Well, I’m on vacation this week and, based on early reviews, I’ll probably get several blogs out of this. But I wanted to share this one first to, hopefully, get the foul taste out of my mouth. I mean, we are on vcation. We should be making fond memories to tell the dog when we get home (we don’t have kids). We put the dog in a kennel while we were away. It’s not right that he has a better vacation than we do. Our first stop this week was Chicago, where we had the second worst hotel experience of my entire life. I try not to be overly critical of places. Usually, if I go to a restaurant and the food is bad, or the service is bad, or both, I just won’t review it. At least, not here. But if you ask me in private, wellll……. Everybody has a bad day occasionally and I try to give them the benefit of the doubt. I may go back but, if I do and the service and/or food continues to be bad, I won’t go back a third time. But I also won’t review them. I figure, why bother? If this bad situation continues, the place will just shut down of its’ own ineptitude anyway. They don’t need my help. Besides, people love a good car wreck. A bad post may attract looky-loos like flies to, well whatever flies are attracted to. So, if you have any fly DNA, first of all, congratulations on being related to Jeff Goldblum and, second of all, STOP reading this right now.
The sad part is, the hotel itself is actually very nice, at least based on what you get for your buck. It has an odd name, The Hotel Collection I hope it is a small collection. If it isn’t, it will be soon enough. One thing it has going for it is a great location, right in the middle of Wrigleyville on Clark Street, just a 5-minute walk from Wrigley Field. It’s an older brick building, as many of the buildings in Chicago are. Clearly they don’t worry about earthquakes here. Fire seems to be more of a problem and, I suppose, bricks don’t burn as easily as wood. The building was probably built nearer the start of the last century than the start of this one. The lobby was comfortable with sofas and chairs scattered about and exuding an overall baseball theme.
The owners seem to have a good sense of humor as well. That’s something they will need in abundance when people start asking for refunds en masse. They will also need a boatload of cash. A quote, made by a famous ballplayer, was framed and hung next to the outside of each door as you entered your room. The elevator was slower than a catcher trying to steal second base, but they acknowledged that in baseball terms that only a true fan of the game would understand and apprciate.
The room itself, located on the 4th floor, was small but functional and comfy. There was a queen bed for us and bunk beds for the kids. Since we both hate the idea of raising rug rats, that’s where we threw our luggage. The bathroom, though small, was still large enough to accommodate a double sink and a large shower. The room had a balcony, which was very cool, with a great view of the alley that ran in back of Clark Street. There were two Adirondack chairs we could relax in and enjoy the soft afternoon breeze. Perhaps a small table and a couple of plants, real or fake, would have added to the overall ambience. But that’s nit-picking. From our room we could go up one floor in the world’s slowest elevator, to the roof. Not much there but a great view. They could have dressed that up with some chairs/tables. Maybe a tin roof so you could sit up there even if it’s raining. They advertised four drinks every day, a $34.95 value, included in the price. These “drinks” consisted of a beer, a water, and a couple of other nondescript beverages in a bucket of ice. The day we arrived we checked in late and found these on the nightstand. The ice had melted leaving a water ring on the table and water was dripping onto the floor. On our second afternoon, housekeeping knocked on our door and when I opened it, handed me the ice bucket without a word. At least the ice had not started to melt yet. Again, I’m indulging in a little picking of nits here. But it does get worse from this point on.
The real issue we had was with the level of service. Hotels are in the service industry folks. Customer service should be their primary objective. Otherwise, why exist. A hotel can do a lot of things wrong but, if they have a courteous, friendly, and helpful staff, it will make right any number of sins. Take those traits away and it’s just a bad vacation waiting to happen. A few days before our scheduled arrival, I sent them an e-mail, at their request, stating we would probably arrive around 6:00 PM on Sunday. At 4:43 on Sunday afternoon, I received a text with instructions upon arrival. This text number was to be our primary point of contact with the hotel. Not a flesh and blood individual, not a phone bot. Heck, not even elevator music that makes you want to go Van Gogh on yourself while on hold. A texting number. All of the hotel doors are accessible by guest keycard only. The text explained there were a series of lock boxes located just to the right of the front entrance. Ours was lock box #20 and we were to key in a code which would open the box so we could access our key cards. After some momentary confusion while I checked my OTHER right looking for the lock boxes, we found them. Hey, we left our house in Bakersfield at 7:00 AM to drive to LA for an 11:30 flight, went through TSA check at LAX, took a four hour economy class flight, took an uber to our hotel arriving at 6:00 PM, 4:00 LA time. I WAS TIRED! Anyway, now armed with keycards in hand, we were granted access to the deserted hotel lobby and our room. We didn’t see any sign of another living being until I was handed our ice bucket with complimentary beverages, almost 24 hours later. That includes hotel staff, housekeeping, or any other guests.
We had tickets for a Cubs game Tuesday afternoon at 1:20 PM. After the game we had to catch a flight to Colorado Springs at 6:50. It was a tight schedule and I wanted to leave our luggage with hotel staff at the bell desk and pick it up after the game, probably around 4:30. One problem, there was no bell desk to speak of and definitely no staff. I texted the anonymous text number person, thing, explaining what I wanted to do. After several back-and-forth messages, they said they would have someone from housekeeping stay late so we could collect our luggage after the game. When we were ready to pick up our luggage, we were to call the number we had been texting so they could notify housekeeping to meet us in the lobby. Talk to an actual person. What a concept! One of the more disconcerting takeaways from this was, apparently there is nobody on staff at the hotel after 4:00 PM.
