This week’s compensation clinic case comes from a stay I had this past month of June at the Castillo Hotel Son Vida, a Luxury Collection Resort in Mallorca, Spain .
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You can access Castillo Hotel Son Vida here.
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Last June I booked 5 nights at the Castillo Hotel Son Vida, a Luxury Collection Resort in Mallorca. The main resons to choose this property, on the posh suburs of Palma, was their advertising of their recently renovated rooms and their adults-only policy. The room was booked on points right before the dinamic pricing award came into effect, so we could lock a nice 30,000 points per night rate, with the 5th night free.
Our first issue arised right before our arrival to the property. As Bonvoy Platinum members, one week before our check-in date our room showed at the Bonvoy app to be upgraded from their Classic room to a Deluxe room. While we were waiting for our MAD-PMI flight (that was heavily delayed), our room type went back to a Classic room. Thinking it may be a glitch on the app, I decided not to pay attention at the moment.
We ended up arriving to the property around 11 PM, after about a 3 hours flight delay. At check in, the front desk agent confirmed us that effectively we had not been upgraded and that there were no upgrade options available for our stay. He was not able to explain why the app showed us as upgraded until just a few hours before. We were tired after a day of traveling and we decided to give it a pass and just go to our room and sleep.
When we get to our room, it was pretty clear that it was not a “renovated” room: it didn’t look anything near to the pictures on the website. Also it was a bizarre configuration: the room had two bathrooms, one regular and one accessible. It didn’t take us long to realize that the air conditioning was not working. The room thermostat was marking 26,5 C and did not move from there. This temperature added to the very high humidity made it almost unbearable inside the room.
We inmediately called the front desk, and we were informed that there were no maintenance technicians available at that time, and that the hotel was fully booked for that night, so a room change was not possible. The best they could offer was to bring us a fan to the room. The fan was so full of dust when it arrived to the room it was disgusting!
At that point we were very upset on how our stay was going, so I decided to take a look at other hotel options in the area, just to find out that the island was sold out for that weekend. It was a bank holiday in Germany and all hotels nearby were fully booked.
The next morning was no better: almost a 30 minute wait to be seated and offered coffe at breakfast. After a quick chat with the F&B manager, she called the front desk manager, who came to our table. We exposed all the issues experienced in less than 24 hours and manifested our intention to shorten our stay and go somewhere else. The manager was very apologetic and asked us to give them a chance to ammend their faults.
We thank you very much for your loyalty as a valued Bonvoy Platinum Elite Member and apologize for the inconveniences with the air conditioning. Our engineer has checked it and we do hope that tonight you will enjoy a lovely night.
Due to a bank holiday in some European countries we did not had yesterday the option to grant you the well deserved upgrade. As spoken with our Hotel manager, we are happy to inform you that from tomorrow we have a lovely suite with breathtaking views overlooking the bay of Palma
We will post 10.000 additional Bonvoy Points for the inconveniences .
Please do not hesitate to contact us for any further information you may need.
With our best regards
RAMON BALLESTER
FRONT OFFICE MANAGERCastillo Hotel Son Vida
C/ Raixa, 2 – Urbanización Son Vida, Palma de Mallorca, 07013, Spain
T + 34 971 493 493 | F + 34 971 493 494
The manager upgraded us to their Loewe Suite, a 100 sq.m. suite for the rest of our stay, and the 10,000 points offered were quickly deposited in our Bonvoy account.
Issues are bound to happen when you travel, but the most important is how, as in this case, the manager addressed these issues. The spectacular upgrade and the service from then on was top notch and we ended up having a great stay, despite of the first night.
