This weeks Compensation Clinic case features Radisson Blu Shanghai New World hotel where a LoyaltyLobby reader had less than pleasant stay due to not being able to properly cool the room.
Remember that you can email me your compensation cases with travel providers and I feature one case every Sunday.
You can access Radisson Blu Shanghai New World hotels website here.
Here’s copy of the email that the LoyaltyLobby reader sent to the Club Carlson customer service:
I stayed at the Radisson New World hotel in Shanghai 12-13 December. My first room I got was 27 degrees hot. I called the reception and they sent an engineer to have a look at the situation. He tried to adjust the air conditioning but that did not help. He just laughed and opened the windows. As that did not help I was sent to another room. In that room it was 26 degrees. I opened the windows and turned the AC off as I had to go to a meeting and hoped that would cool the room down.
When I returned to the room it was still 26 degrees hot. I then turned to the lounge personnel that sent me to a third room on floor 35 where it was 24 degrees. Then I said it is ok as I wanted to stop moving rooms, although you could notice it was a smoking room, although I am a non-smoker. I opened the windows for some hours and finally got the temperature to 23 degrees.
I don´t think this is acceptable in a 5-star hotel that you need to change rooms 3 times. I had trouble sleeping when it was too hot and I needed to have the window open, so I think it would be fair that you
compensate me with a free night or points equal to a free night. I am a gold member also if that makes any difference.
Here’s the reply from the customer service:
Thank you for taking the time to write.
We appreciate your recent message.
We apologize for the problems you encountered at the Radisson Blu Hotel Shanghai New World, we know that this can be very frustrating. We have filed a formal issue with the hotel addressing these problems. We allow the hotel management 48 hours to research your situation and respond back to you with a satisfactory resolution.
Thank you for allowing us the opportunity to assist you.
And here’s the reply back from the hotel:
We received your issues on Customer Service Application.
And we were checked with our staff about this. We are awfully sorry to this moving room. Actually, our staff should be checked room temperature before you moving.
We will pay more attention for room temperature in future.
And we manually awards 44000 points for one free night stay. Please check it online
Conclusion
I can certainly relate to the reader because I just had the same issue with a Grand Hyatt hotel here in China last night. The temperature is set to 25 Celsius and won’t move much lower even when you set it to 16 and choose the strongest power. I woke up several time during the night sweating.
Why do these hotel think that this is an acceptable service?
All these western brands are eager to expand in China and throw the brand standards out of the window in the process.
