Loving the lingua franca

I’m sitting in the bar of the hotel listing to an interesting conversation between a restaurant customer, the lady on reception and the hotel manager.
The conversation is a discussion over whether the hotel should be charging for parking for someone who is just dining in the restaurant rather than staying.

What’s most amazing is that all three are having the conversation in a language other than their mother tongue.

The customer is French (he has stated this fact on at least four occasions “at home in France we do not charge to visit the restaurant”), the lady on reception is Polish, the manager, judging from the accent (and the name on the duty manager board) is German.

Yet they are all having this conversation in English, which means I can listen in and enjoy a rather pompous customer being brought down a peg or two.

His general complaint is that in France you are never charged car parking to visit a hotel restaurant, and has finally escalated to the statement that if the hotel was run by a proper hotel chain this wouldn’t happen.

I’m trying not to laugh, as I’ll give the game away, as I can clearly see both the receptionist and manager are about to leap on this open goal.

It’s at this point I suddenly realise that perhaps English has become a little too pervasive.  The fact that it was automatically the language of choice for the customer when travelling abroad, and the fact that the hotel staff are fluent leaves me feeling a little thick.  After all, I can barely master please and thank you in Polish, let alone attempt to defuse an annoyed patron in another language.

And the punch line.

The hotel is part of the Accor chain.  France’s largest hotel chain

Refunding the Toast

Subsequent to my recent “Interesting” stay with the Mercure in Salisbury, I’ve had a very apologetic email from the manager of the hotel and the full cost of the breakfast refunded back to me.

Not having your toast or eating it

I have no problem with a hotel wanting to make best use of its facilities, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of the guests. After all, surely the key priority for a hotel is its paying guests?

This would not appear to be the case for the Mercure in Salisbury. It appears to have its eye solely focused on bringing in extra money, even if it is at the expense of its guests.

This morning was an eye opener to truly bad planning and poor customer service.

The hotel was being the venue for a “Holistic and Psychic Fair” which meant that the bar and restaurant area was being used for that so there was nowhere to offer breakfast. This wasn’t going to be a problem as they were going to offer free room service to all the guests.

In theory this should all work fine with no problems, and if this were the only event taking place then it would probably have all worked fine.

Unfortunately, the hotel had also taken a booking for a pretty large wedding on the Saturday evening, and strangely, if you have a large wedding party in a hotel, it was full to capacity with guests.

All of whom needed breakfast, all of whom would have to have breakfast through room service, all of whom would probably want breakfast around a similar time.

Now if I were the manager in this instance I would spot that there was a potential problem here. If 50 rooms all want room service in a very short period of time it’s either not going to work, or you are going to have to draft in lots of extra staff.

The hotel just didn’t appear to think that there would be a problem, and consequently by the time my breakfast was due at 09:30 they were already running over an hour behind.

I wouldn’t have minded breakfast at 11:00, if it wasn’t for the fact that I had to check out by then.

The added problem was that I had already pre-paid for breakfast and this is where the really poor management came into its own.

By now the hotel realised they had a problem, they were phoning guests to let them know their breakfast would be “a little late” which in itself is pretty poor, if you’ve messed up, put your hands up to it, don’t try and make it look like it’s only a minor mistake.

So, you would have thought that they might put some plans in place for the inevitable when a guest who hadn’t had the breakfast came down to ask for a refund.

But no, instead I was met with a “that isn’t possible, if you’ve paid for breakfast you’ll just have to wait for it to arrive, we won’t give a refund”

I decided not to take the receptionist up on her offer of getting me the duty manager (which she only offered when I said I’d be writing a formal complaint) as by now I was in a pretty bad mood and I doubt I could have kept my language civil.

So, I’ve documented it all, I’ve written it all down and sent a letter to the manager, to ask what they think of the service their hotel offers.

Let’s see what the response will be. Although I can already predict, some pleasantries, a gentle denial of any liability or inability to manage and an apology that company policy doesn’t permit refunds.

I’m hoping I’m going to be wrong. If I am, I’ll review the rating I’ve given the hotel, if I’m right then perhaps it might have to be a letter direct to Accor Hotels.