By now I’m accustomed to all sorts of things that can go wrong in booking a room. The room with a view … of the office building next door. The ‘non-smoking room’ with the tell-tale smoky staleness that my asthmatic husband can sniff out, even if no one else can. (PSSST! Hotels, the non-smoking thing is mainly a benefit for folks more sensitive to such things than managers and maids, so a quick re-labeling won’t work). I’ve encountered mix-ups on how many beds are needed, or what floor or amenities a disabled guest requires.
I recently faced a new problem — no heat. My experience in the Land of Lakes was not just a matter of a missing ‘amenity,’ (heat) but also a matter of the near total indifference with which it was addressed.
My husband and I were in Minneapolis for medical tests he needed and, for convenience, stayed at the Radisson across the street from the hospital. I was already miserable with what would be diagnosed upon return as a raging sinus and ear infection that had bloomed from a cold I’d endured for two weeks. We got in late and, since it was almost midnight, I was looking forward to taking my medication and falling into a nice warm cozy bed.
I sensed something was wrong the minute I pushed open the door to our fifth floor room. Was that air conditioning they had on? It seems that in the land of a million hardy Scandinavian descendants, the Minnesotans like to keep everything frigid. Oh, well, I shut the air off and turned the knob to ‘heat’ and … nothing happened. I looked around the room to see if there was some other mechanism to try. No luck. I scooted into the bath for a scalding shower to warm up and asked my husband to call the front desk. Even as I was prepared to do it, I dreaded having to change rooms that late.
So imagine my response when I emerge from my warm foggy cocoon of a bath to be told that the hotel had no heat.
NO HEAT? THEY…HAVE…NO…HEAT??? I ask in bewilderment. What kind of hotel has no heat?
I called the front desk myself. Not because I doubted my husband, but because I needed a personal explanation for such a calamity, and unlike him, I was prepared to go into bitch mode to get some stinkin’ heat, because otherwise I would be miserable all night.
My inquiry was met with what amounted to boredom. After at first providing no reasonable explanation, upon my repeated complaints, the night manager told me that the entire hotel had a heating system that was designed to be switched on at a later, scheduled date. For efficiency.
More like cost, I’ll bet. And for the record, someone else (another manager I presumed) to whom I was referred, told me with no detectable signs of remorse or empathy that they really didn’t think the hotel had a responsibility to tell those booking rooms during the ‘unheated’ seasons that there would be no heat.
Now, maybe those bloodless folks in the north are used to braving colder temperatures, but I have a news flash for the hotel industry – many folks staying in a facility are not locals!
And thus, here I was in Minnesota, not used to being blasted with refrigerator temps in late September. Just as in the tropics I might expect some air conditioning for visitors, even if the locals play tennis in 90 to 100 degree environments.
I was hardly alone in my discomfort. There’s an Applebee’s within the hotel and, while eating there, I heard numerous complaints about how cold the place was — including my own. The staff informed me the restaurant couldn’t address the problem because the hotel controlled the climate of the whole facility.
In the end, and only after a conversation that made me sound like a harpy when all I wanted was something north of 62 degrees, the front desk sent several staffers up with an assortment of blankets and, finally, a space heater. Which begs the question, why didn’t they just offer that in the first place?
So, on top of all the questions you might have to ask (or have your travel agent ask) about a facility, (and here’s my list of some usual questions) –
Extra resort charges, availability of spas and gyms, presence of indoor or outdoor pools, what the refund policy is, how close (or far) they honestly are from an airport or beach or other attraction, what they define as a ‘suite,’ can I give back the mini-bar key?, do they allow pets and/or children?, do they charge for parking, are they gay-friendly (something you might want to know if you have children, or if you’re gay), do they have an elevator or disabled access, etc.
You might also ask if they have heat, or air, or water for that matter. Feel free to discuss your hotel experiences and what you found missing.
