vandalby

+1

or +10,000 as the case may be. Unfortunately, the Chatwal is moving up to the rarified air of the CAT 7 property!

PTahCha

Checked in last night. Reservation was for a queen room under negotiated corporate rate. Upon check-in, the front desk clerk offered a 2 twin bed room, with no other options. Stated that they do not pre-block for Platinum guests. Had to get the MOD involved, and he did not offer much help either, only offering 6000 points, continental breakfast, and promise of a suite for rest of the stay.

Comes today, I was placed into a spectacular king room, but not a suite. Had to get MOD involved again. It's a different person, and she basically said the entire hotel is sold out, she could not offer any upgrade to a suite. There are many Platinum and Gold guests at the hotel, and she could not upgrade everyone. Also, this was the room that the previous MOD blocked. Received 6000 more points.

At this point I'm opening a ticket with corporate to make sure I actually get SPG points, since it seems that they often promise but cannot deliver.

8tracks

My wife just stayed at this property in what was going to be the first of 3 stays in 6 weeks but now will be the only one. Her room still had trash in the trash cans, a used bar of soap and half empty shampoo bottle in the shower and she believed the sheets had not been changed from the previous guest. She asked to speak to the Manager on duty. After explaining the situation his only response, which he repeated, was to ask "can I have them bring you up a new bar of soap?" It was surreal.

She was given some points as compensation but she would much rather have had someone come up to at least inspect the sheets.

This is my first complaint of any Starwood property on the forum. I hope it's my last.

JBauer

Anyone experienced Plat breakfast offer here? I'm guessing not impressive.

JBauer

Checking in tomorrow for my NY price match free night. Booked Mega Room. I know upgrades can be hard here. Are Fantastic suites in the pool? Should I buy the old- we upgraded you to a higher floor? Or push for a real suite? Gonna try my luck. Not even sure what the next category up from Mega is at this place?

JBauer

Stayed for one night as part of the now defunct NYC price match promo, so it was free. Have stayed here for business because of location, bot don't love this place.

Upgrade: had the usual battle here despite the spg app showing suite availability. Started to call plat concierge and they relented and upgraded me from mega room to a small fantastic suite.

Breakfast for Plat: Pathetic and the bare minimum. Three items on a bar top.

Overall, this place still underwhelms and it's amazing how bad the staff is. It's almost like they Ty to make everyone as miserable as they are

hotelfanatic

Stayed here a couple years back and appear nothing has changed base on recent reports. Not sure what's with these old properties on Lex. The Hilton DT and Waldorf nearby are no better. The only one I would consider staying is the Hyatt Lex in that area.

jammanxc

this hotel is terrible.. platinum recognition was not up to Starwood standards. Checked in to this hotel booked in a Cozy room. The clerk offered a 1 king spectacular room or a 2 queen mega room. I asked about the suites that were still for sale on (fantastic/spectacular suite) on the spg website. She said there were no suites available (what a lie). After coming in from a long flight in front of my girlfriend, I wasn't going to argue with the clerk so I accepted the 1 King spectacular room. It was nothing spectacular was it was a 220 sqft SMALL room. The internet didn't work properly in the room as well (room charge). I was put in a room on the 6th floor and the wifi had very low signal on all 4 of my devices (kept timing out and not connecting). The only way to get signal is inside the shower, holding my laptop in a small corner nook of the shower. The platinum breakfast was paltry. You can only choose 1 cold pastry and a choice of 1 juice, coffee, or tea in the lobby area set up on the bar top. Upon checkout, the clerk argued that they are no longer waiving the internet for platinum guests (WHAT?!). She said that she will waive it for me because the internet never works in the hotel and that she will note it in the computer. I will never stay here again and it is not worth the $300+

Flews

This happened to me a while back at this very same property. They did come up to clean the room, but nothing more. I wrote a letter of complaint and they offered me an upgrade on a future stay.

The service and attitude issues mentioned by other posters, even years later, reflects my own experiences here.

I have no idea why management puts up with this stuff. I used to stay here a lot, but have since moved over to the W in Times Square for my NYC stays, and so far I have nothing but good things to report.

Cheers,

Andie007

Spent 2 nights around independence day at the W New York. It was my third stay at this hotel - I know what to expect. But this time, it was quite disappointing.

Arrived at the hotel at round about 5pm. I already saw in my SPG profile that my cozy room booking (flexible rate) was upgraded to a studio suite or something. So, I was quite happy that I received my first suite upgrade at this hotel.

Arrived at the hotel and tried to check in. Nevertheless, my suite was not ready so far. W asked whether we were able to wait for 30 Mins until it was ready. We accepted and had a short walk to Bloomingdales.
Coming back after 1h the suite was still not ready. Then, they offered a fantastic suite without view on 6th floor. We accepted this one. Found this quite odd.
I had to ask for my platinum benefits, esp. the breakfast. But it seems that they didn't expect that somebody is requesting breakfast. Gave me a small card I should present at the W cafe in the morning.

