Your staff had no idea how to answer any of the qu...
Your staff had no idea how to answer any of the questions we had and we were not given an overview of hotel amenities at check in. A front desk agent did not know what an itemized receipt was, nor did she know what a hand towel was. The bell staff and concierge did not know how to answer simple directions on how to get to a local grocery store and gave me an attitude when I asked for a map of the area.
We were at the event for a conference and had to haul our heavy boxes to our room without assistance of a bell cart because the bellmen wouldn't trust us to bring it back. I run a low-funded nonprofit and we could not afford to pay a bell person. My husband and I have worked in the hotel industry for years, those bell carts are some of the least expensive out there. It was ridiculous that we could not use one for 10 minutes to drop off boxes of heavy items. We worked at a high-end Hilton resort with 1400 rooms and bell carts worth more than double the worth of the ones at Sheraton Gateway and they were lent out to guests without issue.
Speaking of boxes, if you are going to have conferences in your hotel, you really need to have a pack and ship center. We shouldn't have to go online, make an account, and then pay a ton of money to print the label at your establishment. If nothing else, your shuttle should be available to drive us to the local Marriott to ship the items.
On top of all of this, we had to change our room the second day because there was a maggot infestation in the bathroom. Four people were sent up to my room with no idea of what to do about it. The first came up when I was not in the room and I had a message on our machine that they didn't come in because we "had a dog". At check in, I verified we had a rabbit, not a dog, who was penned when in the room and informed the maintenance staff before leaving that they can come in and that the rabbit would be with me downstairs. I eventually spoke to a manager and had us moved; however, by the time we packed up our stuff the room was given away to another guest so we had to wait for another reassignment. This time, we were moved to a room that was not up to standards in accordance to the hotel's contract with the Animal Rights National Conference, as our bedding was made with down, aka murdered animal feathers.
"Live plucking causes birds considerable pain and distress. Once their feathers are ripped out, many of the birds, paralyzed with fear, are left with gaping wounds some even die as a result of the procedure. Workers often sew the birds skin back together without using any anesthetics.
That s not all buying down can also support the cruelty of the foie gras and meat industries because many farmers who raise birds for food make an extra profit by selling their feathers as well. At the slaughterhouse, many of these birds are improperly stunned, which means that they are still conscious when their throats are cut and they are dumped into the scalding-hot water of the defeathering tank." -PETA
Speaking of the conference, when we arrived neither the concierge staff nor the kitchen staff knew of the vegan options offered so we had to order in from another restaurant after a 12 hour day of traveling. We checked in with the conference leads a few days later and they told us that your staff should have been up to date on that information by then.
Oh, and can we talk about the unreliability of the wifi in the meeting rooms? We bought the code to use at our booth to make credit card transactions and we used up all of our cell phone data because the internet would not hold up.
Finally, your checkout policy is weird. Most hotels let the guests fulfill the checkout process within an hour of leaving the room. We were told we could not do this and had to rush to hand over the keys on the way out. Very inconvenient.
If you are going to stay here, be sure to ask for an inside room. Otherwise, you'll hear planes landing the entire night.
I've stayed at sketchy motels that run better than this hotel. We will not be staying here again.
