The lovely Hotel Portixol in Palma.

This is part 2. Check out part 1 here.

I’d like to share our notes on the ‘meet and greet’ we experienced at a couple of luxury hotels we stayed at this year, so you can be the judge:

No1. Much-fancied boutique hotel.

• No dedicated parking area outside the hotel for guests to unload luggage from the vehicles. And I’m not joking when I say ‘guests’ unloading.
• A staff member (who turns out to be the only staff member on duty) watches out the window as I struggle up the stairs with our bags.
• Lara goes into the hotel to be informed that ‘they’ (the last use of plural when referring to hotel staff at this property) were not expecting anyone to be checking in today. Turns out that this is a very funny ‘joke’ that doesn’t go down so well with guests who have been up since 5am and driving all day – namely us.
• I lug our bags up to the lobby, where the singular staff member is having a ten-minute discussion with a guest who urges the staffer not to remove her sandwich where she’d left it by the swimming pool, instead of checking us in. Weird, but this is when we realised that the staff member is the only one on the premises.
• The solo staff member complains about how heavy our bags are as he grudgingly takes them upstairs to our room.
• We get no information about the hotel, no breakfast times, and are told that if we want any information to ‘look it up’ in the hotel directory. To be fair, this is probably because the solo staff member had to go and look up ‘mojito’ in his cocktail recipe book so he could make some for the guests by the pool.
• The staff member does, however, bring us glasses of champagne – but by this time we consider it an apology rather than a welcome to the hotel – which, by the way, is stunningly beautiful, one of the loveliest ones we’ve ever stayed in. Cheers!
• Later, when we ask for dining recommendations, the staff member suggests that we should have stayed in another part of town if we wanted good eating options.

No2. Much-fancied resort.

• We arrive at the resort but can’t, for the life of us, find anything that resembles a ‘reception’ or a ‘lobby’. And we’ve checked into thousands of hotels. We do, however, find a few cooks smoking outside the kitchen in full view of anyone who turns up at the resort.
• Later, the food turns out to be just as ill-judged as letting guests see kitchen staff feeding their nicotine habit as their first memory of the resort.
• Lara goes off to find someone who can explain where the reception is. There actually isn’t one.
• Nor is there anyone who can help us with our bags because we’ve “arrived too late” (it’s 8.30pm) and “the boy has gone home”, according to the receptionist on duty. Our bad luck, I guess, for turning up ‘late’. The resort did know when to expect us, but the emaciated receptionist who clearly survives on the same nicotine diet as the cooks can’t even lift one of our bags off the floor with Lara helping her, so I lug the bags up the stairs to the stinking hot room by myself.
• Despite expecting us at the exact time we have arrived, nobody bothered to turn the aircon on and the room is as hot as Dubai in August. Well, nearly.

I’m not going to mention the names of these hotels as I think it’s unfair to name and shame these places based on one experience. However, our experience in hotels tells us that these kinds of problems are not anomalies, but rather are indicative of an intrinsic lack of understanding of ‘hospitality’ and all that it implies, a lack of processes, poor training, and of bad hiring.

Yet both hotels continue to get written about in the luxury travel press and luxury travel concierge-style websites and given glowing reviews. Would you be happy parting with upwards of Euro 300 a night for this kind of ‘service’? And what if this was a special stay – a honeymoon or that first trip away as a couple?

Contrast these experiences with that of the following properties (coincidentally, most in Mallorca where we spent a couple of months last year) and credit where credit is due.

• At the lovely Hotel Portixol in Palma, the front desk staff insisted on taking over the tracking of my tripod bag that had gone missing after our flight – taking the documents, following it up personally, and delivering the bag to our room when it arrived.
• At their sister hotel, Hotel Espléndido in modish Port de Sóller, our bags were whisked away so fast when we arrived they were in our room before we’d even finished checking in. When we had to move rooms (we had to stay an extra night), the changeover was done as soon as we left the hotel for the day without us having to lift a finger. Neither of these properties are five-star luxury resorts, yet their service far exceeded that of the two darlings of the luxury travel press above.
• At Son Brull hotel (also on Mallorca) the staff member who checked us in took us all the way through to the room and took care of our luggage, a rather democratic but ultimately sensible way of dealing with guests – if you have the right staff members. The staff here even insisted that we move to another room once they realised that we were going to be working and more desk space would be desirable. All handled without fuss or fanfare.
• At the golfing resort* of Castillo Hotel Son Vida (yep, Mallorca again), the service was predictably excellent (it’s a Starwood Luxury Collection property). Even when our bags took a little while to arrive at the room, the staff member apologised profusely for taking so long – even though it wasn’t longer than ten minutes. That’s smart staff training. Which is what all of the good experiences we’ve had share in common. All had outstanding staff and service in their restaurants and bars as well – clearly no coincidence.
• The Four Seasons Doha, though, took the cake. I was not only greeted warmly but even called ‘Mr Carter’ (instead of ‘Mr Dunston’ which I’ve learnt to live with as Lara makes all the arrangements and bookings) before I’d even stepped out of the car. The service remained brilliant and personal for the duration of our stay. At dinner, while discussing food when the manager, he said “Well, you’d know that, as you live in Dubai.” The staff had obviously done their homework.

I normally dislike business and ‘how to get ahead’ clichés, but one rings true about our experiences over the past few months: ‘you only get one chance to make a good first impression’. So why do so many hotels and resorts manage to make such a bad one? And why does it appear to be so hard when it seems like such an obviously wise investment in guest relations? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

*No, I don’t actually play golf, I was just there to take photographs…