Compensation for problem at a Sheraton?
 

Just here to ask if my issue is something I'm likely to receive any compensation for, and if possibly so, how I should proceed.

I serve on the board for a non-profit organization that provides leadership opportunities for young people. We have an annual convention in a metropolitan area that attracts several hundred people, the vast majority of whom stay at our conference hotel (a Sheraton property). We have been using this hotel for about 20 years. Not that I am personally known to them, but I have been on our board for about that long and have stayed there each year.

Last week during our conference, I arrived at about 11:00 a.m. and was given keys to our room by the board member who oversees that task at about 2:00 p.m. I was very busy all afternoon with my conference responsibilities. My husband had dropped me off and then he ran errands until about 5:00 that afternoon. When he arrived, I gave him his key in the hotel lobby. He ended up assisting some students, etc., and he and I didn't see each other again until about 9:30 that evening.

At about 7:00 p.m., I was finally able to run up to our room for the first time, and it appeared that my husband had already made a quick stop in the room to shower, probably watch a little March Madness from the bed, iron something, and make a cup of coffee. It appeared that he had been eating some chocolate trail mix in the bed as there were some flecks of chocolate on my side.

The next morning, he asked, "So why did you use both towels yesterday and leave them on the bathroom floor?" I told him I hadn't showered at all, and that's when we realized that we each assumed the other had been in the room at some point to freshen up / relax for a few minutes and had mussed things up... when in reality, our room had never been cleaned. We had slept in a dirty bed and likely been using dirty glasses to haul water to the coffee pot that we believed had been used by each other. We had no fresh towels and I haven't had the stomach to ask my husband if he had picked up one of what he thought were my dirty towels from the floor to dry himself after his shower. :-/

I reached out to our group's hotel liaison to let her know what had happened and to ask about some form of compensation. She said she would ask her manager. She returned later with this message: "What we are able to offer you is our sincerest gratitude for taking the time to share your experience with us so that we can improve our processes." I asked, "And that is all?" She enthusiastically pushed the value of their gratitude as though that was worth anything to me.

Our board members were all extremely busy running our conference. Not only did I not have the luxury of time to press the matter with a manager, but I was not going to push this onto our extremely busy hotel-tasked board member to remedy in that moment. He had bigger things to troubleshoot than my hotel problem.

FWIW, our rooms were around $180/night + parking, and I was there one night. I feel like we paid the Clean Room With Clean Towels rate, not the Dirty Room rate.

If I reach out to their manager, does anyone have a recommendation about whether this should be done via email or over the phone? Is the local manager my best bet? And what compensation would be fair? Bonvoy points? A partial refund?

Thanks for any insight or guidance!

ETA: My husband and I occasionally stay at Marriott properties, but I tend to book the best deal I can find through the Chase portal w/my Chase Reserve to get 10x the points. Sometimes that's a Marriott... but not something I get to build up Bonvoy points with. Unless they gave enough points for a free night with them, which I would happily use, I would likely transfer them to our preferred airline.

Way too many irrelevant details.

To summarize:
You booked a room for one night. The hotel mistakenly gave you a room that hadn't been cleaned and that shouldn't happen. But you didn't go to the room right away. You and your partner had asynchronous schedules and didn't realize the soiled room was not of your own doing. Inappropriately, you used dirty cups to fill the coffee pot (only complaining that it wasn't your own dirty cups?) All the more reason to *never* use those nasty pots as they don't and really can't get sanitized.

Response:
If you had complained right away, as you should have, you'd maybe get a small room upgrade for the trouble. After the fact, it's awful but not worth compensation. Maybe they'd throw you 5k points.
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I agree about the points compensation. They're going to be Bonvoy points; SPG ended almost five years ago.

Points worth one night for staying in a room that hadn't been cleaned is what I would ask for.

I agree with Out of my Element. You are due far more than 5K pts. That is absolutely disgusting.

recently i was at a marriott in spain...i checked in to a suite and when i walked into the bedroom i realized something was off bc there were two hangars on the bed (not the type in the closet) then looking around i saw a food to-go container on a side table...despite the bed seemingly made up with crisp pillows, something was off.

in the bathroom i saw a used cup, toothbrush and towel on the floor and took pics and called immediately. they were very apologetic and frankly i did not care much as the rate was only 170/nt and i was exhausted from a long day of travel.

anyhow, long story short they cleaned everything asap and ended up giving me 50% off the first nights rate without asking. granted this is a european property where they actual care and not a US property.

but yes, 5k is pathetic recovery for such an issue.