Anyway, we had a great independence day evening and day after this in NY. After our last and great dinner in NY, we came back to our suite at the W quite late. Opened our room and a nice huge bug made its way through our living room. My partner was really scared in this moment - and just this short period of time, a W housekeeping boy crossed our room. It seems that he was not really impressed of this and called someone from the maintenance who killed the bug 5 mins later. Then the overall "perfect management" of the W starts:

Kick-off: Bug was killed
5 Mins later: Front desk called - truly apologize. Will make a short note at the management office
10 Mins later: Management called - asked whether the bug was killed and offered a bottle of champagne. He ordered this immediately for our room
2 hours later: I put my do not disturb sign on the door (so no champange anymore / it was 2am!!)
8am in the morning: Management called again and woke me up. Offered me breakfast. Denied because I already choose the platinum breakfast. Then, SPG points were offered as being SPG plat - no credit on my account so far (very poor!!!)
9am: Housekeeping called and asked if the bug was already killed (would I stay in the room with the bug?!?!)
11am: Check out - no question if we enjoyed our stay there. Just thank you and good-bye.

The Acura service to the W Downtown worked quite well. But we had to block the time for this 24h in advance.

Overall, this was my last stay at the W New York. Think that just the W Union Square and the W Downtown are really good choices for an upcoming stay in NY. It was a really disappointing stay...

One other thing, did the hotel stopped offering free in-room Fiji water for plats (the other W's still offer this)?

jammanxc

other W's offer fiji, but this one was a bottle of nestle water..

Andie007

Hm, still no points credited from the hotel. This is really annoying...

JohnSIN

This is a little note I shared with my Ambassador:
-------------------------------------------------------------

You recall I mentioned that it was important that my room be guaranteed for my late (past midnight) arrival on the 17th/18th night at the W Lexington.
My evening started really well with my UA flight departing on time and landing early. My bag had come on an earlier flight and I thought, great, by 1 am I am in my W bed.

Guess what!
Arrived at the hotel and a lady was checking in before me.
The receptionist said ‘oh, this is Mr. JohnSIN’ to which the reception manager said ‘Mr. JohnSIN, give me 2 minutes, we have a problem with your room, I will be right back’.

As he said this, he escorted the lady in front to a taxi.
I asked ‘Is she being walked?’, to which the receptionist said, unfortunately yes. So I kind of guessed what was coming! The very situation I wanted to avoid.

I am very good tempered but my other half can attest that this temper degrades rapidly when tired and worse when exhausted.

I started telling her how disgusted I was considering all the care we had taken to notify them of late arrival, that I was life platinum, that I had x number of years… Needless to say, at this stage I was so upset I was going through the entire list of forthcoming reservations with SPG and mentally cancelling each and every one of them (Westin SFO, Shanghai, Hanoi, KL, Singapore etc..). As you can imagine, I was very upset.

Reception manager comes to me and explains that unfortunately they had to take 5 rooms of the inventory on a day when the hotel is fully booked because of a leak. Someone had left their bath tap run and they managed to flood and damage 5 rooms. He said that they were putting me in a Suite at ‘The Pierre’ a 5 diamond hotel complimentary and paying for my taxi fare. They would give me some SPG points for the worries. By this point I was a lot happier even if, let’s face it, no one really likes crossing town at 1am.

So I take the taxi to ‘The Pierre’ and find myself with another 2 guests from the W, 1 lady and 1 Gent (separate bookings) that had been walked as well. The receptionist tells us that they are fully booked and that they have a problem… Oh MY I thought… when is this going to end? So phone calls between The Pierre and the W reception elicit a very embarrassed look at us and explain “We are very sorry but we are short of room, so we have 1 room and 1 presidential Suite with 2 bedrooms. Would you mind sharing?”.

So we decided to let the lady take the single room while myself and the other gentlemen shared the presidential suite (retail at $5,000 USD), each with our separate bedrooms and bathrooms.’ We joked about it and I recounted that my last time sleeping in a shared accommodation with a stranger was in the very same city of NY about 20 years ago at the YMCA!

Anyway, checked-in this morning and the W apologized again for the misadventure and said I had been given a very nice Urban Suite (Thank You).
Good thing is that I snapped lots of pictures of the presidential suites at The Pierre.

So in the end, I understand that things can go wrong even when you take the best of care. Had an interesting stay at The Pierre, some SPG points and a Presidential Suite, so I guess I can hardly complain.

So make sure you look out for the bonus points or I will let the water run in my bathtub!

ma91pmh

Very gracious handling of a tough situation mr sin

m0hamed

Regardless of hotel chain, and even with an Ambassador at SPG and Private Line agent at Hyatt I always call the property directly to confirm the late arrival request upon making the booking, and ALWAYS the day of arrival.