Seattle, WA

It was nearly a year ago that I first stayed at the Seattle Westin Downtown. While the room itself was lovely my overall stay was disappointing. As we exited the hotel elevator we were greeted by what appeared to be a large pile of dog poo and a big extraction fan. Fortunately it turned out to be a large pile of chocolate covered raisins but nonetheless the pile remained in front of our hotel room for two days before I complained and it was finally removed. We weren’t so lucky with the big extraction fan. That sat outside our door until the day we left.

When I returned home I wrote about my experience and forwarded my entry to the management at the Westin. In return I received a very nice email from the Hotel Manager, Andrea Norton. She wrote:

Ms. Myers

Thank you for sending me the link to your review of our hotel. I was disappointed and embarrassed that we failed you in so many ways.

Please accept my sincere apologies. I have shared all your comments (positive and negative) with the appropriate departments.

I hope you will afford us an opportunity to regain your confidence and patronage. Should your travels bring you back to the Seattle area, please do not hesitate to call me directly so I may personally attend to your reservation and stay.

Be well,

Andrea Norton
Hotel Manager, The Westin Seattle

In a day when customer service seems at an all time low and few companies bother to acknowledge customer complaints, it was refreshing to receive acknowledgment and an apology. Common courtesy goes a very long way in my book.

It was for that very reason that I took Andrea up on her offer and gave the Westin a second chance. Sadly our return to Seattle was due to a death in the family. We decided to end our trip on a happy note by staying downtown and spending a week enjoying our favorite city. In other words, I was entrusting a very important trip to Ms Norton and the staff of the Westin.

Thankfully, our trust was well placed. From the moment of our arrival the staff did their very best to make our stay comfortable and enjoyable. We had a great view the last time we stayed at the Westin but this time the view was magnificent. We opened our curtains to find the Space Needle right in the center of our window with the Olympic peninsula spread out before us. It was breathtaking. Why am I telling you when I can show you?

Our luggage followed quickly behind us along with a cart carrying chocolate covered strawberries, cheese, sliced pears and nuts. We’d mentioned to the desk manager who checked us in that we’d brought a case and a half of wine with us from the Yakima Valley. He thoughtfully sent the tray up to go with our wine.

I was somewhat embarrassed to learn that nearly every staff member I encountered had actually read my last review. One told me, “We’ve made a lot of changes. Your review was a good wake-up call. It’s our goal to have you leave feeling better than when you arrived.”

A couple of days into our stay I received a note from Andrea asking how our stay was going. I told her everything was going great and if I were to complain about anything, and this would be a minor issue, it was that I was unable to make a decent cup of tea in my room. You see, I grew up in England and I drink a good 10 cups of tea a day. In the old days you used to get a small coffee pot that you could run water through and get an ok cup of tea. Not great, mind you, but tolerable. Nowadays they tend to have pod pots. I ran water through the pod at least a dozen times and still bits of coffee were floating in my cup. I gave up.

Andrea kindly had a proper tea kettle delivered to my room. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work correctly but I greatly appreciated the effort. The next morning I rang downstairs and asked if they could send me another one. When I returned to the room at the end of the day there was a new tea kettle and my message light was blinking. It seems that the hotel didn’t have another tea kettle, so they bought me one.

They bought me a new tea kettle!

I felt rather bad about that so I emailed Andrea and apologized for being such a pain in the tookus. Her reply, “That is how great service should be.”

In fact, that is exactly how great the service was at the Westin.

So, to Andrea, Cameron and the rest of the wonderful staff I’d like to take this opportunity to say Thank You! for exceeding our expectations. Thank You! for caring about the experience of two people all the way from Austin, Tx. We very much look forward to our next stay at the Westin.

Seattle, Downtown, Westin, Review, Hats Off, Hotels

The Westin Seattle
1900 5th Avenue
Seattle, Washington 98101
Phone: (206) 728-1000
Fax: (206) 728-2259
Email: washi@westin.com

Pros: Great location, wonderful views, comfy beds and linens, bus stop right out front, close proximity to restaurants and coffee shops that offer free wi-fi

Cons: Poor housekeeping, no free wi-fi, $16 a day for High Speed Internet (might be a pro for business travelers), $32-35 a day for parking. Forgive me, but I’d much rather spend my money enjoying Seattle’s fabulous seafood!

In general, when visiting Seattle, we stay with family. This visit we’d already spent a week in Spokane at a family wedding and a week in the Yakima Valley staying with family and touring the Rattlesnake Hills Wine trail. In light of that, we decided to be a little selfish and enjoy our favorite city without familial obligations and therefore we booked a hotel. Our criteria for the hotel was centered around a desire to be downtown, right in the middle of everything and of course, we didn’t want to stay in a dive.

My first choice was Pensione Nichols Bed and Breakfast. Situated in Pike’s Place Market, the location was appealing, the price good, and it just looked like a neat place to stay. Sadly, they were booked. With a little help from Priceline, I managed to get a very good price for The Westin, in downtown Seattle. The Westin is supposed to be a very upscale hotel and we were very excited to stay there.

