Brand Promises Broken
Posted by jehoshuakilen on August 15, 2009
Just got back from my Honeymoon and we had a fantastic and wonderfully relaxing time… for the most part.
One of the crowning jewels in this blissful experience was to be an overnight stay in Seattle; catch a show, stay in a nice hotel, eat some really good food. Alas, it was not to be so. The hotel I booked looked like it was filled with old world charm and elegance, just the things that my new bride enjoys. The pictures on hotels.com for the REGULAR GUEST ROOMS, not the suites, look like this:
Beautiful room, right?
Supposed to be the guest room
I won’t say the deal I got on the website but it was a fairly decent price, and I couldn’t wait to show her the wonderful place I found for us. As we pulled up to the front entrance, we were greeted by an effusive and smiling parking attendant who seemed knowledgeable and very helpful. He then informed us that we would have to pay an extra $38 for him to park our car or we could go down the street a couple blocks to a public garage. He said this while taking our luggage out of the car, with an impatient tone, leaving me feeling like we had no option. I gave him the keys. This was definitely strike one since most other hotels of repute in Seattle pay for guests parking or offer some kind of discounted service. Not this hotel.
We walked into the grand lobby, looking just like the pictures. Rich, majestic, and quite beautiful. The check-in goes fairly smoothly, and we are off to our room. The walls are colored robin’s egg blue with trims of gold and yellow, all very well done and the excitement is building, I can’t wait for her to see the room. We get to the door and open…
The bed was kind of nice
Plain, Plain, Plain
Does this look like the pictures above?
Looks like a Holiday Inn, not a 5 star hotel
To say the least, we were disappointed. I understand that promotional pictures are different from reality but this much? And beyond that, how is the theme of the room jiving with the rest of the hotel? Old world elegance meets thrift store Asian Fusion?
I called down to the front desk hoping for some resolution but instead found a disgruntled employee unwilling to help my new wife and I on our honeymoon. She had no explanation for the discrepancy in decor, made no apology for the subterfuge, and informed me that ALL the guest rooms looked like that (in a tone that suggested I should have known that) but she might be able to find a different color scheme. I hung up.
We pressed on and being the great people that we are we had a fantastic night, caught a show, met some new friends, and generally enjoyed life. The next morning we got up to check out and skipped down to the guest services counter, happy to be leaving the disappointing room. When we got to the counter, the employee asked the fateful words I had been waiting for:
“How was your stay with us?”
I told her. In great detail actually of the fantastic frustrations the hotel heaped upon us. It wasn’t a bad hotel, nice in it’s own way, just the advertising is lying and that isn’t good for the company’s soul. To her credit, Jonah, listened patiently and apologized immediately for her colleague’s callousness, comping our parking and offering to help us with a room in the future. She nearly saved the experience.
Nearly.
These days no business can afford to be substandard, to promise a certain level of service or product and then not deliver. People expect all businesses, just as they do other people, to be honest and fair with them in their dealings together. The hotel offered one experience and delivered another, not drastically different but enough that our expectations were immediately shattered. It was so bad that the room might as well have been a flea bag motel.
Will we stay there again? Probably not. The memory of being lied to is too strong and I suspect we are not alone. I imagine that the Fairmont Olympic Hotel in Seattle has lost a fair number of customers because its advertising isn’t based in reality. I know my wife and I will always remember our stay there as the low point on our honeymoon, simply because our expectations were built up and then shattered by a lack of brand integrity.
