My family and I stayed in the Best Western La Playa in Daytona Beach. We chose this hotel for our family reunion because different statements in their advertising appealed to us:
The hotel advertises the "cleanest rooms on the beach." The rooms were everything but clean and there were mold stains on the ceilings and walls. My mother is highly allergic to mold and reacted with an asthma attack. The whole hotel looked rather run down and not well maintained. There was trash laying around on the sun deck, cigarette butts were laying on the deck chairs, the pool was filthy.
The hotel advertises to be right across the street from the largest shopping area on the beach. My mom and my sister like to go shopping, so we thought we could combine everybody's interests by staying in this hotel at this particular location. When we got there we saw that nearly all stores in the shopping area were vacant, the shopping area itself was a big building site. Although this fact was known to the hotel management, they continued to advertise as if the shopping mall was there and open.
The hotel advertises an ocean side deck and bar. The adults in our family like to enjoy a drink by the beach, therefore this point as well lead to the decision to stay at this particular hotel. The bar was closed during our stay for a private party.
The hotel advertises to have the friendliest staff on the beach. This is a misstatement as well. We had several problems with incompetent and unfriendly staff during the two days of our stay. When I complained about a particular incident to the manager on duty, she admitted to know about problems with the staff but she did not offer any solution.
The hotel does not provide enough parking space. One evening after dinner, we had to park our cars across the street in an unsecured parking area and had to cross a busy four-lane highway to get back to the hotel. This may not be much of a problem for most people, but there were three small kids in our travel party and my blind dad, too.
Back at home, I wrote a complaint to Best Western La Playa in Daytona Beach. The letter I got back from there was like a slap in the face: a generic form letter, very arrogant and not addressing our particular problems at all. A second letter was never answered by them.
We had picked the Best Western La Playa in Daytona because it had advertised various features that were appealing to my travel party and me.
Once there, we realized that most of it's advertising is false or misleading. Problems with housekeeping and restaurant staff made our stay a nightmare.
The hotel should take responsibility for what happened. We have paid a lot of money for a weekend vacation that never took place because the Best Western La Playa did not live up to it's advertising, our expectations nor to it's name "Best Western." They also offer a Satisfaction Guarantee. I have tried several ways to voice my dissatisfaction with the hotel but it seems to me that this guarantee is just false advertising as well.
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