MalContent: The Ritz-Carlton Hotel group, Florida, USA
Holidays are always stressful. Travelling in a group (two kids, two adults and two seniors) makes it doubly so. Now, add to that, planning a twenty day summer holiday from Europe to Florida, four months in advance, and you can triple the stress factor, not to mention the money factor! But, at the back of one's mind on a dreary March afternoon, is the prospect of along awaited family reunion during a beachy summer holiday, that should include a little bit of everything for all the travelling party members; a few days in Disney World, Florida, to keep the kids happy (who can resist the whiny charms of an 11 year old clamouring after the brand new Harry Potter rides!), a few nice restaurants to satisfy the foodie seniors, and a beach or two for the overworked adults. Masterminding the travel itinerary to fulfill the above is the Herculean task, or so I thought. Finding the appropriate hotels to host this travelling gang, now that's the easy part. Or so I thought, again!
My first port of call was to stick to a hotel chain, with hotels along most of our travel itinerary stops. The magic answer; the Ritz-Carlton hotels. The downside being that I have never actually stayed at a Ritz-Carlton hotel before. Still, the gloominess of the fateful March afternoon, coupled with the sunny beach inspired images produced by my overactive and sun starved imagination, resulted in my throwing caution to the proverbial wind, and a couple of clicks later, the holiday was booked, and the credit card was charged. Heavily.
Now, I must add here, that we, the travel gang, we are not disappointment novices. We have had our fair share of customer service disasters and/or disappointments. But to have your entire holiday turn into a walking, talking, living, breathing customer service nightmare, now, that is difficult to stomach. So, following this ill fated summer foray into the terribly disappointing world of Ritz-Carlton hotels, USA, I took to the internet to find out whom I should address with my distress. This turned out to be an unexpected Herculean task! Finally, not satisfied with the meager 4000 characters allowance in the customer service comment box on the Ritz-Carlton website, I took a stab in the dark, and picked a few names from the various lists of various CEOs, Directors, Managers, and all the other very important people in the Ritz-Carlton universe.
Below, you can see the original e-mail I've sent out on August 13th, 2012. Further along, you can read the very polite e-mail reply from the relevant Ritz-Carlton executive, dated September 21st, 2012, which arrived on the heels of an hour and a half long telephone conversation with the very same executive. Today is Wednesday, October 31st, 2012, and I am still awaiting the promised arrival of the much discussed Ritz-Carlton gift cards. I 'may' be lucky and receive an unexpected Halloween gift! But then again, maybe not!
The moral of the story; if you suffer from the 'overactive imagination syndrome', as I do, please do not make the same mistake as I did.
My e-mail:
Dear Sir/Madam
The below information was intended to be posted on your customer service comment form on your Ritz Carlton website, which unfortunately only allows 4000 characters. My opinion is, as documented, much longer than the allowed 4000 characters. After a failed attempt to find ANY relevant customer service contact email address, I'm forwarding this information to you:
We traveled from Europe to stay at a number of your properties in Florida. We booked to stay at the Fort Lauderdale Ritz Carlton, from July20-26th 2012. The booking for this trip was made on March 4th 2012. We ended up leaving your hotel three days earlier than anticipated, on July23rd. From the beginning to the end this was a highly unpleasant and unsatisfactory hotel visit. After similar problems at your South Beach, FL (reservation number X) and your Naples, FL (reservation number Y) property, we were 'upgraded' to what we were told was a 'better' standard of rooms. As we checked into our rooms, we found both rooms to be extremely unclean. There were sticky stains and dirt marks all over the balcony floor. The carpets looked like they have not been hoovered in weeks. The first night we spent at your property, there was so much noise and shouting coming from the adjacent room and balcony, that we made a phone call to the reception, which was never answered but was charged for as an outgoing phone call! The internet which we were paying for was working intermittently, and when we complained about the inconvenience, we were connected by your front desk to a third party call center. The swimming pool for the property of your size is miniscule. The day we complained about the lack of cleanliness in the pool area, which