Alphecca Madrid

Review of Shangri-la's Edsa Plaza Hotel

The room, amenities and food were great. However, ...

The room, amenities and food were great. However, we experienced some problems during our stay which affected my overall impression of this hotel. The first problem was parking. We arrived at 2:40 PM and was able to check-in at 4 PM already. Upon arriving at the hotel premises, we were advised that parking was full and we had to line up for valet. We waited for an hour or so and when we were the next to be accommodated, I got off the car to talk to the valet personnel. My 1 year old baby had a wound in the forehead which needed to be treated soon. Since it took us so long waiting for parking, my husband (who also drove our car) got off, left the car along with the keys with us, and went to the pharmacy. I requested the valet personnel to accommodate us for parking since we waited already for more than an hour and that I had 2 little kids (ages 1 and 4) and a senior citizen with me. However, the valet personnel in the window just ignored me and told me there was no available parking already. He also blamed me for not parking in the mall instead. How rude! After letting us wait for more than an hour, how could I expect such a treatment from a 5 star hotel and Shangri-La at that. Afterwards, that valet personnel in the window advised me to talk to his staff in green uniform standing near the cars. I approached the guy who unfortunately dismissed me too and referred back to the guy in the window. I was disappointed and expressed my frustrations for such an uncalled for response to our situation. Only after calling them out did they take appropriate action and allowed us to get off the car. Had I not done so, we would have waited for 2 hours or more.

In the evening, at the lounge, there were no more plates and utensils available and one had to keep on requesting these from the staff. They were not sensitive enough to the needs of the guest. What's worse was the broken glass, from which my son drank his juice. I called out the attention of the personnel and the manager, Ms. Diane, was kind enough to assist us and update us of the development. I requested for an investigation of the incident, through CCTV review, to check at what point was the glass broke. Unfortunately, the investigation started at 7:20 PM on Dec 31 and they were only able to update us at past 11 AM on Jan. 1. That was 16 hours of CCTV review for a 20 minute coverage (est 6:50 PM to 7:10 PM), only to inform us of nothing. They told me the view was covered. Again, what a poor surveillance unexpected of a 5 star hotel.

Despite all of these, some notable good points of the hotel are its impressive room, amenities and food. I would also like to commend the clinic and its staff for assisting us during our stay.

My take-away from this overall experience is that Shangri-La was not prepared for this occasion. These things could have been avoided if they anticipated the volume of guests and pre-arranged the parking, briefed the lounge staff about quality control and service excellence.