September 7, 2012

Dear Guest;

I am writing you to follow up with our conversation yesterday and my call to you from this past weekend. I am truly sorry that your experience at The Avalon Lodge over the Labor Day holiday weekend was not as you had hoped.

Melody, I have done my best to try and understand your point of view and concerns which you outlined for me. I have also taken into consideration our staff input; who as you can see by our reviews usually does a stellar job at attending to our guests’ needs and some basic information.

As I understand it, what you outlined for me as your concerns were:
• You checked in early and were told the room was not ready, they checked you in and gave you a key and told you to return, which you did, to a clean room
• You did not get any paperwork at check in or check out.
• You asked for an iron and ironing board and it was petite; not full size and did not fit well on the table in room
• Your shower turned off during your shower
• The pool was dirty and colder than you would like
• You felt the staff did not respond to your needs, in whole or in part
o You mentioned if they would have offered a refund, you would have left
• You did not have a table lamp beside the bed
• You had only 10 channels on your TV and the channel guide listed 30

I would like to address each of these concerns for you:
• We checked you into the room at 10:16 AM, almost 6 hours prior to check in time. You requested a first floor room which we obliged. The room was clean at the time of your early check in. It was also explained to you at check in the carpets of all downstairs rooms were being cleaned that day. We asked the cleaners to clean your room first and place dryers in it so that you could check in after your breakfast, even giving you your keys at this time so you would not have to come back to the front desk. I mention this because one of your concerns was that the carpets were a touch damp at check in.
• I have enclosed copy of your registration card, which you signed at check in. This is all the paperwork we give at check-in, as is customary with most hotels, with the exception of area literature, etc.
• At check out, we do give out a folio of charges. You declined it, as noted in your reservation. Later, your friends who also stayed with us asked that we email you a receipt, which we did. I had another copy sent yesterday, after we spoke.
• The in-room lighting was designed by an architectural firm to allow more free space on the table and put the switches in reach of the bed and lights overhead. I am sorry this was not something you liked. When you mentioned it, our staff offered place lamps in room, but you told them did not want them entering your room at all, so they let you know they were at the front desk for you. You never stopped by so that we could give these to you.
• I do apologize about the ironing board not fitting on the table. Honestly, it is the first we had heard of that and are going to remedy the situation by adding full size ironing boards to our available guest amenities.
• You mention your shower turned off during your stay – mid shower. I am sorry if this in any way inconvenienced you. Our showers, as I mentioned, do have auto shut off to ensure the heat does not get to scalding if the handle is turned too far. It must have been turned up to that point. I am glad your husband fixed it for you. I will note we also stated we would look at it, but you declined.
• Our in room TV placard comes from the cable company and they did make some recent changes to increase the channels, both locally and regionally. This may have affected the listings matching the placard. We do also offer Movies on Demand with first run, in theater movies to our guests.
• The pool is an item which helps me to understand that more than our hotel issues, there is a perception issue. You see, the inspector just came out 2 days prior to your stay and gave us the sign off for a fully compliant brand new filter system and mentioned how very clean our pool is. It is also consistently heated between 78-80 degrees. Our staff cleans it also, 2 times a day, usually pre and post guest use hours.

I will say that it is our company “Golden Rule” if you will to put people first and to do what it takes to ensure our guests are happy within our abilities. Knowing this, and having received hundreds of guest letters, online reviews and survey cards to applaud our staff and property, it is hard to understand how any of your issues could have been so unresolved.

In looking at each of these issues in depth, I am truly disappointed you would write such a review while still at the hotel, with a DND sign on the door, not allowing us to address, explain or fix anything. Your review also states our amenities are not as promised, which I do not understand. Our pool does have a newly replaced, working and approved filtration system. Our staff, as they are trained, respected the DND sign and did not disturb you in room to address anything. They did approach you at the pool, knowing you were unhappy, but you shunned them away.

You mention not leaving only due to not being able to get a refund, however our staff was prepared to offer one of our vacation rentals as an alternative location for you, the night of your arrival, immediately seeing you did not want to stay with us, and did offer to let you out of your reservation at any time. We did in fact refund your last night when you checked out 1 day early. The constant DND sign and inability to talk with you truly seems to have exacerbated your disappointment and our inability to communicate with you and resolve this to your satisfaction. We also checked the lock and found the door threshold to be very tight. It did require an extra little pull to latch the door. This was an easy and immediate fix if we had known.

Finally, in our call, you quickly stated, before I could even address the point, that you were not abusive to our staff, but that they were inefficient and did not care. I must say that our staff was aware you were not happy and very disappointed they did not know how to open communication to make you happy.

At this point, I do not know how to turn this past experience into a good situation for you or us. I do not feel you would want a complimentary return visit. You did not communicate to let us understand and fix anything and have now consumed the nights, but did write a review to Trip Advisor while in your room; so I do not feel a further refund is in order; beyond your last night, which again, we did refund in full because you departed early and sadly, unhappy.

I will end this letter with a sincere apology that you were not happy. I am not sure what else I can do at this point. I will also post this reply to your Trip Advisor review.

Sincerely,

Deb Pierrel