I was recently in America for a conference. While I was in New York, I stayed in the Radisson Martinique. Imagine my dismay, then, when it turned out to be the worst hotel I have ever stayed in.
My workplace booked this for me, as I needed somewhere in this particular area for a few meetings before heading onto DC. Right from my arrival, there were problems. My UK bank card doesn't work in a lot of places in the States, so my company book / pay with their company card in advance, sending an auth fax to confirm the hotel can take payment from their card.
At check in, I'm told I need to pay. Looking confused, I'm told the room was merely reserved, not paid for. After handing over my card to pay for the first night (and not even knowing if payment would be accepted or not), I headed to my room. (Eventually my company told me they had indeed sent the hotel a fax in advance - did the hotel staff simply not check the fax machine, or throw it away? Who knows. The lady from my company who had to fix this mess informed me that whoever they dealt with on the phone to sort the problem out wasn't particularly pleasant, either).
The room was tiny, the view was a brick wall with some windows in it, I couldn't control the heating (it was always boiling hot), and the two worst problems: one, the safe wouldn't work, and two, the smell of SMOKE!
The room, the floor itself (and all the other floors I checked out) all reeked of a stale smoke odour. Absolutely horrible, especially as I'm a non-smoker. It seemed like every time the (very noisy) air-conditoning radiator / fan thing switched on, the smell of smoke started to blow into your room. I did hit the off switch on this, but it would always come back on...great engineering, guys.
The safe? I had lots of electronic gear with me, and NEEDED a safe as I'd be in and out of the hotel a lot...didn't particularly want to carry it all with me. Lots of back and forth action commenced, with a guy coming up and failing to fix it, then I was moved into another room, then told to wait for the same guy because the safe in that room didn't work, either (he failed to show up, which didn't exactly inspire confidence). Rang the front desk numerous times - eventually he arrives and tells me the safe in the ORIGINAL room is now working. Had to move back downstairs - something like FOUR HOURS were wasted during all of this nonsense.
I was there for something like three nights - by the final night, I was having problems breathing properly, I felt out of breath and my throat was killing - presumably because of the endless stench of stale smoke filling the room. I'd been up since 6AM because of work, had to be on a train early the next morning and it was now after 10PM and I was pretty annoyed. Went downstairs, demanded a new room only to be told it was pretty much booked out, "would you like me to spray your room with air freshener"?
Surely, that has to be a joke. I persisted, and was told they could take up a dehumidifier. Ok, sure. But..."You can't be in the room when its on, and it'll need to be on for around at least half an hour".
Yep, I was presumably supposed to walk around New York after 10PM at night while they messed around with dehumidifers. I persisted some more - eventually got moved to a new room where I was promised there wouldn't be a smell. Sadly, I wasn't in there long before the smell was back again, and to top it off, the toilet seemed to be stuck flushing and there was only cold water in the shower.
My chest still feels a bit wheezy even now. When I mentioned all of this to the hotel I stayed in during my time in DC, the girl at the desk rolled her eyes like she knew all about the problems people have at this hotel. Considering the Radisson is in New York, it must be a pretty bad state of affairs when poor reviews can travel that far.
I would never go near this place ever again, and if you're a non-smoker, I *strongly* advise you to look somewhere else. To top it all off, their Wireless Internet takes the title of "Worst Net access I have ever had in a hotel". It would stay connected (but lose all net functionality) every ten to twenty seconds, meaning you had to constantly disconnect / reconnect till you were ready to throw the laptop out of the window.
Which wouldn't open.
While your room was filled with the stench of smoke.
Is anyone else seeing a pattern of "bad ideas all round" here?
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