philfna

I find technology extremely useful, and use e-mail, Skype, blackberry, etc. quite a bit. I have found luxury properties remiss in their ability to respond to simple queries via e-mail. Case and point last year when I was getting married in Korea the RC Seoul failed to acknowledge my email for 3 weeks, and they ignored the emails from RC customer service in the US. I finally got a response, but it took a bit. I have now e-mailed the RC Georgetown trying to get a response to a reservation at the spa, transportation, and a dinner reservation. 3 days later and no response to my queries. The Peninsula Chicago failed to respond to my email during my stay, but sent a response AFTER my stay.

I don't mean to rant and rave, but if you have an email address check it. If you have a form to order services -- confirm within 24 hours, and respond immediatly. No acknowledgement is given via email to your requests at The RC site. Just a note on the page saying you should consider it to be "confirmed reservation" until you hear back from the spa. Sorry for the rant, but luxury experiences begin with the interactions with the property, and I have to say I am already disappointed in the RC Georgetown. A property with a technology butler should be able to answer their emails in a timely manner!.

Phil

P.S. I should note I did get ahold of the RC during the period -- but I had to call the property several times. The situation has been more than rectified because of DavidO and the property.

ZeroHour

I'm the same as you when it comes to it - I absolutely believe in corresponding via email with hotels and so far it worked fairly well for me, with an occasional glitch here and there.

I've corresponded with hotels in Spain (several of them) and in Istanbul very recently and had good success there - I got engaged in Istanbul two days ago and have organized the whole thing entirely through the email with the assistant manager at the hotel. I've also emailed a couple of hotels in the Middle East and received VERY quick responses - the most impressive was Burj Al Arab in Dubai; an email to their concierge resulted in a response within 10-15 minutes or so.

Strangely enough I noticed that hotels in the USA seem to be the slowest to respond to emails ... this probably corresponds to your experience with the Ritz-Carlton as they're the one of my worst experiences when trying to get someone there to respond to an email and/or to actually send you something via email.

TRAVELSIG

I have communicated several times with both FS and Shangri-La via email, and have always received a response very very promptly! Obvious way to communicate given time zone differences etc... You are right though, that some (particularly independent) Luxury Hotels, are horrible at reading email, much less ever responding...

philfna

Were these US properties or overseas?

TRAVELSIG

Overseas. In the USA, I typically stay in FS (with the exception of NYC), or just go for a regular boring hotel like a marriot, spg, etc. It may be only my perception, but there just aren't a lot of good lux hotels in the USA compared to their foreign counterparts. Also, 95% of my time in the USA is for business, and then I am driven more by location than by hotel type.

free101girl

I frequently e-mail hotels and would say over 90% respond within a day. Interestingly, I find that small independent luxury hotels are often great about responding to e-mail. Two that come to mind are The Goring in London (which on several occasions sent a response within minutes, and this was not during business hours on their end!) and The Metropole in Venice.

OTOH, a couple of years ago I gave up trying to get a response from Hotel Eden, a supposedly 5* SPG property in Rome. I stayed there anyway and as it turned out, the service was not very good. Since then, my attitude has been "if you can't answer e-mails, I'm not staying there."

philfna

free101girl hit it on the head -- if you can't handle responding to an email then you aren't a 5 diamond or 5 start property. I have to again give kudos to DavidO's responsiveness and resources. He has been simple "amazing," and I am pretty tough critic.

Phil

jplux

Are you emailing them at a general email address? I find it best to email the GM directly if I have concerns about my stay. Those emails tend to get answered very quickly.

philfna

I would prefer to email the property in general and not bother the GM. I am hoping that the systems are in place to consistently answer, and take care of simple requests. If that isn't the case then the GM is the next email -- but I use that sparingly as I consider those to be nukes. I have nuked a property before, during, and after depending on the serverity of the service lapse; this being said just like a nuke no on wants to use them. When I do complain or comment to the GM I always want to be as constructive as possible with dates, names, and times if possible. What I saw, and what would I do to correct the action; if I am there in person. If over the phone I just log the incident for the GM. If you complain without some idea of what ot fix it is usually meaningless I find.

Phil

Thalassa

One possible explanation (although a poor excuse) are spam filters. Depending on how tightly they are set, some legitimate mails can be sent to limbo -- especially if the mails are sent from non-corporate emails (such as hotmail, gmail, etc.).

I recently sent an email to a 4-star hotel and did receive a prompt reply, but did notice that the filter had flagged my original mail as "probable spam". Luckily some alert employee did read the mail and respond to it.

A truly techno-savvy hotel should always ask for the guests email address(es) when making a reservation and then making sure those addresses get onto the allowed list.

Cheers,
T.

Non-NonRev

In light of this concern, one possible approach is to send the GM a message stating something along the lines of "I wonder if you cound have the appropriate member of your staff address this issue" (or something similar). This allows the matter to be delegated to the appropriate person and department, and also means that the person who is assigned the request is now responsible for communicating with the customer (freeing the GM from that responsibility).

philfna

I think non-nonrev has a great idea. I'll try that next time, Phil

Thalassa

If a GM does not do exactly this (delegate) without being asked to do so, he or she should not be a GM in the first place.

Cheers,
T.

laf747

I sent Claridges an e-mail on Saturday inquiring about the smoking policy in the hotel, i.e. do they still have non-smoking rooms, given the UK ban as of July 1. Since I have not received a response as of yet, I am now going to forward the e-mail to the GM.

ABG

Am I the only one with cheap Long Distance? I would never send an email to make a spa booking. Just pick up the phone, it costs pennies per minute.