No lift at hotel, family room on 4th floor. Next steps?

[tobynow]

Hello all, I’d love any help and advoce. A few weeks back we had a very bad experience with Accor. We are a family of four with a young baby. We had a long standiy booking at an Ibis in Paris due to its proximity to our departure station, and the fact they had connecting family rooms available.

Upon arrival they said all lifts were broken, our room was on the fourth floor and there were no other hotels they could transfer us to if that wasn’t okay with us. They did offer to move our bags upstairs but had no answer when I asked how I was going to get a four year old and buggy up/down four stories whenever needed. So I said that wouldn’t work and we’d like to move to another hotel. They said they couldn’t do that.

After much back and forth I called Accor Customer services in the UK who said there was nothing the could do. This was an issue for the hotel. But they did suggest I just cancel the booking and book my own hotel.

I then told the hotel that we were considering cancelling (as suggested) and after more waiting they said a nearby ibis could accommodate us. However after a further wait there seemed to be an issue and couldn’t give us a room number. By now we’d been waiting 60 minutes and I was quite frustrated. So I looked on the Accor website and found a bunch of other hotels that had availability. However the only bookable one cost roughly double the cost.

After a further wait (90 mins at this point) knowing our baby needed a nap pretty urgently and we couldn’t do it outside due to the high heat in Paris at the time. I told the hotel I’d had enough of this and was going to book another Accor hotel and got a taxi there. In total we lost about 250 euro by having to cancel and book the other hotel.

I’ve tried to get this sorted with customer services (including escalating it) and am not getting very far. They’ve offered me 40 Euro with of Accor points and a one night stay for two adults at an Ibis. Neither of these are much good as we travel as a family of four and are honestly unsure if we want to trust Accor again.

So my questions are:
1 – what should I have done in this situation? Was I reasonable to say a fourth floor room without lift wasn’t acceptable?

2 – is it usual that Accor HQ say there’s nothing they can do to help, and can’t move us to another hotel?

3 – is there anything I should do now to get a better resolution?

[tobynow]

Oh and perhaps the better question

4) Which hotel group is more reliable than Accor? When traveling with tiny kids you really don’t want this nonsense. I don’t mind things going wrong, I do mind how hard it was to find a solution and how powerless and defensive their customer support has been. So if anyone has found others more reliable I’d love to know!

[can2]

We were treated relatively well by Hilton when ours was in a push chair. Hilton was also okay to compensate when things went south a few times.

[SamG]

Sounds like a nightmare !

The problem is these groups are just marketing engines in the main. The hotels themselves are seperate businesses and just because they’re e.g.all Accor they aren’t actually related on the ground. So if hotel B is x2 the price of hotel A “HQ” have got no mechanism to force transfer your booking across at the same rate without hotel A potentially paying that hotel B the difference which they almost certainly wouldn’t do

So it would depend in each destination on finding hotels that belong to the same ownership, which more than likely could be across different brands. Can be quite hard to research online. But likely have more chance to move you as they’d have better relationships between eachother and the cash all ends up in the same place ultimately

Other hotels may have friendly agreements with local properties of a similar standard in case they oversell . I used to work for a hotel group and unless we were all very busy we had a couple of local properties who we could “walk” people to and they’d honour the rate (and we’d do the same).

This is one reason why in the UK I usually check for a Premier Inn these days. They’re roughly consistent I find and all owned and managed by corporate so they could move you to a different location without much of a problem (happened to me once when there was no hot water)

[tobynow]

Such a nightmare! Thanks SamG

That’s very interesting about them being marketing engines. We’re hotel.com gold and have always found them fantastic when we’ve had issues (including a hotel entirely losing our booking). So maybe we should just stick with rhem..

And on Premier Inn — that’s basically what we were aiming for. Premier Inn style reliability for the travel days.

Can2 – thanks that’s helpful. I think we’ll try Hilton in future.

[Peter K]

Sad to say, this sounds like typical Accor customer services I’m afraid. Everything is too much trouble for them.

[jj]

Do you have any mobility issues? If not, are you sure it was an insurmountable problem rather than a nuisance? We’re you really unable to carry a child up four flights of stairs?

I don’t want to sound unsympathetic, but…

[Scott]

I believe on Mumsnet, where perhaps this would have been better posted, has a board called ‘am I being unreasonable?’. In this case, I’d say “yes”

[can2]

We all believe in Mumsnet!

