Feedback to a budget hotel owner
Feedback to a budget hotel owner
07 Nov 2012
Dear Sir,
We all love a bargain, and it can be quite galling to pay the kinds of rates some hotels see as normal for very basic facilities, so I applaud your pricing strategy. I also very much appreciated the warm welcome on arrival and being asked about my day, though perhaps then asking for an in-depth breakdown of my weekend was a little excessive.
You asked for feedback on how my stay could be improved, so I thought it was only right to offer this, in the spirit of goodwill you already displayed. Here are a few suggestions for future guests.
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If you are advertising an en-suite double room, the term tends to be used when the bathroom has a toilet as well as washing facilities. Indeed, it more normally applies for hotel rooms which have a separate shower and wash room, rather than a shower cubicle and sink squashed in the corner of the bedroom.
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Indeed, on the subject of ‘double room’, this normally refers to a room large enough to accommodate two people and not a small room with a three-quarter sized bed squeezed up against the wall leaving little space to access the bathroom facilities.
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Which reminds me – perhaps you might consider more than one toilet between 14 rooms? While it was nice to get to know the other guests, some were a little agitated and not so inclined to conversation.
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Many hotel residents, including myself, like to be able to leave a window ajar at night. Sadly this was not possible, for fear of dislodging the toilet roll stuffed in the cracks whose purpose, I can only assume, was to prevent drafts. You might wish to think about the logistics around that one.
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I need to mention the pillows. I understand you may be responding to customer demand by providing harder pillows, though perhaps you may have tended to one end of the scale, if not beyond. Less attractive to guests might be their infusion with cigarette smoke, though whether this occurred recently or before the smoking ban was difficult to tell.
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Thank you for the clean sheets and (eventually) hot water, which are ultimately the most important things of all. Thank you also for the sachets of shampoo and the bar of soap. I do wonder whether the latter can really be categorised as ‘gentle’, however, given that it was in fact a hard block of nondescript substance which refused to lather.
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For reasons of simple flood avoidance, it is useful if shower doors can actually be shut. I did manage to dislodge one of them after a struggle, but the flakes of material this generated left me loath to attempt moving the other. This was a particular issue given the propensity of the shower head to flick off its mounting.
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It is always a bonus to have coffee and tea facilities. However, given the small size of the room, I would question the merits of having a full-sized fridge, which limited access to the wardrobe. It might also help to have a kettle that can be filled at the sink without resorting to filling it using the tooth mug.
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On the staircases, I understand that hanging pictures on the walls is intended to add to the ambiance, but their positive impact can be diminished if the pictures are left to slide to the bottom of the frame.
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In the breakfast room, it can be helpful to label the vessels containing coffee and tea, particularly when they taste quite similar so that guests can get a better mental image of what they are supposed to be drinking. The label on the “scrambled eggs” was much more helpful, as I wasn’t sure.
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Finally, please do not leave pairs of underpants on the flat roof above the breakfast room, as this might be off-putting for diners.
I hope these suggestions for small improvements might benefit your establishment, and wish you every success in the future.
Kind regards.
