Disappointing and Unpleasent
We arrived at the Fairmont on December 23rd (around 7 pm) excited for our stay as we are from out of town and the holiday season is one of our favourites. We booked knowing the Fairmont has always been such a wonderful experience for us and have endorsed this venue on many trips and family occasions.
We called before our arrival (approx. 10 minutes) to see if we could get an upgrade as we had been emailed several times and have utilized them before at other fairmont locations without issue, also wanting to extend our stay and request a higher floor. We were told that we should go to the front desk and that there was availability and several options such as floor 7, we were assured we would be taken care of by the Concierge. We then dropped our vehicle off with the valet and proceeded to an empty front desk, a valet member grabbed the attention of a rather unpleasant, young, blonde female who told us that we were misinformed by the employee on the phone and there was no availability and we would not be upgraded. We were told "you do not qualify". She inquired what phone line we used, who we spoke with and when it happened, we felt rather unsettled by the assumption that we had made this up and told her just five minutes ago we were assured this could be done then showing her the call log on my iphone to the hotel five minutes prior. As it was the holiday season we were looking to make it extra special.
We then were assisted by Nigel who was the friendliest face we had interacted with our whole stay who helped us with our bags. The next morning of our stay we called down to the front desk and requested our vehicle to be pulled up-we received an answer from the same employee that we had been checked in by and she stated our vehicle would be fifteen minutes. We proceeded to the Lobby roughly 20 minutes after this and asked about our vehicle-valet had not been informed we needed it pulled around. They then stated that the door was broken and the employee could not exit the vehicle the previous night-we were then told it was around the corner and we could walk to it. After getting to the vehicle the door was not opening (2021 F150 with less then 10,000km) and we were slightly confused about the door complication and walking to our cold vehicle. We were charged for full valet service and unfortunately did most of it ourselves-parking and walking to our vehicle each time as the valet was not "informed" even though ample notice was provided to the front desk.
Hoping to then have a relaxing evening on the 24th we unfortunately ran into some toilet trouble and required a plunger around 3am. We called down to the front desk and asked if we could have a plunger dropped off to rectify the issue ourselves-we were then told they were looking into it and then were hung up on. We called back to ask if it was possible to get a plunger again and the woman who answered said "we told you we are looking into it". A gentleman was then sent to the room roughly 20 minutes later to inform us they still had not found a plunger. Roughly 3 and a half hours passed without any contact from anyone and no options given for an accessible bathroom. We then finally, around 7 am received a plunger and were able to get the toilet working again. As you can imagine needing a plunger in the first place is not a comfortable conversation nor is sitting in a room with no accessible toilet when it was very much needed due to an upset bowel. This was at no point an acceptable or comfortable situation to be placed in at a 5 star hotel or any hotel for well over four hours on Christmas morning.
Apart from the hurdles thrown into our stay we decided to salvage Christmas morning and order Champagne, orange juice and some pastries to our room. When we called down we were told "we are busy" by the room service line with no other solution or time frame for deliver. We then explained we were in no rush and would love to order these items if possible. We were then told "well its going to be awhile" again with no options or timeframe. We responded and said again it was no issue and we'd wait. After that settling in we decided we didn't feel like "inconveniencing" the staff of the Fairmont Palliser for some Orange Juice and Champagne on Christmas morning and departed (walked through hotel to parkade to retrieve our own vehicle as we did not want to rely on valet again).
Overall the expectations and excitement we had for this stay was diminished the moment we walked through the doors of this establishment. I would love to preface this with stating that we enjoyed a wonderful brunch in your dining room and had excellent and friendly service from our waitress and a great experience with Nigel. However all interaction with front-end hospitality seemed to be putting them out and quite frankly extremely rude (excluding the gentlemen who kindly came to the room to give us a status update on the plunger). We have stayed at many of your locations including: Banff, Lake Louise, Jasper, Boston, St.Andrews, Halifax etc. We have never had the need to write a review about a Hotel or any hotel chain we have stayed in and it was extremely disheartening not only for ourselves but for the guests that may have had to interact with these individuals as well. We did not feel any of our requests (being quite minimal) were unreasonable or requested in an impolite way. These stays away from home are often cherished experiences for us and many others and many do not have the opportunity to experience them as frequently as we do. The unfortunate realization is that this could have been a rare experience for others and it was absolutely demolished by the customer experience we had, we only hope this is not the case and was a one off.
We have waited some time to express our concern and let the experience settle to provide an accurate and realistic review of our stay here. We are aware of limitations and capacity issues during the holiday season and were not expecting anything more than the what was provided as an option for us. Our check in process felt like an interrogation immediately rather than welcoming a guest to the hotel. The abruptness before anything was requested was off-putting. We feel it is a shame to have such a poor experience in the first 30 seconds of our stay that just seemed to get worse. We hope this can be rectified and perhaps be a coachable moment for the personal employed to be the first experience of those arriving. It is sad to think that there was more effort put into this review than any of the front-end staff during the entirety of our stay. I cant imagine the reaction that other guests would have had if this was there experience. To recap for $1200.00 we received an abrupt and cold greeting-0 concierge service-a room without an accessible toilet for several hours-no valet service and no room service. The disappointment is that we feel shorted of a very valued vacation.