The Sweet Service Award goes to the Franschhoek Literary Festival, for another excellent weekend bringing 5000 visitors to the village for two or more days, boosting accommodation establishments, restaurants and coffee shops, wine estates, and retail outlets. We received our first 2016 booking two hours after the 2015 Festival had closed, a demonstration of its success. It also brought a lovely concert series by Christopher Duigan to the village, as well as an excellent bassoon concert to La Motte.
The Sour Service Award goes to the Protea Hotel Knysna Quays. The one-night reservation was made and paid by the Department of Justice, for the attendance of a court case in Knysna on Tuesday. When I arrived late afternoon, Jonathan was at Reception, and wanted me to do something on the form, but I could not understand what he was saying. He took exception when I asked him to repeat what he had said. I asked about the wifi password, and he took out a minute pre-printed notice, but forgot to put it into the keycard holder, which meant that the porter had to go back to reception to fetch it! I could not get the wifi to work, and called reception. Bongiwe took my call, and told me to be patient about the wifi, as she had other guests to assist. There were only two staff at the front desk, and the GM had gone home. Bongiwe was the duty manager I was told, and I was shocked when she put down the phone on me when I requested assistance. She eventually arrived at my room, and all of a sudden the wifi worked, clearly the router having been switched on. She bumped into me as she had put her arm around my chair, and I expressed my annoyance about this, which made her start laughing at me, extremely unprofessional behaviour! I also complained about the anarchy created in the hotel by 200 adults and children from India, the children running up and down the passages, and screaming and shouting. My room was in the midst of these rooms. I requested a room change to a quieter wing, having been told by the Hylton Ross drivers and guides that they too had moved to a wing in which no Indian guests had been booked! They also told me that they had to request the guests to sit down whilst they drove the buses, but the Indian guests did not listen to them at all. Loadshedding started at 20h00, but we were not informed by the hotel staff! I was at a restaurant when loadshedding started, and was caught by surprise, as the staff at Sirocco also did not inform its guests that loadshedding was about to start. I was allocated another room, one floor above the Indian rooms, but I could still hear the noise, sounding like one was in a hostel with 1000 children! The mattress on the bed was made from foam, well-worn and dipping in the middle from over-use. The duvet inner too was foam-based, and I froze that evening, having to use the duvet from the second bed as electric blankets are not offered. The passages have slate tiles, so one hears every set of suitcase wheels and steps of guests coming past one’s room, as happened at 4h00 the following morning. When I tried to shower the following morning, there was not one drop of water in the hotel! It was Jonathan who answered the phone at reception, and I probably was the 100th guests calling to ask about the water. He could not explain what the water problem was, nor predict how long it would take to fix the problem, snapping at my questions. I left the hotel angry, and had breakfast at Mon Petit Pain, not trusting the hotel in delivering on a reasonable breakfast, after all the disasters experienced.
In my room a card asked ‘Hot or Not’, which was vibey and making one feel that Protea Hotels care about their guests. I was so angry about the poor service, that I Tweeted about it, warning followers to not stay at the hotel until the end of June, as the hotel staff had told me that they had bookings for 200 Indian tourists every day for more than a month. I Tweeted about the watershedding too. I received no calls or Twitter response on that day or the following day, so I called the head office in Cape Town on Wednesday. René Bobbert is the Guest Relations executive for the Knysna hotel, and told me that my Tweets had not been forwarded to her by their ‘Twitter department‘! So the hotel has someone looking after their Twitter account, but they do not react to it within 36 hours of the communication, especially if it is negative! She asked me whether she should wait for the Tweet to reach her, which made me realise that we would get nowhere. I asked for her supervisor, Melissa calling back, and using a sugary sweet voice to try to appease me, but this did not impress me. The receptionist put me through to Jerome Forsyth-Githahu, the Call Centre Manager, who is in charge of all Guest Relations issues. I told him my story, and he confirmed that no information about my unhappiness or the problems with the Indian guests or the lack of water had been fed back from Knysna to head office. He promised to call back at 10h00 yesterday morning. He called back at 11h30, and got annoyed with me when I reminded him about his time promise. He brushed it off, explaining he had a meeting to attend, but this was not good enough, as he had my cell number, and could have sent an sms. He threatened that he could not assist me with my problem if I did not co-operate! I reminded him that it was not my problem, as I had not paid for the accommodation, but rather that of the taxpayer! It was clear that he had no feedback to share, saying that he had yet to speak to the Regional Manager, 12 hours after my initial call to Jerome. Once again a Protea Hotels staff member was arrogant, and it was clear that he did not care, contrary to the vibey telephone hold message about how cool the hotel group is, and how much they care about their customers, and how they intend to use guest feedback to ‘meet and exceed your expectations’. It is clear that Protea Hotels does not care about its guests, its promise of being ‘South Africa’s coolest hotel group’ all being Marketing hype and blatantly dishonest!
The WhaleTales Sweet & Sour Service Awards are presented every Friday on the WhaleTales blog. Nominations for the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be sent to Chris von Ulmenstein at whalecot@iafrica.com. Past winners of the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be read on the Friday posts of this blog.
Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com Tel (021) 433-2100, Twitter:@WhaleCottage Facebook: click here
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