We recently held a meeting here for which 30% of our attendees had to cancel at the last minute because flight cancelations left them stuck on the east coast for a hurricane. Hotel handled the cancelations without penalizing the travelers (even though their policy would have allowed them to charge for the first night). Their AV folks stepped up on very short notice -- about 12 hours -- to enable us to broadcast the meeting to those who were stranded but still had power. These were the obvious "right things" to do and they did them without prompting or pressure.
I also noticed a couple of more subtle things. Whenever I had a question or issue the person I asked either took care of it personally or brought the right person to me. I was never told, "that's not my job" but I was told, "please wait a moment while I go get the person who knows how to help you." Even more of a pleasant surprise to me was walking from my room to the elevator lobby while a hotel maintenance worker was approaching from the other direction. He had already gone into an employee only area when I got to the lobby but he had pressed the elevator call button on his way by, apparently to reduce the amount of time I would have to wait for an elevator. Simple and subtle, but it told me these folks have a culture of making things good for the guests.
The only real negative was out of their control. The barking sea lions on the bay made for nice atmospherics at first, but at 2:30 in the morning...
hotel reviews