EMAIL REPLY FROM SNOTTY STRATTONS HOTEL - Soap and Lotion debacle

[NadineBaggott]

Dear XXXXX

Thank you for your e-mail.

It is always worth bearing in mind that whilst website reviews can be useful they can also be misleading and only give one side of a story.

Strattons is well publicised for its strong green policies for which it has won many awards both locally and nationally. We offer a luxury experience without sacrifice to the environment - something that we pride ourselves on and have worked for 17 years to create. We have stuck to a comprehensive environmental policy since our doors first opened in 1990, it is now a hot topic in the media and Strattons has been used as a leading example for the last few years and regularly features in the glossy magazines and broadsheets.

We have been using refillable dispensers since 1996 and have never encounted a problem with them.

Our website explains our toiletries, a refillable dispenser with fantastic products. We offer 6 x 250ml dispensers in each bedroom (no soap bars) each costing £17.50 each - £105 per room. If every guest took away the dispensers we would have to increase the room rate or decrease the quality of product, I am sure no hotel could justify £100 of a room rate only covering the toiletries.

'Luxury bathroom miniatures have been replaced with refillable pump dispensers helping to reduce plastic bottles to landfill by 97%, instead one excellent product that can be used as shampoo, bath foam or shower gel, manufactured by a company which does not test on animals and has their own environmental ethics which re-endorses Strattons own position.'

Our hotel also offers an extensive DVD and CD collection for borrowing, would you expect to take these items as part of the room rate? or even the towels from the bathroom?

We appreciate that our hotel is not to everyone's taste. However we do not hide our policies and have been successful because of them.

Kind regards

Hannah Scott
Manager

hunker

Snap!

I got the same.

I responded:

I would not expect a business which relies on the patronage of its paying customers to HARRASS guests after they leave and demand useable products be returned. It's unprofessional at best.

Why not amend your policy to state that taking these items with you will result in your credit card being charges, as is already done with mini bar refreshments? Or install signs in your rooms to remind guests of your policies?

Stratton certainly has a long way to go in the area of customer relations.

Using a 'green' policy to embarrass and harrass guests after their departure so that the last thing that sticks in their minds about their visit is your lack of professionalism appears to be quite a poor public relations and marketing strategy.

Perhaps you should reconsider the wording of your policies before more people are put off patronising your hotels. I certainly am.

Whoever is handling their PR should be sacked, and Hannah as well.

To respond to the concerns of potential customers in such an accusatory tone really shows you what kind of business they're running.

I'll make sure to warn everyone I know off them.

LGJ sniffs her armpits.

er orville (I believe you can fly) I didn't take them!

Well done expat, the response is rather snotty isn't it?

Honestly, Sherlock, I've emailed this to a cousin, whom as I mentioned in an earlier thread is an assistant conceirge in a 5 star hotel in NYC.

She's absolutely appalled at these threads and has emailed them to colleagues in the industry.

As she said, 'Hmm, they really give credence to that stereotype about British customer service. What a shame.'

'It is always worth bearing in mind that whilst website reviews can be useful they can also be misleading and only give one side of a story.'

Well yes, thats why the experience should be a good one

'Our hotel also offers an extensive DVD and CD collection for borrowing, would you expect to take these items as part of the room rate? or even the towels from the bathroom?'

Thats just plain rude if you ask me!

I don't agree that the toiletries should have been taken but the response is disgusting

I dont believe that an organisation is to be discredited because they dared to ask for a stolen item to be sent back, unbelievable

Message withdrawn

A hotel, in the business of catering to paying customers, and who charges huge amounts to do so, demands a plastic bottle of lotion back from a guest after they've left.

Rather than charging it to the guest's card and putting up signs that would cost them all of about 50p to buy in bulk reminding customers of their policies.

Yeah, I'd say it's fair to bring that to peoples' attention and then if some people decide they don't want to patronise such a place they don't.

they aren't discredited anybody reading this can make their own mind up

if I wanted to stay there it wouldn't put me off..

I would love to see one of these bottles though they must be nice if they are 17.50 in bulk and empty

but then the rooms look nice too

but too posh for me

Let's put it like this girls, if Gwyneth Paltrow had taken a liking to a plastic dispenser bottle do we think the hotel would have been chasing her up?

It is absolutely standard practise across the whole hotel industry that the toiletries in the room belong to you and are part of the room rate. I just called a couple of £250 a night hotels to ask that very question (part of something else I am doing) and the staff were utterly bewildered that I was even asking. Totally different to bathrobes and towels. If this hotel wants to do things differently, it should say so very clearly indeed.
Also the price sounds v dodgy to me. I found 400ml bottles costing £1.10 with the pump worth another 85p, a five litre refil of product costs £12.
So overall....

I worked in hotels for years and people assume they can just take all sorts of things. Teaspoons, ashtrays, towels, toweling robes and pepper grinders are the most popular. Where does it stop being part of the experience and become theft? I can totally understand where
Strattons are coming from.

ok they say in the letter

"
We have been using refillable dispensers since 1996 and have never encounted a problem with them."

so you would think they would overlook it if on one occasion two went astray..just a quick tut over dinner at this odd happening

My cousin the sous-concierge has forwarded these threads and responses on to some colleagues, including her boss.

They're all rolling with laughter at it because it's so appallingly unprofessional to do this to a hotel guest over plastic bottles of lotion.

'Just charge their card and be done with it!' was her response.

Message withdrawn

that's my thinking zippi.

Then state in the policy that your card will be charged for the goods, booge, and put signs up in the room to remind guests of that.

I've worked in the hospitality industry as well and that it was standard just to charge someone's card - for mini bar refreshments, phone calls, cigarette damage or any property damage, etc.

Not chase someone up and demand a plastic bottle of used lotion and soap back!

FFS.

Message withdrawn

Agree though it needs to be handled better, we always just used to let it go, after all it could have been a chambermaid or anyone who had access to the room and you can't risk false accusations.

you would have thought they would have sent a polite letter explaining their green policy and politely suggest if they are able to return them in the future they would appreciate. Therefore promoting their greeness without accussing her of intential theft!

Exactly, booge!

That's why most hotels build the cost of toiletries into the room.

What if you accidentally spilled it and threw the bottle out?

What if you used it all up and threw the bottle out?

inentional??? I need to go back to work and start writing more!