It's really too late at night for me to go into this. It's about 1:38am here in Las Vegas, which means that it feels like it's 4:38 am, since I just got off a plane from NYC. I'm out here for yet another trade show with my friend Wil.
Delayed flight. Long taxi line. Big line at the check in for the Paris hotel, which is previously one of my favorites. As we approach I notice that all the check-in staff are going to the back room before giving out room keys.
Something is clearly up.
When it's our turn to get up and check in, the nice desk clerk tells me we can either wait four hours for our room to be clean (mind you it's after 1am) or we can take a smoking suite for the night and switch rooms. I tell him I don't want to do either, he can leave us in the suite or give us the room we've paid for. (Note: we paid for our first night's stay already.) He goes to the back to get the manager, who comes out, glad hands me, and tells me that they're going to do us a favor by putting us in a smoking double suite.
I will not bore you with the details, we went back and forth about how we booked the room two months prior, how I called several times to check on the reservations and we've already paid for the room. The answers I'm getting back are essentially that they don't guarantee you'll get the room you've paid for even if you've already paid ahead of time. They just guarantee that you'll be somewhere, and they can move you around if they want, and how this should really be cool with me. I did not, I point out, pay to be in one room one night and then another room another night. He tells me that it's just like flying, where they don't guarantee you have a seat until you check in. I point out that they also don't put you in a seat and then make you move half way through the flight, or tell you that your seat is not ready, though everyone else has their seat, because they haven't cleaned it, come back in four hours.
Now, I travel a lot. Had they come out and said "we're really sorry. We had a ton of rooms check out today, we didn't anticipate how late everyone would check out. If you wouldn't mind staying in the suite tonight and moving, that would be great for us, we'll give you breakfast for free" I'd have been fine. Really, I get it that sometimes shit happens. But what instead I got from the night supervisor, Michael Hawes, was that it was my fault for not coming earlier. In fact, and this is the part that blows my mind, he told me that "you could have chosen to take an earlier flight."
I think that my head visibly exploded at this point. I mean really. I should have flown in earlier so that they'd have a room for me?
So to add insult to injury, after they send us to a suite that's only got one bed (the only non-smoking suite has just one king bed, and as much as I like Wil, we're not sharing it) they tell we can get a roll-away. (Because clearly I spent $300 to sleep on a twin sized cot, and it's my fault for not coming in earlier) housekeeping tells me that a roll-away will be $30. Oh...no...it...will...not.
Now we're in our "free upgrade" suite waiting for our room service, as I sit and curse at a hotel that I used to recommend to people. (In fact, I've stayed here more than any other hotel in Vegas, and recommended more people to this hotel than any other anywhere.)
As I was leaving the desk, i got his name (see above) and mentioned that I was going to have a conversation with the day manager, because when I'm here for a trade show, (and I was registered under PDN, who is paying a shit ton of money for rooms and expo space in this hotel), I think that the correct answer to why they're going to put us in a smoking room with a single bed when we requested two beds and no smoking, is not "you should have taken an earlier flight."
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