Where do I even begin when a stay at one of the supposedly most prestigious hotels in the world ends up feeling like an episode of hidden camera comedy ?
At times, I wasn’t sure whether I was experiencing reality or some sort of performance art designed to test human patience.
You may ask: What on earth could have gone wrong at The Plaza?
The answer? Everything. Absolutely everything.
The Highlights of My Stay (if we can call them that)
• Check-in, 3:00 PM: First impression ? Dirty socks. Not mine, but a previous guest’s, left in the dresser. What a charming welcome. The room hadn’t even been cleaned properly. Yasmin, from your team, confirmed this delightful detail. It then took an hour to get a kettle and the room re-cleaned.
• The bathtub saga, part one: The handle simply fell off mid-use, while water was running. A miniature flood-in-the-making. Thirty minutes later, an engineer appeared. Thirty more minutes and it was finally fixed.
• The bathtub saga, part two: Even after repairs, the bath itself was unusable. Why ? Because it contained dirt and skin residue from the previous guest. Again, confirmed by Yasmin.
And remember, this isn’t just about “relaxation”. I rely on baths for medical reasons.
• Missed the ballet: Because of all this chaos, I arrived late to a ballet performance that had been planned as the highlight of my trip. A special evening, ruined.
• Technical “luxury”: Later that evening, I tried the Chromecast. It didn’t work. IT visited not once, but twice. Still didn’t work.
• The Great Room Shuffle: From 1629, to 1527, and finally to 1532, I changed rooms until 00:45 AM. At 1:00 in the morning. Yes, one in the morning !!! I finally found a bathtub that filled. By then, my body was suffering, my evening was gone, and my patience had evaporated.
Compensation : A Punchline, Not a Gesture
Now here’s the truly comic part. For all of this, I was offered… a late check-out.
Yes, you read that right. After being given a functioning room only at 1:00 AM, the grand gesture was: “You may sleep in a little longer tomorrow.” Hilarious, if it weren’t insulting.
I was also given a cash-back reduction at the desk, an amount so insignificant compared to what had actually happened that it felt more like pocket change tossed at a street performer than real compensation.
And so, rather than making a scene in your lobby (I’m sure your other guests would have enjoyed it), I decided to be polite. To be civilized. To write this email, calmly.
And the response ? Yasmin, your Front Office Manager, kindly and firmly explained that no refund would ever be made. The tone was so condescending it might as well have been as an insult.
Final Word :
I did not come to the Plaza to fight for a clean bathtub.
I did not pay for a suite in order to spend my night bouncing between malfunctioning rooms.
I did not travel to New York to be treated with disdain by your staff when I asked for the bare minimum.
The fact that this hotel still dares to market itself as a palace is beyond irony.
It is tragedy disguised as luxury.
