We recently hosted a small (11 person) 6 hour business meeting here. The facility is beautiful and well appointed, but the staff does not appear to be geared to handle business meetings, either that or they just subscribe to poor customer service, I don’t know which.
The package we purchased included continental breakfast, box lunch, and afternoon snack as well as coffee and soda throughout the meeting. The cost per person, including their mandatory 21% “service charge”, was $101.64 before taxes.
When we arrived in the room, there was, as planned, coffee and tea, plus a tray of cold bagels a small batch of muffins about the size of a mini-cupcake as well as a bowl of apples, oranges and pears. The fruit was not sliced nor were there utensils provided. There was no way to toast the bagels, however there were small packets of cream cheese. This is what they advertised as a continental breakfast.
After our meeting started, so did the gardeners outside the room. For a good part of the morning portion of the meeting, we were competing with a gardener who had a complete arsenal of power tools, including a mower, edger, and blower. There was no apparent consideration for keeping the noise down during our meeting.
Lunch was supposed to arrive at Noon, but it was delivered a half hour early, interrupting our meeting. Rather than have the servers disrupt us further, we asked them to leave the box lunches on the carts on which they were brought and we would serve ourselves later. This apparently caused much confusion for the staff, because they took it to mean we wanted no further interruptions and therefore did not deliver the afternoon snack, which was included in the price per person.
Not once during our stay did anyone from the sales or catering departments stop by to see if we needed anything. When a couple of days after the meeting we complained about the service, the noise, and the non-existent afternoon break, we were treated in an unprofessional manner, laying the blame on us for not complaining at the time. I should point out that the meeting was in a building quite a ways from the front desk. In order to complain, we would have to leave the meeting, hike to the front desk, wait for someone to speak to from sales or catering, and hike back to the meeting. For the amount of money we spent on this relatively short meeting, we should expect better from a luxury hotel.
To add insult to injury, when we finally received a copy of our bill (it had been charged to our credit card) we discovered they overcharged us by $250. It took over one month to receive the refund.
So while the facilities are beautiful, and the location convenient, we don’t plan to return anytime soon unless they learn to be more responsive to their corporate clients.
hotel reviews