Disgusting. You need to personally escalate/contact the hotel and ask for the manager...not your group contact. Its likely that person never even spoke with or mentioned the issue to the hotel manager.

Your room should've been cleaned and ready before you went in. You were given a dirty room. That deserves more than some tiny amount of points that is nothing to the property.

I don't know how your event/organization books and pays for the rooms.

If it were my event and we had booked & paid for the room for one of our board members to stay in, I would expect the room cost to be credited back to the non-profit and some fairly significant recovery (points enough for a comparable stay in a a comparable hotel). Anything much less than that would probably result in finding a different hotel for next year's event.

You should involve whoever at your organization signs the contracts and pays the bills.

Thanks much to those of you with some guidance. It's much appreciated!

I was really surprised that - given the many thousands of dollars in revenue our conference was generating for them and that I was clearly a board member because of the station I was running and the identifying shirt that I was wearing - that they weren't crazy responsive to make it right. Not because I'm personally 'all that'... just because I should've been identifiable as a decision-maker who could decide the hotel wasn't our best choice for our conference anymore.

Mistakes happen and I realize they were in quick-turnaround-mode from a prior conference. But at the end of the day, I paid the full rate for a clean room with clean towels, etc., and instead ended up feeling pretty grossed out by my experience in their hotel room, and annoyed that the words, "We're so sorry!" didn't even come out of their mouths. "What we can offer you is our sincerest gratitude for the feedback" wasn't what I expected.

I'll research how many points = a free room night and request that amount.

Thanks again!

Regardless of t-shirt, badges, or involvement, the hotel probably doesn't view anyone as a decision-maker except the point-of-contact who booked the event. No hotel employee can distinguish management, governance, volunteer, employee, participant in any meaningful way.

I would *really* encourage you to involve your organization's point-of-contact in any conversation with the hotel, even if you booked and paid for your room separately.

Yeah - I do get that. There are just eight board members and I was working our check-in desk wearing a board of directors shirt and nametag. She had come to the desk to make sure everything was running smoothly and to see if we needed anything further. I had already been communicating with her about an issue related to our dedicated wireless internet password. I told her that the convention itself was running smoothly, but that personally I had an issue with my room and wondered if something might be done for me, and proceeded to explain what happened.

I did tell our board POC and he was negatively surprised at the lack of responsiveness. I did book/pay through our group, so payment for my room was from them. As an organization, we're actually very happy with all that they offer and with their service. I feel like I need to reach out asap, but our POC is tied up on a business trip and we won't meet for several weeks. I'll probably let him know my intent and unless he wants to go another route I'll just copy him as I correspond with them.

Again, many thanks for the suggested request for a remedy. I completely expected that they would be very apologetic and offer to comp the room completely, or at least knock half off the price. It was the lame response that got me fired up. lol

It gives me the "Heebie-jeebies" just thinking about it! Definitely worth more than 5K points!

Using the cups for water, well o.k. the water gets boiled practically in the coffee pot but sleeping in the bed, face in the pillows and using a strangers towel.....ugh.

Yep!

Mistakes happen. It just would've gone a long way for them to at least act mortified that their staff goofed and that we didn't get a room in the condition [clean] that we paid for.

Is it *that* uncommon to be checked into an uncleaned room? Maybe I'm just super unlucky but it's happened at least a half dozen times over the years, more if you count rooms that were still occupied.

It's annoying and definitely lowers my view of the property, but it never took more than a trip back to the front desk to resolve and I never expected anything but occasionally received an upgrade from it.

At the same time, yes "you had one job" and they obviously failed at it.

It happened to at least two other guests at our conference this weekend, and the hotel quickly made it right. They offered to move both to different rooms that were clean.

I'm sure that had we not - in good faith that the room had been cleaned - proceeded to use the room that they would've moved us to a clean one. No big deal.

Just because we didn't discover their error on the front end doesn't mean we shouldn't have been offered some sort of 'make it right' gesture. In fact, the argument could be made that because we actually spent a night on dirty sheets and had a bathroom with dirty towels and other people's hair in the shower, etc., that they should've gone the extra mile to reduce the ick we were feeling.

So far I've been unable to find an email address to contact the manager. I reached out via Messenger on their FB page and just asked for an email address. The message was read about six hours ago, but so far no response other than, "Hi, thanks for contacting us. We've received your message and appreciate you reaching out."