It's the Journey

Over the course of my career years, I was no stranger to travel. Whether for business or for leisure, I was on the road a fair bit. Along the way, I have stayed in a good number of hotels, most of which were great and lived up to their ratings and recommendations.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t always the case and often, it wasn’t the fault of the hotel. Stuff happens!

In those situations, I’ll be the first to extend a hotel the benefit of the doubt as well as my understanding if they seem to be having an off day, especially if they go out of their way to make things right.

As a customer, I am not really hard to please. A clean, quiet, bug-free room with working amenities is all I really need.

Yet there have been situations that still stick out in my mind as those moments wondering what went wrong and then remembering to find the humour. Sometimes it might be a tall order in the moment, but as time passes, I can look back and laugh.

Here are some of the highlights of hotel stays over the years that didn’t quite go according to plan, but I for which I made the best of it.

A room fit for a V.I.P.

Back in the 1990s, one hotel took my reservation for a non-smoking room, but by the time I arrived, there were no rooms in that category left. All they could offer me was either a smoking room or a non-smoking hospitality suite with no bedroom, only a sofa bed.

My asthma dictated that I should choose what was behind door number 2. Besides, I had never been in a hospitality suite before… it sounded like fun.

When I checked out the room, I was beyond impressed. The room was excellent in every way, especially since the super-sized room included a kitchenette, a dining room and a double sized bathroom. It was a room fit for a V.I.P.

However, when I opened the sofa bed to give it a test drive, I found myself slowly sinking. Upon further investigation, I noticed the frame wasn’t quite keeping the mattress in place, creating a deep sagging effect in certain spots.

Thankfully, this was a few years before my history of recurring back trouble. A saggy mattress didn’t dampen my spirits over the deluxe room I was assigned.

Despite the wonky mattress, I still slept reasonably well and was beyond thrilled at staying in such a large room with enough square footage to accommodate a medium-sized cocktail party and a small dance floor.

Don’t mess with my coffee

While I love hotels that offer complimentary coffee in the room, one hotel got their signals crossed and left a carafe that was incompatible with the machine.

This particular kind of coffee maker needed the carafe that pushed against a button on the filter cup to release the freshly brewed coffee. This one was too short to reach the button.

Ever the problem solver, even before my first coffee, imagine me standing there, half asleep, with a carafe in one hand and a letter opener in the other pushing the magic coffee button under the filter holder.

The bottom line: I got my morning coffee but the matter was mentioned in the feedback card.

Someone missed a spot

Hotels pride themselves on keeping rooms spotless. But I understand that there might be times when housekeeping might not get into every corner.

One night in particular, I was reading before bedtime. When I was ready to go to sleep, I reached over to turn off the light, only to notice that behind the night stand was a two inch long cigarette ash.

How unusual considering that this was a non-smoking room!

Mini-bar? What mini-bar?

In one hotel, the final bill included mini-bar charges even though I wasn’t even aware that there was a mini-bar in my room! Fortunately we sorted out the situation amicably at check-out.

The rainy hotel room

When I arrived at my assigned room, as I started settling in, I heard a dripping noise. Naturally I checked the bathroom and nothing was dripping.
I heard the drip again. As I inspected the room with the attention to detail of a TV detective, I found the source of the dripping noise. As best as I could tell, a pipe connected to the air conditioning system was leaking and was dripping on the carpeting.

I placed a wastepaper basket under the drip and called the front desk to report that it was raining in my room. Regrettably, they were fully booked and could not offer me another room, but I was pleased that they sent someone from maintenance right up to fix it.

When the hole was patched and the leak stopped, everything seemed right with the world. I then proceeded with my plans for the evening.

The unfortunate part was that the patch had a limited life span. Around 7:00 a.m. the next day, I heard a loud “pshhhh” sound as the patch stopped holding and the drip started again.

Given that I was about to check out, I just left the wastepaper basket out under the leak again and mentioned the problem when finalizing the bill with the front desk.

What’s that smell?

In one very elegant hotel, when I got to my room, there seemed to be a strong perfume smell in the air. I just chalked it up to either the housekeeper was just there or that their cleaning products were a little strong. I opened the window, finished unpacking, and then left for my first business meeting.

When I returned, the strong perfume smell was still there. I opened the window a little wider and went to dinner.

When I returned for the evening, I realized that the smell was not really going away. The perfume was REALLY strong.

I started sniffing around and realized that it was probably a previous hotel guest who spritzed herself heavily with perfume in the bathroom and that the perfume was on the bathroom wall. I tried scrubbing the wall myself with a washcloth and a miniature bottle of body wash but I just seemed to be bringing it back to life with every wipe.

At bedtime, I closed the bathroom door hoping to be able to block the smell from wafting to the sleeping area, but it was relentless.

When my attempts to fall asleep failed, I changed into my casual clothes and went down to the front desk to discuss the situation, with red eyes, drippy sinuses and raspy voice. Fortunately, the front desk staff was extremely understanding and accommodating in helping me move to another room in the wee hours of the morning.

Lessons learned

At the end of the day, as much as hotels do their best to become our home away from home, things don’t always go according to plan. With hotel guests coming and going, day after day, can we expect hotels to have their eyes and ears (and sometimes, noses) focused at a granular level on every aspect of every room in the hotel?

When things don’t go as planned, I like to think that hotel staff has every reason to make things right in the hope that we return not only to their establishment but to their chain as well.

When situations like these arise, I think we just need to maintain our cool when we report the situation to hotel staff and to maintain our sense of humour at the unpredictable things we might encounter during our stays.

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Sincere thanks for reading!
Have a great day,
André