Jimgotkp

Even though we would expect people to clean up after themselves, it's never the case. If this has been the case at this hotel for quite some time, management should've hired additional part-time workers to help during breakfast hours. Definitely unacceptable to see this type of mess as a guest at any hotel/motel.

Kacee

It doesn't matter if you think the guests are slobs . . . it's the hotel's responsibility to keep its premises clean. Period. This is not subject to reasonable debate.

CJKatl

Oh, Joshua... I was born in Manhattan. My parents grew up there. When I was a few months old, my family moved to Appalachia where I grew up. My grandmothers and other relatives lived in NYC. I visit both NYC and Appalachia frequently. You wouldn't find this kind of mess in Appalachia. You would in NYC.

It's both. Yes, the hotel should have staff there and the staff should be cleaning and restocking, but a reasonable person would clear his/her own dishes, especially if one were to look around and see the dishes were not being cleared.

Goldorak

The few staff around were in another separate room with the food items and they were running and rushing around. They were obviously not here to clean tables.

Because that’s what I expect in a hotel or a restaurant. I spend about 80-100 nights a year in hotels everywhere in the world and I have never seen that before. This is not a YMCA but an hotel where I have paid about $400 a night, so for that price you expect at least a decent place to eat your BF.

I think nobody knows that eventually we had to collect our stuff and bring it somewhere. For information, it was not just putting everything in trash because the plates and cutlery were not disposable ones. And in places where you have to collect your stuff like a fast food place, you usually have a tray and so it’s easy. Here, no trays. At least there could put some signs on the tables or on the wall and then people would be informed. Even if I am not expecting to clean up my table in a hotel, I would have had no problem doing it if I would have known.

Exactly.

I rarely book through OTA and rather book directly with hotels, but it was significantly cheaper booking through booking.com (like 200 or 300 less), and I certainly don’t want to loose time and argue with the hotel with a BRG claim, knowing that they can be pretty tough to deal with.

Tanic

If you end the discussion, then you can't return to discuss it more. Period

joshua362

Apologies, actually I have no real idea of what Appalachia is, just heard it thrown around and bashed for years. I agree most rural, low trafficked places stay nice for a reason. the kindness of the people and the slower less pressure way of life. Aint happening in Manhattan...

In fairness & being from NY, likely most of these guests are not NYC'ers to begin with. Whatever Management has set up is clearly not working, One last possible excuse is perhaps these pictures were taken at the very tail end of breakfast and cleanup is suspended while the breakdown takes place. Breakfast has to end somehow and sometime and can be difficult with a large continuous group still filing in. I've been there late and hungover many times grabbing what I can as they try and close out the morning...

Hope the OP mails or drops off these pictures as they do say a thousand words.

GoPhils

It's NYC. I'm sure the price was comparable for those dates to other hotels which do not provide breakfast.

Not trying to sound snarky, but had you stayed in a Residence Inn in the US before this? Pretty sure most (even those without disposable dishes and silverware) have somewhere to stack the dirty items, although yes they should also have someone cleaning up what's left. If this hotel didn't then that is an issue, and if they expect the guests to clear their own plates and are having an issue with that not happening, then I agree that they should probably have a sign stating as much.

I took a quick peek of their Tripadvisor reviews (which overall are good), but there are comments similar to yours going back several years so it seems like this is a recurring issue that has not been corrected which is unfortunate. However, several of the comments seem to say that the employees were working hard but were just overwhelmed with the amount of people.

Sadly, I fear what might be more likely to happen than a better breakfast experience is that this hotel will become a "resort" or do something so that it won't provide breakfast at all.


This.

CJKatl

OT: Northern Miss/Alab/Georg to southwestern NY and the rural mountain areas between. Penn State made an award winning documentary called the , which followed an Appalachian woman and her family for twenty-five or so years, checking in on them every few years from 1970 on, showing their meager existence, terrible housing, etc. I grew up a couple miles from there, intown as they would say. My father was their doctor. The kids went to school with us at one point.

pinniped

No - at a rural roadtripper motel, the breakfast area would likely be clean and well-tended to by a staff member. @:-)

I won't claim to have the most experiences with Fairfield Inn (or Hampton, or HIX, or Motel 6 or 8, etc.), but when I have *good* experiences they're often the most rural locations. When I've had a bad experience, it's usually been some sort of suburban location.

I tend to bus my own table at RI or any brand with a similar setup, simply to let the table be available more quickly for the next guest. But I also agree that the hotel is responsible for keeping the place clean. People keep bringing up Burger King: even BK has someone wiping down tables, emptying trash, and keeping the place tidy.

It seems like a *lot* of NYC hotels have the issue of too-few lifts for the number of floors/rooms in the building. I'm not sure why, but I wonder if it's because many of the buildings were originally apartments that didn't have quite the same traffic patterns as a hotel, or were less-dense in terms of total guests in the building. (I'm thinking these 1920s-1940s buildings that have been turned into midscale hotels; not so much the biggest hotels in the city.)

Or maybe former generations were more willing to take the stairs?

Kacee

I think both. When these were apartments, there might have been 2-4 on a floor, now they've got 12 (or more) hotel rooms squeezed into the same space. Also, the elevators get more use, so they break down more often. Nothing like an elevator out of service to clog things up.

Goldorak

No, this was a 1st time.

Clearly. As I said, I'm not expecting to do this in a hotel, but have no problem to do it if that's the "policy". But as nobody told us + no sign saying it + no obvious place to put your dirty items leads to this "chaos".

I read TA afterwards and saw that too indeed. And fully agree on the overwhelmed staff, they were very busy running around the food room. No time for anything else.

That could be a good explanation indeed.

VickiSoCal

When you have non-disposable dishes and cutlery if you are expecting people to clear their items there has to be a obvious place to take them and room to actually put them there.

pinniped

At least this RI was using real cutlery and dishes. (Well, to some extent.)

I hate it when hotels use all-disposable supplies at breakfast. Especially if they also lecture me about reusing towels "for the environment".

I somewhat get the paper cups for coffee (reluctantly...), but styrofoam plates and plastic forks/knives are the worst. I'm surprised Marriott actually permits that of their brands, and I'm equally surprised that some municipal government somewhere hasn't outlawed it.

CJKatl

I complained when the once great Birmingham AL FS started only having styrofoam coffee cups in the CL and would not provide anything else when I asked/begged/got visibly angry. I haven't stayed there since, now that I discovered there is a great SHS virtually across the street.

CMK10

I had a similar issue two years ago at the Residence Inn Montreal Downtown. The waits for the elevators were long, the breakfast room was too small and crowded and the staff were overwhelmed and couldn't keep up. I went the first day and the second day skipped the hotel breakfast and went to Tim Horton's. I think it's just the cost of business at large, urban RIs.