We arrived on a gorgeous summer day, the weather more like what we would normally expect in Austin, but hadn’t seen so far this summer. Located on 5th and Stewart, the Westin stands tall, offering spectacular views of Lake Union, Puget Sound, the Olympic Peninsula and the Cascade mountain ranges. As we are familiar with Seattle, finding the hotel was not a problem. Finding the hotel reception area and the parking garage turned out to be a bit more challenging.

If I’d taken the time to look at the Hotel’s website prior to our arrival, I might have noticed this message:

Highway Construction

From August 10, 2007 to August 29, 2007, please allow extra time if you are traveling north on Interstate 5 into Seattle. Interstate 5 will be undergoing extensive construction during these dates and will be reduced to two or three lanes during the daytime, and at times just one lane overnight. Please contact the hotel for further information.

Eventually we managed to valet park and unload the car and we headed inside to register. The nice lady at the desk offered us a choice of rooms, one with a view and one without. We, of course, chose the view, and oh what a glorious view! We looked up the rates for the daily parking and discovered it was $35 a day. Ouch. Self-parking was discounted to all of $32 a day.

We found the elevator and headed up to our room. As we got off the elevator and rounded the corner we were greeted by a large pile of what I can only describe as looking like animal feces. Sitting next to it was a large air blower/moisture control unit, the kind they use to dry wet spots on carpets. We walked around it gingerly and entered our room which was located right next to the mess. Shortly afterward the bellhop arrived with the cart containing our luggage. After he left we noticed he’d dragged some of the mess into our room. We bent down for a closer inspection and discovered that the dark pellets weren’t poo at all but rather, raisins. I was relieved but hoped that the bellhop would report the mess.

The room itself was very nice with beautiful white duvets and bedding on the dark wood queen beds. There was a desk situated in front of the big picture window, a television and armoire at the foot of one bed and a chair and tea/coffee making service at the foot of the other bed. There was also a tempting array of snacks that could be had for an exorbitant price. We’d declined a key to the mini-bar for a reason. Why pay an arm and a leg for snacks when you’re within walking distance of a drug store on one side and a nice little deli/store to the other?

We unpacked our bags and left to find some food, once again stepping over the mess. We wandered down to the waterfront and had our usual first-night-in-Seattle meal of steamed mussels and crab cakes at Steamers, where we sat outside and enjoyed the beauty of the water while people watching. We returned to our room a few hours later, walked past the raisin mess and relaxed in our room for the rest of the evening. I tried to connect to the hotels wi-fi only to discover that they charge $16 a day. Since even the cheapest of motels offer free wi-fi these days, I was too miffed to pay it so I cadged off someone else who didn’t have their connection locked down. It was slow but free.

The next morning we slept in, fetched some breakfast rolls from the cafe downstairs and headed out around 11:30am. As we left we noticed a card that allowed us to pick our room cleaning time so we chose noon-2pm as we figured we’d be out and about by noon and unlikely to return before 2pm. We stopped in at the Serious Pie just down the street for a seriously yummy lunch of pizza and salad. More about that later. We wandered around town for a bit then headed back to our room to grab the laptop and camera. We stepped off the elevator, rounded the corner and stepped past the raisin mess. It was about 2:30p. Our room was still not clean. We’d only turned in the card a few hours earlier so that was no big deal. We returned to our room about 6pm, our room was cleaned but still the raisins remained. The room cleaning was minimal. They’d replaced the towels and made the bed. That’s it. They had not bothered to replenish the teabags, cups, or Splenda that I’d used. Great, just great.

Finally I called down to the front desk and complained. It had been a full 24 hours. Maids, bellhops and guests had walked through the halls and still they hadn’t cleaned up the mess. I wondered if the rest of the guests thought it was dog poo, too. If so, were they as put off as me?

The next day we once again left the room around 11:30 and returned around 3pm to drop stuff off before heading out again. The raisins were finally gone but the air blower remained in the hallway until our last day. That’s nearly 5 days of walking past it for those of you counting and trust me, I was counting. At 3pm our room remained uncleaned. What was the point of filling out the card requesting a specific cleaning time? I’d left a note for the maid asking them for more cups, stir sticks and Splenda. Although they did replace the cups and stir sticks they left me a mere 3 packets of Splenda. Gee, thanks, do you really think you could spare them?

This became the pattern. The room was never cleaned before 3pm. They never left me more than 3 packets of Splenda no matter how many notes I left them. They never did more than the bare minimum of cleaning which meant they replaced the towels and made the beds each day. They didn’t even clear empty shampoo/conditioner bottles from the shower nor give us clean water glasses. The room was never unacceptably dirty and the room was nice but having said that, I’ve had better housekeeping at a Best Western or a Holiday Inn. I expected much better from The Westin and I was very disappointed. Did I complain? No, I did not. As I mentioned, the room was acceptably clean, the housekeeping just didn’t impress me. It certainly wasn’t bad enough to complain about and risk having a disgruntled maid use my toothbrush to clean the toilet. I will, however, be forwarding them a copy of my review. It’s unlikely I’ll stay there again. My friend’s mother recommends the Sheraton next time. We’ll see.

Update: In which the Seattle Westin redeems itself!

Read my other reviews

Seattle, Westin, The Westin, The Westin Seattle, Downtown, hotel, housekeeping, review, Serious Pie, complaint, raisins