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Olivia Greenway, travel journalist and copywriter

May I see a room please? Why do so many hotels get this wrong?

October 7, 2013
By olivia

It is perfectly reasonable if you are thinking of booking a stay in a luxury hotel to ask to see a guest room.  Hotels are usually more than happy to do this, perhaps showing you several rooms so you can decide whether the room is big enough, the extra money for a suite is worth it or which view you prefer.

 

Problems arise when the hotel is full and there are no rooms to show you.  This situation can often be avoided if you call the hotel beforehand and ask when there is likely to be a room to view or you choose a traditionally quiet time like Sunday afternoon.  But if the hotel is full, it is full.  In fact recently, I was beaten to a guest room viewing by the guests themselves, who had checked in early. My guide was alerted on her walkie-talkie.

 

But what if guests have checked out but the housekeeping team have not prepared the rooms?  Some hotels have a policy of never showing a room that is ‘unready’, not even to travel journalists.  Whilst I can understand the thinking, in practice I think this is a foolish step.  The fact that someone wants to see a room in the first place shows that there is interest.  Does the hotel really think that an unmade bed or a few wet towels on a bathroom floor will so distort the impression of the hotel that it will work against them?

 

The foolishness of this policy was played out before my eyes recently.  I won’t name the hotel, because I imagine the member of staff was only following head office orders.

 

A man came up to the front desk.  He said he had been to the area many times over the last thirty years but had never stayed at this hotel.  He was thinking of booking for next summer with his family.  Could he see a room now?

 

The front desk clerk looked at his computer screen and a bit like the travel agent in ‘Little Britain’, he didn’t say “Computer says no,” but something very similar that meant the same thing.  Seeing the disappointment on the potential guest’s face, I thought the clerk was going to relent, but instead he said: “Could you come back in three hours?”

 

By now, it was becoming rather silly.  Did the clerk really think that the man would want to hang around at the hotel for three hours until a room had been cleaned and he could view it?  I could see the exasperation in the man’s face.  In a few minutes, a potential guest had gone from feeling quite positive and wanting to stay at the hotel to being mightily peed off and probably resolving never to come back, ever, never mind in three hours.  Or if he did come back it would be with a few sticks of dynamite.

 

Good hotels employ staff who can think on their feet, who go off the script occasionally.  It may be head office policy to never show unready rooms but in this case they almost certainly lost a booking.

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Trips 2018/2019

2019

January: Zanzibar

March: Cape Town & Pretoria

May: Slovenia

October: South Africa (tbc)

November: Kenya (tbc)

 

Trips 2018

March:  New York, including Frick Gallery

May:  Vietnam including Halong Bay

June:  Giverny and Monet’s garden

June:  Majorca

December: Hyderabad and Chandigarh, India

Trips 2017

January: Johannesburg, Pretoria, Swaziland, Mozambique, Zimbabwe
February: Bangalore
April: Lake District
May: Malaga
September: Mexico, Cancun
November: Delhi, Agra, Shimla
December: Berlin, Prague, Budapest, Venice

Trips 2016 (not clickable)

January: Oxford, Tenerife
February: Hampshire
March: Manchester
April: Sicily, Germany
October: Bangalore, New Delhi
November: Bangalore, New Delhi
December: Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

List of trips 2015 (not clickable)

January: European ski resorts; Milan
February: Germany, Austria, Switzerland
March: Istanbul, Jersey, Vienna, Prague, Budapest
April: Road trip Ireland
May: Road trip France, Germany, Benelux and Copenhagen
June: UK luxury hotels
December: Cannes

List of trips 2014 (not clickable)

January Weimar, Vienna
February - Berlin, London
April - Chicago, Toronto, Montreal
May/June - Driving trip, Spain
July – Majorca
July - Paris
August - Southern UK
September – Northern Italy including Venice
October - South of France
October/November - Germany, Austria and Switzerland
December - Cape Town, Durban, driving along Garden Route South Africa, Kenya, Rwanda

List of trips 2013 (not clickable)

  • January - Tenerife
  • March - Istanbul
  • April - Italy luxury hotels - mid and southern Italy including Sicily
  • June - Las Vegas
  • June - Massive west coast road trip - Vancouver, BC
  • June - Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Napa Valley, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, Santa Monica, San Diego
  • September - Washington DC, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia
  • September - Carolinas, Georgia, northern Florida (Talahassee area)
  • September - New Orleans, Orlando, Miami; Vancouver
  • October - Puglia, Italy and Milan

List of trips 2012

  • January - Hawaii, USA
  • February - France - Le Touquet, Lens, Lille
  • March - Nelamangala, India
  • July - Milan, Italy
  • August - Buenos Aires, Argentina
  • August - Iguazu Falls, Brazil
  • August - Montevideo, Uruguay
  • September - Delhi, India
  • November - Dubai, UAE

List of trips 2011

  • January - Madeira, Portugal
  • February - Bangalore, India
  • April - British Virgin Islands, Caribbean
  • May - Sicily, Italy
  • May - San Francisco, USA
  • June - Bangalore and New Delhi, India
  • July - Prague, Czech Republic
  • July - Munich, Germany
  • July - Washington DC, USA
  • August - Lake District, UK
  • September - La Grande-Motte, France
  • Annapolis, USA
  • October - Buenos Aires, Argentina
  • December - Helsinki, Finland
  • December - St Petersburg, Russia

List of trips 2010

  • February - India - Kerala & Chennai
  • March - Manchester & the North West
  • March - Austria
  • April - Czech Republic
  • May - Lake District
  • June - Cologne
  • July - India - Bangalore and Delhi
  • August - Eastern Cape & KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
  • September - Grasse, south of France
  • September - Wick, Scotland
  • October - Utah, USA
  • December - Montreal, Canada
  • December - Madeira, Portugal
Olivia Greenway, travel journalist and copywriter
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