I attempted to book a room at the Westin for my husband's birthday. When I called the hotel I got an operator that told me the hotel was at 100% capacity. So I called the Sheraton (formerly the Hyatt) and was told they required a two night stay. We had just stayed there a month before for 1 night. When I explained this I was told "well on certain weekends we require a two night stay." Then I was told the Westin had rooms. When I explained this they said they could see they had rooms; even rooms with a King bed like I wanted. So then I tried to book a room with a king bed at the corporate rate my husband always gets. I was told that we would have to book it through a travel agency. I explained that we had stayed at the Westin several times and I always just called the hotel and was able to book it ($146). They told me, "my computer won't let me do it." I ended up so frustrated that I told them I would just look for another hotel. I searched online and found a "secret hotel" at Crown Center and low and behold it was the Westin for $91. So I booked it and then called the online service to see if I could get a king bed. I was told to call they hotel and they would try to accommodate me based on availability. So I called the Westin and got the same unfriendly operator. I asked to speak to the front desk and I was told there were no direct lines for the front desk. I was then transferred to "reservations" which ended up being some woman's voice mail. I tried calling back several times with the same result. I finally got fed up and just decided to request it when I checked in that night. So I show up at the hotel holding several bags and two coats as my husband was meeting me there. Not a single person greeted me. When I stepped up to the counter the woman never offered to have someone help me with my bags. She ran my credit card for incidentals without telling me it would reserve funds. She then told me it declined. When I insisted she run it again of course it went through. When I asked if I could get a room with a King bed she told me they didn't have any. I also asked for the Starwood Preferred Guest floors as we were Starwood Preferred Guests and was told that because we booked through an online service she couldn't do that. So I heft all my bags upstairs to a room with two double beds and that also happened to be right by the elevators and ice machine. It was difficult to sleep as the ice machine was incredibly loud in our room. It also didn't help that there was a drunk man sitting by the elevators screaming at 4:30 in the morning. I finally called the front desk to request that they send security up. I was so disappointed as this was supposed to be a special night for my husband's birthday and because we had stayed there so many other times and our experience had been very different. I did not talk to one single employee that seemed to care how my experience went. It seems that the customer service and personal touches that we enjoyed before have been stripped down to call center reservations and disgruntled employees. We will have to find a new favorite spot.
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