We went to the Glasgow Malmaison for our first night of our honeymoon before flying off to the Indian Ocean. We both live in Glasgow and were simply looking for some high-class pampering and a romantic dinner. Good points first: Great breakfast. Nice bathroom. Great urban view across Glasgow. Very friendly staff - trying their best. Got a bottle of bubbly for all our troubles. And now to the not so good things. Our receptionist was nice but indifferent. Trainee perhaps? We had to carry our own luagge and got only vague directions to the room. We had technical issues with cold water and the drain in the bathroom, which were eventually fixed by a friendly reception manager. However, even after it was fixed the sink only drained slowly, a typical sign of poor maintenance, as I guess the pipes were full of hair. A bottle of bubbly was offered as compensation, which was great, but it never came. I rung reception and they promised to try again. It was eventually send to the restaurant as we didn't want to sit in the room forever. The restaurant was also unavailable for a while as the kitchen had problems, which I can forgive. However, we eventually were given the menu to chose the courses from. It looked impressive until I asked what was actually included in our Dinner+BB. Now we were given a cut down, cheaper menu and told that our room included £15 each for dinner. Any options such a side chips and coffe were charged extra. For an almost £300-room I thought this was scandalous. When the food came some of it was nice; the risotto just bland and without flavour. Our room had two skylights, but these couldn't be opened. When I asked whether such a fancy hotel had air conditioning I was told that this was actually a very hot day for the end of April and no, they did not have aircon. The windows that opened in the lower part of the room wouldn't really cool the air upstairs where the bed was. Also being a city centre hotel leaving the windows open increased noise levels unbearably, in particular in the morning.
To summarise: Although I can forgive technical hitches, lack of aircon and a porter and the poor DBB menu really upset things. Staff are friendly and try their best, but probably lack training, direction and better procedures that ensure customer satisfation at this level to justify the hotel's price tag. Spend half as much in the Hilton and you get a much nicer service and similar if not better rooms. I can see how American guests might be horrified at the standards here. My experience with hotels in the States has always been outstanding, with far better service for a fraction of the cost. If you have cash to burn and are curious about this try it out. If you are looking for something special and work hard for your money go somewhere else.