is the day we decided to cut our stay short, was the first time we saw someone subsequently clean the pool and the three disgusting looking, yellow dirt marks on the bottom of the swimming pool floor. Your one shower at the swimming pool was 'out of order'. The elevator which takes you the beach level was filthy. The space/room across this elevator on the swimming floor level, where you do not WASH but HOSE DOWN all the cutlery and plates from the swimming pool restaurant, is disgustingly dirty and it smells bad!! The area outside the elevator on the beach level is filthy and feels unsafe/unsupervised. You are an ocean front resort, yet do not provide beach chairs and/or beach umbrellas/towels. The service at the swimming pool restaurant was appealing, yet for a party of six we were charged what now seems to be an obligatory 20% service charge. This should be renamed 'come and suffer our lack of any type of decent service charge'!! We ordered a plate of Tortilla chips with dips, to only receive 10 chips scattered around a big plate with no dips. When we asked for the dips they arrived 15 minutes later!! The general quality of food is below 5star hotel quality. On the morning of our early check out, after all of our complaints fell on deaf ears (as we could not bear to stay at this, our third consecutive Ritz Carlton in Florida any longer and we rebooked the reminder of our trip) we were met by a messy looking, unfriendly front desk clerk, who looked completely out of sorts and uninterested in any of the comments we were making about the unnecessary charges, for example, being charged for the internet three times per day per room, or, as already mentioned, being charged for a phone call to the front desk! It took the arrival of the front desk manager, who appeared equally disheveled and confused, to apologize and minus these charges.
In order not to repeat our further concerns/complaints regarding our stay at your other Florida properties in a separate email, we will include them all here:
We stayed at the Ritz Carlton, South Beach from July16-20th 2012. These bookings were also made on March 4th 2012. At the time of our booking we requested interconnecting rooms, with one king and a helper bed, connecting to a two double bed bedroom. At our arrival, we were told by a very snooty and unfriendly front desk clerk that the hotel was not aware of any such request. When we explained that this booking was made long time in advance, we were met by total indifference and lack of cooperation. We were led to two dark, small, double bedded rooms on totally different sides of the same floor. It took much arguing, and a long time of what should have been our beach holiday, to be finally moved to our initial request. The availability was obviously there, as the group checking in next to us was spontaneously upgraded to distract from the obvious unwelcome attention we were causing with our complaints. At an extra cost of US$10 plus tax for the internet , we were continuously being logged out, so that the business email we were writing was sent out three times, much to our embarrassment. As we complained to the front desk about this inconvenience, we were sent a handwritten letter of apology addressed to Ms. ------- from Mr.x (Engineering), in English, that would have rivaled at the very best an elementary second grade student. This is not a five star hotel guest service! As we finally managed to get to the pool and get the attention of the pool attendants, there were only seats left in the blazing sun, with one umbrella for six people. It took another 45minutes, talking to a different pool attendant and a tip, to finally get umbrella number two! As we visited the beach the following day, we discovered, as we did in your Naples, FL property, that the Ritz Carlton charges extra for the beach umbrellas. The entire pool area, just like your Ft. Lauderdale property, appeared to be extremely unclean.
It was my sister's birthday on July17th, and I tried to order a birthday cake and some flowers with the concierge, as I have done the year previously at the Peninsula in Chicago, the year before that at the Beverly Hills Hotel in LA, and as I always do every summer at any of the 5star hotels we travel to during that time of the year. Much to my embarrassment, NO one got back to me, as promised, and when I called back the concierge, they said they will get back to me again, and only did so in the evening of July 17th, telling me that they could NOT help me with my request! As I reiterated all our concerns at our check out, the front desk manager mentioned I should have contacted her immediately, as she would have tried to take care of our concerns. I did explain to her that at check in I did ask to see the front desk manager, who I was told was unavailable.
