“Nothing short of awful. Do not stay at this hotel!”
I will start by saying that I travel on business probably 30% of the year. As such, I stay at many hotels over the course of the year, and generally do not post reviews. This was such a bad experience that I felt that I needed to let other travelers know about this property. I generally give my business to a Hilton or Marriott property, but had a short 2 night stay that I needed to book in a town with not a lot of choices. I chose this property over a Holiday Inn Express, and it was a bad choice.
I reserved 3 rooms for 2 nights each. At check-in, I was told that the hotel takes a $100 deposit per room, which I commented on as being something that I don't see during my normal business travel. The desk attendant simply said this was the hotel policy, and continued the check-in process. As I walked to the room, I saw that every room had a door accessible from the outside, which I am not fond of. My room did not have a functioning shower, another room in my block had a non functioning heater/air conditioner. The ice machines did not work, the power outlets in one room did not work, and the walkway outside the rooms was cracked and buckling. This is simply an old property with some cosmetic attempts to freshen it.
Despite the items above, we stayed for the 2 nights without complaining. It retrospect, that was a mistake. However, my real issue with the hotel came at check out. I generally leave a property on my departure date without calling or stopping by the front desk. I have not had an issue with this in 18 years of business travel. Luckily, I was suspicious enough of this hotel to call prior to leaving the property. When I informed them that I had 3 rooms checking out, I was told the I needed to come to the front desk with my parking passes and all room keys, or there would be a charge for each key not returned. I was absolutely amazed by this. These were standard plastic mag stipe key cards, why would there be a fee for not returning them? Especially given that most people just leave them in the room? I was very unhappy to hear this, and told the attendant on the phone that I would not pay this fee. She argued with me stating the she checked me in, and had informed me of this policy. I responded that she had informed me of the deposit they were taking,and that I had questioned that, but I was absolutely certain she had not mentioned this ridiculous key charge. She was beyond rude, and when I asked to speak to manager, she said one was not available. I was basically hung up on. I ended up going to the front desk to get a duplicate key to get into the room that had already been vacated so that I could get the keys that were inside. After wasting time doing this, and going through a very long check-out process, another attendant decided to "waive" the fee for the one plastic key that was missing. I suspect that it was because I had told them that I would initiate a charge-back on the entire bill for the 3 rooms if they chose to charge me for a missing plastic key card.
I have been home for a few days, and am still upset about what a poorly run property this is. I will be calling the Best Western corporate offices to complain. Again, something I have never done in 18 years of business travel. I would highly discourage anyone thinking about staying at this property from doing so. There simply has to be a better property in the area to stay at.
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC.
December 10, 2012
Thank you for taking some of your valuable time on writing a review on your stay at our hotel.
Please accept our apologies for all the inconveniences you experienced throughout your stay. We are truly sorry that we did not full fill all your expectations but do guarantee that we take all of our guests’ experiences and make changes to prevent it from happening again.
You mentioned that you travel throughout the year and usually give your business to Hilton and Marriott properties and we appreciate that you had given us the opportunity to host your stay. Please take in consideration that there are many hotel chains in the market, each one having different hotel policies, some of them you might not be accustomed to. Unfortunately, one of our hotel policies is requiring a deposit, which is refundable at check-out. This deposit is not an actual charge but a pending hold on your credit card that gets released at the time of check out. Most hotels use a pending hold for a determined amount that would cover any incidentals, such as telephone charges, vending charges and any other occurring fees. It is surprising that as you had mentioned, as a frequent traveler, are not familiar with, yet. As we understand, other hotels in the area also require a deposit when checking in, so perhaps even booking elsewhere you would have encountered the same policy.
As far as our outside rooms go, our hotel is designed in a way that some room entrances are towards the outside, with easy access to the parking lot and other rooms that are towards the inside of the hotel. While most guests prefer an outside room for obvious reasons, we did not see any special requests from your party when reservations were booked or at checking in.
As a valued customer, when issues come up with any of our rooms, we highly recommend that you report it immediately to the front desk so we can address any issues right away. Keep in mind that our top priority is our guests’ satisfaction and we work hard to full fill our guests’ expectations. We believe that no guest should have to experience any issues during their stay as they are the ones paying for our hospitality. As a result of having ignored the problems or by not reporting any issues to our staff, it prevented you from having an enjoyable stay, and prevented us from the opportunity of resolving any issues and providing excellent service.
I would like to mention that when we read your reviews about the shower, the AC/Heater and the power outlets not working, our maintenance staff was sent to perform a full inspection and they were found to be working properly.
Our staff strives every day to provide our guests with superior hospitality and once we receive a report from a guest about a maintenance issue, we resolve it and prevent it from happening to other guests.
In addition, since we had a high occupancy at the time of your stay, our ice machines were constantly in use and temporarily running out of ice. It takes approximately 30minutes for the machines to replenish the ice.
We are truly sorry that you were upset due to the fact that we require all guests to return all room keys. We are concerned with our guests’ safety and personal property. We try to prevent any situation that can arise from a guest leaving the keys inside the room and accidentally leaving the door open or by not closing the door properly and having an outsider walk in the room causing damages and creating extra charges to the registered guest. As a guest, you are responsible for the room while it is registered to your name. We do understand that sometimes our guests misplace the room keys, however we can make an exception when we see our guests’ efforts in working with us by returning all room keys.
Our main objective is to make sure that every guest’s stay is memorable, comfortable and overall have a great experience. We have our Front Desk staff working 24 hours, 7 days a week to serve you in every situation and you are always welcome to take advantage of that.
Thank you,
GM, Best Western Moreno Hotel & Suites
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This response is the subjective opinion of the management representative and not of TripAdvisor LLC.