Tuesday morning we took a scenic river tour of downtown Chicago. When we returned to the hotel, there were two guests in the lobby trying to check in. I asked how they managed to enter the lobby without key cards. Another guest had been in the lobby and opened the door for them to enter. I explained we had received a text with instructions on how to access our key cards, pointing out the lock boxes on the right, right and not the left, right. They had not received any such text. But check-in time was 4:00 PM and it was only 11:30 so we reasoned that may have had something to do with it. A phone number to call was posted on the front door, the same number I had been texting. They had tried to call that number but had been getting nothing but voicemail. I tried the number and, after being put on hold for a very short time, spoke to a woman who said she would send housekeeping down to collect our luggage.
Meanwhile, the other guests finally got through, but were told a room wasn’t available yet. Check in wasn’t until 4:00 o’clock but still, most hotels will at least attempt to accommodate an early arrival. Remember, it’s all about customer service. I don’t need to be pampered but I expect the same basic amenities any other hotel would provide.
About 5 minutes passed and housekeeping eventually appeared emerging from the slo-levator. This was a Hispanic woman who spoke only limited English. We took the elevator to the basement with her, where she put our luggage in a corner, with our name on a name tag, until after the game. We wished the other guests luck (they were going to need it) and headed out. It was a great game, and I will probably blog about my Wrigley Field experience later. It was also a fast game, and we were back at the hotel by 4:15. The same couple was still there, still trying to get checked in. They had left and returned with a second couple they were traveling with who were likewise trying to check in. Both couples were being told their rooms were not yet ready. Mind you, this was five hours later so it’s not like they suddenly showed up early. While we are waiting, another group of four or five people appeared, also trying to check in. I was the guest who opened the lobby door for them. The card system was not all that secure. I felt sorry for the poor Hispanic woman. Not only did it appear she was the ONLY on premises staff, but she was a maid. That was her job. She wasn’t, nor was she equipped to be, a bell captain, a concierge, a desk clerk, a cook, a candlestick maker, or anything else. She was simply a maid. But she was being asked to perform all these other functions and be the face of the hotel. As well as performing her own duties, cleaning rooms, which she obviously wasn’t getting done quickly enough. Guest relations is not her job and, with her limited ability to speak English, she was having a hard time dealing with the increasingly angry mob. Everyone was becoming very frustrated. I was hearing people talking about asking for refunds. I’ll say it again. If you operate a hotel, you are in the service business. Customer service is your number one priority. It is not how much profit you can make by cutting staff back to the bare minimum.
I do get what is going on here, sort of. There has been a great push in this country in recent years to eliminate, for lack of a better word, cashiers. This is especially true in California where minimum wage is now $15 an hour and going up. Several years back, we started to see self-checkout in places such as Home Depot and Lowe’s. We are starting to see it more at grocery stores, especially Walmart. Fast food chains started experimenting with kiosks where you could place an order without interacting with a human being.
Then COVID hit. Social distancing has become a thing and it has accelerated the need for contactless sales interaction. That is the excuse at any rate. It really just acted to accelerate a process that was already ongoing. In some places, this is probably necessary and a good thing. At one time I worked in fast food. I cannot imagine trying to run one of those restaurants today, where labor has always been the single highest expense anyway, and now being forced to pay a high school kid working part time $15 an hour. Do not get me started on the minimum wage laws in the state of California. But hotels are not one of these places. This appears to be a poorly executed extension of this ongoing trend in the service industry. Rooms at the Hotel Collection go for about $150 a night. Down the street, the Hotel Zachary charges $400.00 a night.
The Zachary is a full-service hotel compared to this, which was a no-service hotel. You’re not going to get $400 a night at the Hotel Collection. But, upgrade the amenities, just a little bit, add an actual staff, and I could see $250 a night. I believe our floor had either six or eight rooms. The Hotel Collection has four floors, three of them for guests. That works out to between 18 and 24 rooms. An extra $100 a night equals at least an extra $1500. More if the place sells out, which it probably does on a regular basis during the baseball season. Hopefully the next owners will realize this and hire some staff, add some decor on the blconies and roof, and generally upgrade the place.
By the way, I mentioned this was our second worst hotel experience ever. Just for the record, our worst hotel experience was a hotel in San Diego several years ago. Don’t even recall the name of the dump and wouldn’t mention it if I remembered (damn looky-loos!). The thing I do recall, though, was arriving at around 10:00 PM, dead tired from the drive, and getting into bed and literally rolling over on top of my wife because the mattress had no box spring and sagged in the middle. It was like the two of us were sleeping in the bottom of a sack.
The Hotel Collection has a plan. Poorly executed though it is and without thinking it through. It’s possibly a good idea, (but probably not) but needs a lot of work. Is this the future of hotels? I hope not. They were swinging for the fences but, like the Mighty Casey of baseball lore, in this case they have struck out.
