hotelfanatic

How does one know this to be true? Have someone taken a poll of all Diamonds that stayed at this property and published the results? Or is this feeling from reading this thread? As one knows, people complain more than compliment in these forms. I see a few brave souls beginning to speak out on their positive experiences at this property.

Did you called Diamond line to complain? And what was your outcome? Did you rec compensation?

JFKSFOLAX_friend

Huh?

Who is "one"?

"Brave souls"? Are you serious?

I see plenty of positive trip reports on Flyertalk. Brave souls is a bit of a stretch.

LIH Prem

calm yourself young padawan.

-David

ma91pmh

Ok just got back from a Labor Day weekend at the Andaz Fifth. It was, as ever, something of a mixed bag. I'd used a confirmed suite upgrade a long while back for this trip and wanted to make sure we'd have a suite with a sofa-bed so I reached out to GPC here and they were kind enough to check with the hotel and sure enough a lady called Shanna confirmed and that said bed would be ready upon arrival on Friday. So on arrival after a 15 minute or so wait for the room we get to our room to find we have been given a Splash suite on the 3rd floor. Now don't get me wrong I think most people would be very happy to get this, it's above the normal upgrade pool, but I am looking around and seeing a huge couch which clearly is not going to sleep my kids and little room around it for rollaways. Not to mention I am having palpitations at the thought of the noise from 5th on the 3rd floor. So I call up and explain that I'd called ahead of time to ensure we got a room with a sofa bed (we stayed last year in a really excellent suite on the 12th which fitted our needs perfectly and I fully expected to get the same). At this point I was told pretty bluntly that I was SOL and that the place was "full" and nothing they could do. They offered a rollaway and when I explained we had two kids I was told I'd get a call back. Long story short, no call back, I had to call them again, we got run around a lot, and then finally they "found" a suite on 12. Oh and I had already got the guy to admit they had larger 2 bedroom suites but they would not give those out despite their failure in providing the accomodation they'd confirmed. So I guess they just went empty.

When we finally got to our "suite" on 12 turns out it's the smallest suite in the property and is more what I'd call a regular room with a divider. It did at least have the required sofa bed so at least my kids could sleep properly but at this point I have a pretty nasty taste in the mouth. Looking on the web site it looks like they now have new categories of "Suite" and "Large Suite" and the latter is what used to be "Suite". The new "Suite" is what I'd call "Slightly bigger room masquerading as crappy junior suite but we can now upgrade those whiny diamonds into this room instead of giving them a real suite"

Unlike the larger suite we had last year (which last year was their standard upgrade) this one had no dining table so no opportunity to get breakfast in the room so we had to go downstairs to The Shop. I have to say the staff here seem far more competent than their brethren around the corner that handle guest services. Every day we had great service, though it was really busy and frankly I am sure everyone would have been better off with us eating in our room I do have to concede that the breakfast treatment for Diamonds here is second to none. I never saw the check once and we had breakfast each morning. Top marks on this front ^

I had another run in when our water bottles did not get refreshed and we had medicine to take so I called guest services. Lo and behold it's my best buddy Shanna who's incompetence I was already familiar with. She told us mini bar comes once a day or we could pay for room service to deliver now. At this point I was just pissed so hung up and went to take care of it myself

Check out took a long time as we wanted to change the card used (I remembered needed to meet min spend on Mrs MA's Chase Sapphire card) and the guy did not know how to do that. He called the "manager" who I swear could not be a day older than 25 at best. They got it fixed. We did get offered $15 movie credit for the room situation and the guy checking us out reminded us of that which I thanked him for - but it still stayed on the bill when I looked at it afterwards

So what do I conclude? I think first and foremost it is not that the staff are bad, they are just truly incompetent. I think the team is too young and inexperienced, led by the same, and that shows in an inability to take care of their guest properly unless things are "going smoothly". I think that explains the digression in feedback here where for folks where things go fine people tend to come away with a very favorable impression as the young staff generally try to be very pleasing. But when things go wrong, the staff do a VERY bad job of getting things fixed and this leaves people upset

I spent a lot of time thinking this would be my last stay at the hotel and I am seriously considering staying at the Bryant Park next time. It is actually not easy to find reasonably priced 600 sq ft suites in NYC but BP is on a par regular rate wise with Andaz and it's better located overlooking the park. But no promise anything would be better there and of course the Diamond confirmed suite upgrade can save a lot of money, though now it looks like I will need to offer up some more money to confirm the larger suite (the "suite" and "larger suite" are both part of the upgrade pool but of course now I cannot depend on getting the type of suite we need). So I may yet continue to try this place but I will go in with expectations low and set appropriately, and ensure a very strong paper trail of room expectation and any promises made by the hotel so that I can ensure we get the accommodation we expect.

Sorry for the long post

GoingAway

Not sure at Fifth Avenue, but the Andaz Wall Street has a fridge of water in the fitness club, if you run into the mini bar problem again, its a good place to look for water replenishments.