[yorkieflyer]

Next steps, would have been the steps…

[can2]

jj wrote:

Do you have any mobility issues? If not, are you sure it was an insurmountable problem rather than a nuisance? We’re you really unable to carry a child up four flights of stairs?

I don’t want to sound unsympathetic, but…

I think this is a bit unfair. My child is still young so push chair days are not that far in the past for me. I’d be so annoyed if I had to carry a pushchair with a full basket and a diaper bag etc for 4 flights.

You don’t have to have a mobility issue to complain about this. And yes, in my opinion, this deserves a compensation. In my experience, Hilton is good for this, too.

[JDB]

You are really reliant on Accor goodwill here and it’s not something they stock much of. If you sued them you would get tuppence for such an issue. I was confused as to why you needed to carry the pushchair up the four flights; surely the hotel would have stored it for you on the ground floor and lots of people have to carry children up four floors. It’s not ideal, but it’s also not that dramatic. It was very poor they didn’t do more to help, but some of that is explained above. If you had moved to another hotel, I’m sure they would have refunded you, but that would have left you out of pocket.

As others have remarked, booking with central reservations online or the telephone completely disintermediates you as the centre has essentially no sway over what happens at a specific hotel within their marketing group.

[BBbetter]

Given that they offered to bring bags up for you, makes your case even weaker.
A more expensive hotel would have been worried about reputation and arranged alternative hotel for you, but ibis?
Are you sure this wasn’t mentioned in recent tripadvisor reviews?

[tobynow]

This is all helpful thanks.

It wasn’t mentioned on TripAdvisor when I booked, but tbh I didn’t check again in the weeks before we visited so may have missed it.

On the buggy — I know some will think it’s unreasonable. The problem is the buggy with the baby in it is not light (esp with all bags etc). It’s fine to lift up a few steps at the station etc, but I didn’t feel it was doable as we’d have had to go up/down a number of times due to outings, dinner, and naps/sleep. (The baby sometimes sleeps better at night in the buggy. And then we transfer her into the cot. But that relies on me being able to smoothly get her to the cot.)

So it sounds like I should just put up a TripAdvisor review warning other families and accept the accor points and move on!

[can2]

It was the 4th floor not the 14th
Maybe a wake up call to be in better shape?

I grew fondness that how offensive responses get here.

[tobynow]

Lol. Rui N! In in fine shape, thanks for your concern.

My main priority at this stage of life is ensuring my children and wife get sleep, and not having a working lift would have impeded that and caused a variety of headaches. But there we are. Sorry I asked! Didn’t imagine we’d end up taking about my fitness. 😄😄

[Rui N.]

can2 wrote:

Rui N. wrote:

It was the 4th floor not the 14th
Maybe a wake up call to be in better shape?

I grew fondness that how offensive responses get here.

Like always, silly posts get silly responses. Someone has to be quite clueless in how the world works to expect much more than a token for such an inconvenience.
Nothing offensive here (unless something was deleted in the meantime).

[dougzz99]

I wonder how the responders with it’s nothing, mumsnet smartarsery would feel in the same situation.

[Rui N.]

If it was me I’d be mighty pissed. Doesn’t mean I’d be able to get something out of it or that I would expect anything.

[tobynow]

Circling back to my 4th question though — are there any groups/chains people feel are better at handling things when there are issues?

[can2]

I for one think this was a legit issue. There was a structural problem in the hotel. It requires compensation. That’s crystal clear to me. It is not silly at all.
But I don’t think you can get more than what they already offered. You may be angry all you want, but the realistic solution is clear.

[Aston100]

If the circumstances and the recovery options/alternatives were exactly as described, I would ask the hotel to bring the buggy up and down on demand.
Or else enquire about regular rooms very close to each other on the ground or first floor (keep the buggy at reception if above ground floor).

Is a ‘connecting family room’ a show stopper?

[Aston100]

This makes me wonder how taller hotels manage their lift problems?
Sounds unusual for multiple lifts to be out of action. Are they not meant to be on separate ‘systems’ (for want of a better word)?

[tobynow]

Oh connecting rooms wasn’t a show stopper. That’s why we booked the hotel but we said we’d take any other rooms at any hotel with a working lift, or at that hotel lower down.

The hotel was fully booked though and their staff elevator was also out of action.

Aston100, yeah maybe we should have done that with the buggy. My concern was what about the late night / early morning buggy adventures with a sleeping child – the likelihood of our sleep averse baby staying alseep seems higher in a lift (Vs me carrying her up stairs).

Can2, thanks. I hear you. I’m less angry now! Thanks