Holiday Inn Bodrum – am I expecting too much?

[anuj]

Can someone tell me if i’m being unreasonable?

Obviously as a holiday inn resort i’m not expecting 5 or even 4 star luxury:

Before the visit I sent 4 emails and didn’t get a single reply.
As we checked in the guy literally just stared at me blank then showed his phone with a translation to wait but it didn’t make much sense (said something about a chef ? think it meant to say chief). Then the main check in person came who could speak some english but couldn’t tell me if any food was still available.

Next the shower fittings were rusty and unscrewed.
The pillows are super hard.
The hotel phone has the buttons for reception etc but no labels and none of them work anyway. If you dial 0 for reception they can’t understand english.
A bottle of wine was left in the room but despite asking for a corkscrew never received one and since then no one can understand the english for it.
At breakfast absolutely none of the food had a label or even veg or non veg info and a lot of it was covered so you’d have to lift each metal lid to see what was in it.
I’d say the majority of the staff don’t speak english.
I feel bad for finding it annoying because the staff are all lovely and it’s not their fault, feels like a management issue for picking non english staff then deciding to brand with an international brand.

Am I unreasonable to expect these issues to not crop up in an international brand like holiday inn?

[Aston100]

Surprised English was a language barrier in Bodrum.

[NorthernLass]

Does it say “English spoken” on the hotel website? If not and I didn’t speak the local language I’d probably book somewhere else. It’s slightly surprising as having English speakers is going to attract a higher percentage of potential guests, and therefore revenue, but you can’t really count on it.

[anuj]

It says English spoken in the IHG hotel profile yes. Not that I ever check that section because every international chain hotel I’ve been to has never had people who don’t speak english. Only day 2 so will see how it goes.

[The Savage Squirrel]

Doubt the the HI staff in UK are all that polylingual. Whenever I don’t speak the local language, I treat that as my deficiency to work around, not somebody else’s.

[can2]

Yes you are expecting too much in Bodrum.

It is all in the price tag in Bodrum area. For HInn, this is all you get. I’ve been to some hotels in the area with great looking hard product but awful and terrible service.

Good service in Bodrum starts from a much higher price point unfortunately

[can2]

And I was told this somewhere in Turkey by someone who looked like he knew what he was talking about.

In the holiday season, staff who can speak English and another European language are snapped up by big chains and upscale hotels immediately. The rest, who are inexperienced or monolingual, are divided amongst the food chain. H.Inn may be getting monolingual but experienced ones. Lower ones get the completely clueless ones etc.

[NorthernLass]

If the service isn’t as advertised you can try taking it up with IHG CS and see what the response is.

[Aston100]

The Savage Squirrel wrote:

Doubt the the HI staff in UK are all that polylingual. Whenever I don’t speak the local language, I treat that as my deficiency to work around, not somebody else’s.

Yeah but… English is often the default second language in touristic places around the world.
HI staff in the UK don’t need to speak a second language due to pretty much every tourist having some kind of grasp of English (at the very least).

English is honestly so many people’s backup language. I recall a German and a Russian in Turkey conversing in English.

[ChasP]

20 years ago my girlfriend insisted that in Turkey you should probably remove 2 stars from any hotel rating and flatly refused to consider any thing less than 5 star
She was right !
a 3 star in Spain is usually as good as a 5 star in Turkey

[can2]

oddly my wife made a similar comment about 5stars in Turkey 🙂
She calls some DTs in the UK as Turkish five star!

[anuj]

can2 wrote:

oddly my wife made a similar comment about 5stars in Turkey 🙂
She calls some DTs in the UK as Turkish five star!

Guess this may be a Turkey thing, my experience of holiday inns abroad in India is quite different. Some of them easily beat some tired UK 5 star hotels. Tbh I never pay attention to the star rating they’re very unreliable.