I would disagree on your assessment of your best bud, there. From your report, the listening skills were totally absent, which made her responses inappropriate when the hotel was clearly in the wrong. That is not good customer service at any level.

londonienne

ma91pmh, thank you so much for your review of the property. It's stunning how well so many of these disastrous experiences at the property rhyme: denied upgrades that were confirmed ahead of arrival, lack of care for Diamond guests, poor communication, and virtually no attempt at rectifying the situation to the guest's satisfaction in light of the circumstances. I would hope that those few Diamonds who have not (yet) been subject to such filth take note of the graciousness of the guest, the great lengths to which he was obligated to go to set things right, and the misery of interacting with hotel staff, all of which were compounded by the realities of traveling with children. A hotel that tests your patience to such a degree at $450/night is clearly in need of new management.

I would like to ask, though, did you make any effort to contact the General Manager or the Director of Rooms? While I don't think it would have made any difference at all given the rest of the data points on this website, I would strongly encourage you to contact the Diamond Line and Hyatt Consumer Affairs, explain what happened, request a refund of your stay, and cc in the Director of Rooms and General Manager into the email. I would also request that you include a link to this review. These measures will serve to hasten the replacement of hotel management, or failing that, the adoption of more Diamond-friendly policies.

This hotel would be a delight if the service in any way came close to the location and the standing of the property.

ma91pmh

I just went to the lobby and got some from there. It was clearly too hard for them to help out themselves.

Maybe my sarcasm wasn't switched on clearly enough but I think we are thinking the same thing. this person was clearly incompetent. Two interactions and in both cases the person screwed up royally. If she were on my team, she'd be on the list of "people to fire when we have to make redundancies"

ma91pmh

@londonienne - no I only interacted with front desk manager. I will however follow up with an email to Jonathan Frolich assuming he still has something to do with the hotel. As I think about whether or not I return I do have to consider whether or not I cut my own nose to spite my face. We were on a great rate, $236 a night, so with breakfast included I'd be hard pushed to beat it in NYC. This was booked a LONG time ago when they were still building out their presence. But next year when my diamond status slips (Hyatt overall has just been too disappointing to give biz to this year) and rates are more in line with the competition, the Bryant Park or Ganesvoort look tempting alternatives.

While I would not expect a refund, I'd certainly expect them to make good on their promises and improve their service

The big problem for the senior management of the hotel is this kind of performance makes you think about going elsewhere. If the service was as it should be, I would not even consider staying elsewhere. But as it stands, these guys literally force me to look for alternatives, and if I find something, then they are done for. This is what they fail to understand about loyalty

londonienne

This is precisely how I'd phrase it. This hotel spits on Hyatt's best customers with striking alacrity; however, Hyatt needs to know that such treatment is very likely why many of us will decline to requalify for Diamond status at the end of this year. The managers of this property need to know that their flagrant violation of Gold Passport rules will have repercussions beyond this hotel -- indeed across Hyatt's entire portfolio of properties. I encourage you to fax any future hotel invoices from New York to Hyatt Consumer Affairs so they can see exactly how much revenue they are losing due to this property's gross mistreatment of Diamonds.

LilZeppelin

it seems incompetence does not differentiate between guests, it's just that some elites are more vociferous and more easily ticked off. By assuming a role of royalty, we run the risk of sounding hollow. Hyatt is reading this, and seeing as much investment, they might as well think they are just fine. Take breakfast away though, and hotel will start looking for what it is. As breakfast is never so important for me, I prefer the chain's big brother down the street, where at least the attitude and competence of staff are more in line with hospitality industry standards. But then again, it's definitely not for everyone. "Yes, we can" vote with our purse strings.

SeamasterLux

Hey all,

I have a 6 night stay coming up in a Large Suite (got a 400 USD/night rate on a non-Hyatt website) but I'm not expecting to get a better suite than I what have paid for. Too bad, I would have gladly enjoy the Splash or the 2 BR but I fear it will remain as a dream.

At least I'll enjoy the breakfast for free. I'll post a report after my stay

P.S.: by the way, I can't wait for the PH NYC to open next year

SeamasterLux

Checked-in this afternoon in my Large Suite.

At check-in, I ask if there is any suite with twin beds, the girl answers "but of course Sir, let me check". Then she looks for one and tells me: "we have a lovely one on the 5th floor with a perfect view. It's our very best room with twin beds and I'll gladly give it to you".
I take a glance at the screen and see that she actually tried to "downgrade" me in a Loft room without even saying it.

So, that's the new perks on fashion at the Andaz 5th Avenue, you get downgraded when you're diamond.

Of course I refused and took my Large Suite and am very happy with it.

I'll comment later on the rest but this was worth mentioning

ma91pmh

now they are out figure it's ok to mention that Ana Ivanovic and Jo-Willfried Tsonga were both staying while they were playing at the US Open. Saw Ms Ivanovic at breakfast each day with her mother. Tsonga saw a couple times at breakfast and then heading *out* when we were heading in at 11pm... maybe with earlier nights he'd be in better shape for the big boys

hotelfanatic

Don't think she is lying - it is the best room with twin beds in the hotel. Isn't that what you were asking for - twin beds?

LIH Prem

+1

-David