ignored me for 24 hours (BTW this is when I called Starwood customer support to raise a complaint, as your staff were obviously just ignoring me). I called the second day, and I asked if I can speak with him and why he completely ignored me, and yes he did come to my room then to tell me that he could not find any cream for bug bites. Your housekeeping manager at that time offered to take me to the hospital as they can exactly diagnose what I had and prescribe a cream accordingly, so I said yes, if that's what it'll take then I will go with you to the hospital, I told him that I will come down the reception in few minutes and we can go. When I went down I was abruptly met by your duty manager, who was very rude. He basically suggested that the housekeeping manager should not have offered this to me, and that the hotel cannot take me to a hospital and cannot pay for the hospital charges, and that this is something I should do on my own. Remember until now I have not asked the hotel to pay for anything on my behalf, not even the cream if they would have gotten it to me, I was prepared to pay for the cream and the hospital charges. It was the rude behavior of your duty manager that made me eventually demand that you pay for the hospital charges, because as I mentioned to you in my emails, I mainly want to make the point that the behavior of your duty manager was unprofessional and unacceptable, and by such request, I want you to acknowledge that this behavior is unacceptable and should not be repeated to other guests regardless of the issue at hand. What angered me the most in this incident, was that the duty manager and all the other management staff were insinuating that I am either lying or fabricating this story, or that it happened outside the hotel and I am trying to push it on the hotel, as evident by this reply to my post. Not only is the hotel management refusing to take any iota of responsibility for this incident, but there were very rude and unsympathetic in their behavior with me.
You say and I quote “Our duty manager did recommend that you visit the hospital at which we could arrange an urgent appointment which you declined as you would have to cover the costs because the investigation was still ongoing” is basically an outright lie not even a fabrication of the events. Your duty manager did not offer any help in arranging an appointment and not even an urgent one at that, and if he did not offer it then I certainly did not decline it either, you should get your facts straight here. Your duty manager did not offer any help whatsoever and was not courteous in his behavior at it either. All that he basically said (not in exact words) is that this did not occur in our hotel, as you have no pest issue in your hotel of course, therefore it is completely my problem and I should basically go away and do whatever I please. Whether I wanted to go to a hospital or not was not something he wanted to concern himself with!! Had he offered to help in any way he could or offered to make an appointment for me or was professional and courteous in his attitude I would not be wasting my time posting about this. I actually went to the hospital twice on my own without any offer to help, the first time they said they could not take me without a prior appointment, as they already had many patients waiting for the dermatologist. The hospital receptionist asked me to come the next day at between 1-2pm which I did, but they said that there was only one dermatologist and he had to go to a town meeting and will not be back until 5. I had to go to Dubai that same day and could not wait. Had your staff helped in making an appointment I could have saved this wasted time and effort too. I want you to compare that with what happened when I arrived in the Dubai hotel which I went to after leaving your hotel. As I was checking in I told them about what happened, and although they had nothing to do with it, they immediately got on the phone and made two appointments for me at two hospitals that they recommended and asked me which appointment was more suitable for me. I picked the earlier one and went to the hospital they recommended, which is the one I got the report from that I sent to you. Please take a moment to reflect on this behavior from a hotel that had nothing to do with this incident and your own staff behavior before you reply back to me with “it is not our problem, and we will fabricate more events to show that we have done all we can and that we actually care” crab kind of post.

I apologize for this long post, but I had to respond to the hotel’s post. To summarize, the hotel is taking this issue seriously now after the initial post, but they certainly are not accepting any responsibility whatsoever for this incident and they keep reiterating that, while the probability that it did occur in the hotel should at least be considered by them. More importantly their behavior when the incident occurred was indifferent without any attempt to assist in whatever they could, or show any sympathy or courtesy to a guest that had a bad episode of bed bug bites. This is the unprofessional behavior that I found unacceptable and is what I am here to change, so hopefully it does not repeat with other guests.

Zaki.awwami

Hotel post was alluded that the report showed that it originated outside the hotel, and that is not true at all, so I included it.

I wrote my feedback to the hotel's post. [Comment on moderation edited as not allowed by FT Rules.]

LFCorsten

This is a very long and defensive reply to the hotel. Sorry to see you got bitten, but you are making a very big deal for something which is straight forward: you got bitten, you can't prove it happened in the hotel even if you show other 5 hospital results and you have to write this defensive essay against them to insist you are right. I agree with the other reviewers saying you just want to punish the hotel as you are not getting your unreasonable demand. Am not sure you are really interested in this not happening to others. As for the hotel, I would say don't offer loyalty points and since you want to show good will just pay the dr appointment which is probably less than the points anyway and that's it. And let all be happy.

TMM1982

I think you've got this backwards. The hotel's reply was very long and defensive. You don't find it at least a little bit odd that the hotel felt the need to make a new username on FT just to defend against this one allegation? I sure do.

LFCorsten

I actually find it odd that a guest opens a new account with the obvious objective of discrediting the hotel. This is not what FT is here for. I find it is the hotels right and duty to reply to an allegation of this kind. There are always to sides of a story.

I think the hotel has no reason to hide.

TMM1982

I actually don't find it odd at all. The guest was bitten by bed bugs and went to hotel manager to demand fair compensation. Hotel's offer was not acceptable to guest so he warned them he would post highly negative reviews if they didn't comply and so he did. Sounds like he's following through with the promised consequences to the hotel.