Luxury Travel: You Call Yourself a Five Star Hotel?!

"You call yourself a 5-star?!"

I was recently in Paris on business and stayed at the Renaissance Paris Vendome Hotel on rue du Mont Thabor. It is a luxury boutique hotel that is part of the Marriott Group. Like so many boutique hotels, the decor is sleek, the location is great and it has all kinds of small details that give it character and charm such as a cosy library filled with beautiful art and fashion books and a lovely spa. Alas, I will not be staying there again. Ever.

I arrived rather late on the first night of my stay and so settled in and ordered room service. The meal was tasty enough but it arrived lukewarm. By then, I was tired and just wanted to get to bed so I didn't send it back. Little did I know that it was a sign of things to come.

The next day, I left at 10:00 am for a series of meetings and came back late that afternoon to return calls, answer e-mails and change for a business dinner only to find that my room had still not been cleaned. In the roughly six hours I had been out, no one from housekeeping had thought to check it. As a result, instead of getting right to work as I had planned, I had to wait in the hotel's library while my room was serviced. While it might be a lovely place to meet a friend for drinks, it remains a public place and not where you necessarily want to conduct your business dealings.

That evening, I ordered a taxi to take me to the restaurant where I was meeting a business contact for dinner. I new I was in trouble when I came down to the lobby and found a very elegantly attired couple having a polite but tense exchange with the hotel personnel over a taxi snafu. Their taxi had never arrived and it apparently wasn't the first time this had happened to them during their stay. Mine arrived ... eventually. Taxi snafus happen often (especially in Paris) but one expects a 5 star hotel to deal with it promptly and effectively. It was also the first of two over the course of my stay. Two taxi snafus might not seem like much but then again, I only ordered two.

The first was mildly irritating but the concierge thoughtfully called ahead to the restaurant to let them know about my predicament so no harm was done. The second time however, the desk attendant never recorded my request and simply forgot to reserve it altogether. Since the taxi was to take me to Gare du Nord, what should have been a routine departure turned into a stressful race against time. There were other little things that irked me during my stay including the fact that the doormen are not always present to open the door promptly or that while the staff were friendly, they seemed ill-trained to do their jobs which made interactions awkward. It left me wondering how on earth they ever managed to obtain their 5 star rating.

None of these incidents on their own seem like much but their cumulative effect signal to me that the establishment has systemic service issues that need to be addressed promptly. A five star rating in the highly competitive world of luxury hospitality is hard-earned. It's also hard to keep especially when disgruntled clients are blogging and tweeting about the mediocrity of your establishment. Someone should make a point of explaining this to the management of Renaissance Paris Vendome Hotel.

Sincerely,

The Luxe Chronicles

Comments

[Helene]

Truly happy to hear you had a better experience than mine Blanca. Perhaps I was inordinately unlucky? Either way, an establishment of this type cannot afford haphazard service. Nor can it afford to shrug off the complaints of a paying customer. I could easily have overlooked some of the incidents if the hotel's management had responded appropriately. After all, bad things happen to good establishments. Alas, indifference is not an appropriate response to shoddy service.

Helene

[blanca]

I stayed in that same hotel January last year and I found no defaults. My room was done, my dinners and breakfasts arrived promptly and while staying there I ordered 2 taxis without having any problem. I'm really surprised of reading your review, but maybe I was lucky.

[Daniel]

It sounds like the next time you are in Paris, you need to visit the Price de Galles hotel. Simply fabulous. :)

[Make Do Style]

Nightmare! One needs a hotel to be efficient and taxi matters completely guaranteed. Given we recently had a Gare de Nord dash I know how desperate it is to get a taxi in Paris!