We’ve been planning a trip to New York at the end of a month’s vacation in Canada and the US and as we love to cook, we homed in on a hotel with a kitchen.
The hotel is in a great location on 34th St, spacious rooms by NYC standards and a great view of the Chrysler Building.
However, we stocked up on some produce from the various markets close by but when we went to prepare some dinner, there was only an egg-flip in the utensil drawer. No sharp knife, no stirring spoon, no can opener, nothing!
Whilst I’m handy in the kitchen, it is quite difficult to slice bread or peel a potato with an egg-flip!
Assuming that this was an oversight, we phoned reception who stated that “being a large hotel, we don’t stock every kitchen” however they would get housekeeping to send up a sharp knife, vegetable peeler and maybe even a wooden spoon.
20 minutes later, an apologetic housekeeping lady arrived with one small sharpish knife stating that they don’t actually have anything else to provide – ever.
Numerous promises from the front desk never actually produced any results. There seems to be a real disconnect between front desk and the housekeeping staff.
If your kitchen is just catering for reheating pizza and keeping beer cold, maybe you should just state that!
If you are going to charge extra for a kitchen, make sure you stock it with some utensils!
We also had several other examples of inattention to detail:
The toilet either kept running or blocked up over the week. In fact, it overflowed into the bathroom (TWICE) - maintenance eventually sourced a new valve and fitted it on the fourth day.
Two light globes required replacement and there was a flat battery in the cordless phone.
I’m just wondering how much attention is paid to preventative maintenance.
We’re seasoned travellers and realise that things do go wrong. However, whilst the maintenance and housekeeping staff tried their best, the front desk staff were dismissive, never really owned the problem and were quite ineffectual.
Even on check-out when we outlined some of our concerns, there was just a cursory sorry before attending to the next customer.
At over $400 per night, I guess we expected more from the Affinia chain.
hotel reviews