Jackie Danicki

I was invited to take a customer service survey by Marriott, owner of the Renaissance brand, which runs The Columbus hotel in downtown Columbus, Ohio. The Columbus bills itself as a contemporary, elegant hotel - and that it certainly is - with the room tariffs to match. (Especially for Ohio’s capital, which has very little going on and where many restaurants and other businesses shut down for the weekend, it’s a pricey place.) We stayed there - along with the bride, groom, and many other guests - for my friend’s wedding on Saturday, checking in on the Thursday prior.

Anyway, I’m glad Marriott emailed me the invite to take the survey, since I had nearly forgotten about my resolution to complain to them. Nearly! Here’s an excerpt from my comments, given after rating various aspects of the hotel on the survey:

We were extremely disappointed in the level and quality of service we
received at The Columbus. We are frequent travellers who often stay in
four-star and five-star hotels around the world, and were at first
impressed with the look and ambiance of The Columbus. But the service
we received throughout our stay proved to us that The Columbus is not
the elite or high quality hotel that one would expect for the room
tariffs charged. While many staff members wore smiles and were
friendly, most executed their duties in what could charitably be
described as a wholly inadequate manner. For example:

1) Upon check-in, we were given the key to a room that was already
occupied. The woman at the front desk who corrected this mistake was
apologetic and friendly.

2) When we asked for information about local bus routes and how to buy
tickets, front desk staff had literally nothing to offer us. They did
not look for other staff members who might be able to help, or
volunteer to find out for us.

3) The soap, lotion, body wash, and shampoo in our bathroom was not
replaced or refilled after being used. (We do travel with all our own
toiletries, but use hotels’ offerings where possible.) Even a Holiday
Inn would get this right.

4) When one of your bellhop/valets was pushing a luggage cart he had
loaded with one of our party’s belongings, he dislodged an unopened
bottle of bourbon, which fell to the ground and shattered. No apology
or compensation was offered for this loss of property at your staff’s
hands.

5) At breakfast at Latitude 41 [the hotel’s restaurant] one morning, our server (Terry) got one
order completely wrong and did not apologize. He also failed to bring
our toast and English muffins to the table until after our breakfasts
had been on the table for seven minutes. No apology was offered for
these errors, and overall service from Terry was a shambles. When I
spoke to the woman who had seated us, pointing out that our excellent
dinner in the same restaurant the night before had raised our
expectations even higher than what one would normally expect of such a
supposedly esteemed (and not inexpensive) establishment, she did not
seem interested or offer to pass my comments on to the manager.

6) The next day, we returned to Latitude 41 for breakfast (our stay
was as part of the Skaggs/Witte wedding group, and brunch with the
bride and groom had been pre-arranged with other guests prior to our
disappointing experience the previous day). When I asked the manager -
who was busy typing into her cell phone - if we could have a table for
eight, she told me that we would have to wait at least ten to fifteen
minutes for three tables to be put together. I queried why this would
take so much time, as the manager continued to use her cell phone and
did not even make eye contact with me, and was told that that’s just
the way it was. The restaurant was not at all busy at this time, with
only five tables occupied. After we waited, our server (Rob, I
believe) failed to serve the drink I ordered for a full 20 minutes
after I had ordered it, and only did so after my fiancé discreetly
spoke to the manager. Several members of our party opted for the
Latitude Buffet, and were extremely dismayed to find no plates, no
eggs, no yogurt, and no hash browns on the buffet. No apology was
offered for this, and one member of staff was less than polite in
giving directions to a female guest for how to order from the omelette
station. Further, one waiter who showed up with another to pour our
water (ten minutes after we had been seated) completely blocked one
member of our party from sitting in her seat. Even after my fiancé had
complained to the manager twice, more mishaps took place: I waited 30
minutes for my eggs benedict (which were delicious when I finally
received them), we waited ten minutes after requesting a refill on
coffee, the server threw away a package of crayons which one child in
our party had been playing with, and I waited ten minutes for another
refill on my soft drink. We had service at an airport location of
Wolfgang Puck that evening that put the service at Latitude 41 to
shame, and at half the price. Neither the staff at Latitude 41 nor the
manager seem to understand that the expectations for a $20+ per head
breakfast in Columbus, Ohio are high; nor do they seem to be able to
meet those expectations. There was not one person supervising the line
chefs in the kitchen, who we could tell were flustered and needed some
direction.

So while the look and feel of Latitude 41 - as with The Columbus -
seems to belong to a world class elite establishment, one experience
with some of the people who work there demonstrates that it is not. I
would love to know Marriott management’s reasoning for the price of
this hotel, where the service is worse than that of many hotels that
charge a fraction of what The Columbus does.

–

I’ve also promised to post my comments here, and to let you know if, how, and when they respond. Anything less than a partial refund will be a pretty poor show on their part, but I don’t expect anything from Marriott at this rate.

Filed under: Life