Travel Adventures Deux

I woke up Sunday morning not feeling completely happy about Friday night’s adventure so I wrote a note to Sheraton about it.

To the General Manager or Managing Director of the Porto Alegre Sheraton,

I arrived at your hotel late Friday evening, 2014/12/05, to discover that my room had been emptied of most of my belongings. A few important packing bags were left behind. I was in room xxx2. I had apparently been checked out of that room without my knowledge even through my room key still worked. I called the front desk to find out if they knew anything. They said that I had two reservations and the second was for a different room. I have no idea why I had two reservations but I assume it was some issue in my company’s travel department. I spent a couple of hours in the middle of the night wondering where my belongings were and trying to get them back. All I had was what I was carrying with me that day. Most of my belongings were in lost and found. I got a few things back that evening and the remainder after 10am the next morning. Today I’m in room xx0.

I’m happy about getting all of my belongings back and puzzled about why I had two reservations and needed another room. I’m quite disappointed by how this transition was handled. Since your hotel was aware of both of my reservations it seems unlikely that I would want my belongings to be packed up and sent to lost and found. Even with that, after all of the inconvenience and worry on my part, I didn’t even receive an apology for the events that occurred. While I’ve been coming here for many years, my desire to stay at and recommend your hotel has been significantly reduced.

While these things happen and this has become a travel story that I can share with others, you may want to examine and improve your procedures in order to avoid occurrences like this for your guests in the future. Doing so will likely improve your future business success.

Regards,

Lonnie Mandigo

Nothing happened on Sunday, of course, because no one was around to read my message. When I got back to my room Monday evening though I saw this…

Import 2014.12.08- 2933

Import 2014.12.08- 2934

I thought that was really nice and I was pretty much over it anyway. It had become another travel story.

That evening as I was coming back from dinner I had a nice chat with Carolyn, the front desk supervisor. This resulted in a shot of Jameson and this note…

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Friday morning I get to have a quick chat with the hotel general manager and the front office manager. I guess I got their attention. Sheraton’s part in the collision of events that resulted in this adventure may have been avoidable but I’ve never seen perfect execution from anyone. As far as I’m concerned they’ve made up for it very well.

Maybe I’ll stay here again in the future. I hope so. 😉

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One Comment

  1. The Sheraton was clearly having a bad day. I found out later that the reason my laundry took so long was because they had delivered it to the wrong room. I found this out because a colleague, who was also staying here, recognized a shirt that I was wearing.

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