Compensation Clinic: Hilton Garden Inn Shenzhen Bao’an

This week the Compensation Clinic case comes from a brand new Hilton property in China that looks stunning based on the photos on its’ website.

A LoyaltyLobby reader had some issues with the newly opened Hilton Garden Inn property in Shenzhen, China.

It all starts with my stay at Hilton Garden Inn Shenzhen Bao’an, the first HGI in China, that recently opened. I stayed for a night due to business trip, in Jan 13th, 2014. After the stay, I wrote an extensively-long e-mail to HHonors to express my feeling about the hardware and services, as follows, (I’m a person who always being strict to details)

You can access Hilton Garden Inn Shenzhen Bao’an website here.

Here’s the email that a LoyaltyLobby reader sent to Hilton:

Due to my work, I stay in this recently-opened hotel on Jan 13 for a night. Basically I’m feeling satisfied with my stay. However, there are several items I’d like to address as follows:

When I made the reservation on hilton.com, the room type I selected indicates that the hotel is 100% smoking-free. However, I found out that smoking rooms are available on Floor 4 – 6. Obviously the information is not up-to-date (I’m not making complaint about the smoking room, because unfortunately, I’m a smoker, so smoking room is my preferred room type).

Upon check-in, I haven’t received the greetings for Gold Status member (That I currently am). And the staff seemed a bit amateur for handling HHonors members.

During my stay, the in-room internet, either WIFI or Ethernet connection were down from 3:00pm to 8:00pm. I was having my afternoon nap due to no internet connection, and suddenly, there’s a loud music playback came up from the vent. At first I thought it might be the alarm clock dock next to the bed, so I tried to turn it off, but it turned out to be the central system control. Therefore, my afternoon nap was ruined.

In the evening, after I came back from dinner around 8:30pm, I saw there are some broken plastic strips on the hallway of my floor (See attached photo). I understand those are the garbage from the internet service maintenance, but they’re supposed to be gone right after the maintenance finished. What’s worse, when I went down to lobby around 11:30pm for buying snacks, those garbage were still there.

In the morning, I had my breakfast at the restaurant in 2/F, the food quality was good. The service was acceptable, in the standard of Hilton.

I hope my stay experience could provide a detailed feedback for the hotel to take action of improvement. Base on my upcoming business trip schedule, I would stay at least 15 nights in the area of this Hilton Garden Inn for the next five months. So I hope the management of the hotel can keep up the pace to be THE choice, not just for me, but also for the other guests.

Here’s the email that the reader received from Hilton:

Thank you very much for visiting our website and for sharing your comments about your most recent stay at the Hilton Garden Inn Shenzhen Bao’an. Your complaint has been passed on to me at Guest Assistance at the Hilton Worldwide Corporate Office.

I can only offer my sincerest apologies for the less than satisfactory experience that you had at our property on this occasion. I was so sorry to learn that you felt the front desk staff did not recognize your Gold status membership at check-in and the issues with the internet connection; it was also disappoitng to read about the noise disturbance and the garbage left in the hallway.

We have forwarded your comments to the hotel management for them to take the necessary corrective steps. Your feedback is highly valuable as it allow us to continue working towards improving our hotels standards.

To make amends for the shortfall in service, the hotel would like to award you 15,000 HHonors; Please reply to this email, confirming your HHonors account number and we’ll be happy to add them to your account personally.

Here’s the email that the reader received from the property three days later:

Warm greetings from Hilton Garden Inn Shenzhen!

Thank you very much for staying with us on your recent visit to Shenzhen and for taking your valuable time to complete the Online Electronic Survey.

Your positive comments will be shared with our Associates and encourage us to fulfill our aim to provide “Excellence in Service” and Comfort to our guests.

However, we noticed some low feedbacks.

We would like to sincerely apologize and thank you for your feedback. They are so important for our continuous improvement. We look forward to welcoming you on your next visit at Hilton Garden Inn Shenzhen.

If I can be of any help now or in the future please do not hesitate to contact me.

Conclusion

As this is a category 1 Hilton HHonors property, the points awarded for the inconveniences were enough for a free night at the same category property.

I have to say that there are often service issues with Chinese properties and you really must have some patience trying to resolve them. The properties itself usually are fantastic hardware wise, but the “software” (read service) is lacking.