Compensation Clinic: Aloft Kuala Lumpur

Compensation Clinic-case this week comes from a reader’s stay at Aloft Kuala Lumpur Central where the room had dirty sheets.

Remember that you can always email us, send a message via Facebook or use Twitter and include photos too. We’ll try to cover a Compensation Clinic case here once a week, every Sunday.

READ MORE: Marriott Bonvoy Rate & Bonus Points And Miles Promotions

Here are photos of the dirty sheets:

Here’s the email from the reader:

not sure if this is worth reporting on the website that you run. However, it was my personal encounter with stained duvet cover at Aloft KL Sentral Malaysia during my stay last month.

The compensation provided by the hotel is a suite upgrade at the next stay and 3,000 points. Both of which I have declined and at the end, they still decided to credit the 3,000 points to my account.

Here’s email from the General Manager:

Following your below email addressed to Marriott Customer Care, which was forwarded to my attention and following our previous email communication, I understand that you are not happy with the gesture of goodwill extended as a genuine courtesy for this service shortfall about the cleanliness of the linen in the room. I acknowledge your feeling about the hotel only trying to offer a “sweet temptation” for you to return as a bait which is certainly not what we are trying to do and I am truly sorry if this is the feeling you got from our offer of good faith. We have offered you 3,000 Marriott Bonvoy Courtesy points as the Suite upgrade was not up to your expectation. Additionally, and only if you wish to give us another opportunity to remedy the poor impression created on your last stay, we will be happy to offer a complimentary upgrade on your next visit. There was honestly no wrong intention from our end.

I noticed from your comment that the property should be re-training the housekeeping team on basic hygiene and upon receiving your first email, I have shared your comment with our Executive Housekeeper who has taken your feedback very seriously and had gone through multiple trainings and coaching sessions, over the past 2 weeks, with the housekeeping maids and supervisors as we do not compromise on our cleanliness standard. As candidly shared with you, this was a human mistake and in stark contrast with the cleanliness standard in place at the hotel and practiced by the rest of the housekeeping team. While you may be doubting on our ability to avoid such re-occurrence, I can only show our good intention into improving the situation and preventing it from happening again. Hence, I hoped you will be giving the property another chance to create a better experience for you. Should you still not wish to, it will be a real pity but I will respect your decision.

However, and while I understand that your expectation is to have a better compensation in view of the category 2 of the hotel, I regret to inform you that courtesy points offer are not in consideration to the category of the hotel and I would like to re-iterate our genuine offer to provide you with 3,000 courtesy points as a gesture of goodwill. Should you decline our courtesy offer, we will respect your decision, however, should you agree, my team will proceed with the courtesy points award which will be credited to your account in just couple of days.

Once again, I am terribly sorry for the negative impression created on your last visit and I sincerely hope to have the opportunity to welcome you again to simply create a much better experience on your future visits, should you wish to give us another try.

Thank you for your kind understanding and I look forward to hear from you so that we can take the appropriate actions accordingly.

Here’s replay that the reader sent:

Thank you for the courtesy points of 3,000 Bonvoy points and suite upgrade should I decide to return for a future stay.

I appreciate that you took my feedback in and have proceeded to with re-training of the housekeeping and processes. No doubt it might seem like an isolated incident. Personally, I have chosen to decline the points and the suite upgrade. I appreciate your time to address the matter – though not in a very satisfactory manner, hopefully, it provides a case study for future improvements.

Should there be a future visit to the property, I do wish that the same issues do not resurface – the stained sheets duvet. I have faith in the Marriott International Brand as I still plan to explore other properties within the chain.

Here’s the reply from the Aloft’s General Manager:

Thank you for your email acknowledgement and for taking the time to provide additional comments. I sincerely regret to read that you would like to decline our offer for the courtesy points and for the complimentary upgrade but do respect your decision.

Once again, I am truly sorry for the inconvenience caused and rest assured that this did serve as a case study for us to re-train our team, and beyond to ensure that we never compromise on room cleanliness. I honestly hope to have the opportunity to welcome you back to ensure that you can experience the improvement and be re-assured in our commitment as well as Aloft Brand, under Marriott’s International’s commitment on the highest cleanliness standards in our hotels.

If your travel takes you back to Kuala Lumpur, please do feel free to contact me directly and I will personally look after your visit and ensure all are taken care off.

Conclusion

It seems that these former Starwood hotels don’t understand how little 3,000 Marriott Bonvoy points are compared to Starpoints.

I was offered 3,000 Marriott Bonvoy points when checking out from the Sheraton Frankfurt the other week and declined. Told that I could care less about 1,000 Starpoints and would rather leave one star review on TripAdvisor.

There are hotels that are cutting corners and have cut hours of housekeeping staff that could be the issue here. I have stayed at this hotel number of times and have not had any issues beyond internet access.