We checked into your Naples, FL property on July14th to July16th. On our first night there, we went down to have dinner to find no availability in the Lobby Lounge, your Gumbo Limbo closed, your Steak house/Seafood fully booked, leaving us with your night club/sushi dinner option after a long drive. The food here was substandard, served up with blaring music in the background, drunk adults and underaged children dancing and screaming on the dance floor. An utter and complete nightmare of a dinner!
The next day we went to the beach to be greeted by very ambivalent beach staff, who informed us that our beach umbrellas will cost us an extra US$25 per piece. When we enquired why we have to pay extra for beach umbrellas in a 5star beach resort, we were told that the Ritz Carlton does not charge a resort fee. We were paying US$349 per room, plus US$20.94 FL tax, plus US$13.96 Collier tax. Just as a comparison for you, once we cut our losses with the Ritz Carlton experience and moved on to The Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, where we were paying US$350 for a premium room, which is incomparable in size, cleanliness and furnishing to any of the Ritz Carlton rooms we have experienced, we found that ALL our beach amenities, the internet and the shuttles between the different parts of the properties were included in our room price, and we were NOT charged an extra resort fee. When we asked your Naples, FL beach attendant to put our six beach chairs at the desired space on the beach, so that my young niece and nephew could play with their beach ball and we could keep an eye on them, we were told this was too far and inconvenient for him, so the beach attendant placed the chairs where it was convenient for him.
This trip marked the first time we stayed at the Ritz Carlton properties in the US. We were note just disappointed, but we felt that due to the utter lack of professionalism at every level, the Ritz Carlton managed to destroy our highly anticipated, long planned for and looked forward to summer of 2012 holiday. I would definitely not recommend this hotel chain to any of our friends and business associates, and we will make sure that this opinion is posted on the Tripadvisor. The very fact, that a hotel chain like the Ritz Carlton, can so misleadingly advertise itself as 'classic luxury', as you do on various websites and in advertising, has inspired us to start a blog highlighting these advertising traps. Your advertising effort to 'let us stay with you' and to thus, create lasting memories for your guests, is nothing more but an advertising gimmick, and therefore, from our point of view of a customer, an absolute failure.
Many thanks.
Kind regards,
------------------
The response:
September 21, 2012
--------------------
Dear Ms. -------------:
Thank you for speaking with me about your
recent visit to the Ritz-Carlton Hotels in Florida. As you know, I am very sorry that we did not meet your expectations.
We always invite our guests to share their
thoughts with us in hope that we can continue to improve our hotels. I
am disappointed to learn that your stay at The Ritz-Carlton, Naples,
The Ritz-Carlton,
South Beach and The Ritz-Carlton, Fort Lauderdale was less than perfect. I would like to apologize for the
service deficiencies you experienced at the hotels during your summer trip. I have shared your comments with the
General Managers of the Ritz-Carlton hotels that you visited, so they can find
out why the incidents you shared with me happened, and more importantly, to
ensure they do not happen in the future.
We pride ourselves on
providing excellent service and surroundings for our guests and we are sorry
that we fell short in this endeavor with you. Again, thank you for your feedback, as this is how we get
better.
I realize during our conversation you
mentioned that you did not have any plans in the near future to return to the
States, so I indicated to you that -------, our Guest Relations Manager,
for The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company would mail a gift card to you, which is
valid at all Ritz-Carlton properties.
I hope that you have received the gift card by now. We look forward to improving your
perception of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company.
Ms. ---------, you
are a valued guest of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. I hope that when your
travels return you to one of our hotels, that you will contact my assistant ------ at 904-xxx-xxxx or me, at 904-xxx-xxxx, so that we may secure your
reservation and ensure that your visit is perfect and flawless.
We look forward to
serving you in the near future.
Regards,
----------------
Market Vice President
xx/xxx
Cc: -------------
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