Satan's own lodgings (long)
I'll let my letter speak for itself.

April 12, 2002

Dear Mr. Sternlicht,

I am writing this letter to express my shock at the appalling conditions in the Ritz Plaza hotel, a Starwood property in South Beach, Miami. At the Ritz Plaza, my wife and I found conditions that would have been unacceptable in a slum flophouse. In a deluxe ocean-view room at a hotel owned by a reputable chain such as Starwood, they were incomprehensible. I am sure that as the CEO of Starwood, you would want to know just how wretched the Ritz Plaza is. I look forward to hearing from you.

My wife and I recently had the misfortune of staying at the Ritz Plaza for five nights. Why did we stay that long? By the time we arrived in Miami and realized how awful the Ritz Plaza was, most other places were booked up, as it was still high season (we checked out March 31). The lowlights of our visit were the urine-soaked elevator and the flea-bites we woke up with after sleeping in the Ritz Plaza’s beds.

We booked our room at the Ritz Plaza online. It was more than $200 U.S. per night. Although we hadn’t visited the hotel before booking, we were reassured by the Ritz name, and by the fact it was a Starwood hotel. Both my wife and I have stayed at Starwood hotels for business and personal travel. Never before have we had a problem.

Upon checking into our ``deluxe’’ ocean-view room (#903), we were a little alarmed by the chipped paint in the hallway and by the fact only one of the two elevators was in service (something which was to continue throughout our stay). A funky aroma of stale cigarettes and god only knows what else lingered in the air.

Inside the room, we had a TV with a broken remote control and only 6 (mainly local) channels, despite the promise of satellite TV. When the TV was turned on, it made loud popping and buzzing noises every 10 seconds or so. The TV wasn’t the only piece of equipment in the room which was on the fritz. When I opened up the ironing board to get clothes for that evening’s dinner in shape, it wobbled back and forth like a see-saw before finally collapsing in a clatter on the floor. I called housekeeping for another one, and they brought one that was covered in brownish, reddish stains that could have been rust, chocolate or blood. Given that we had dinner reservations, I bit the bullet and used the filthy ironing board.

When we came back to our room after dinner, we discovered that the toilet didn’t flush properly. This was a problem which was also to continue throughout our stay. It wasn’t the only problem in the bathroom. Everywhere in the bathroom, paint was chipping off the walls, and many of the metal surfaces in the room were rusty.

As we drifted off to a fitful sleep, we were awoken several times by something which sounded like the helicopter beach scene in Apocalypse Now. ``What in god’s name could be causing that noise?’’ we asked ourselves. We looked out the window to discover that we were a few stories above about 15 large machines that appeared to be industrial-sized air-conditioning units. Despite the fact we were both wearing earplugs and the windows were closed, these things still made enough noise to keep us awake.

There were several other problems we faced during our stay:

--On the way to the beach, in the Ritz Plaza parking lot behind the hotel, there were gigantic shards of what looked like plexiglass, the remnants of some old sign. They were all over the ground for our entire stay.

--The pool bar was almost never open past 5 p.m.

--The lobby bar was open, but never staffed.

--The solarium was being used as a storage facility for cleaning and maintenance equipment.

--The one working elevator would frequently go right past requested floors.

--The walls were so thin that we could hear people in the next room when they were using the toilet -- not a pleasant experience at all.

On our last night at the Ritz Plaza, we smelled cigarette smoke -- a major problem as I suffer from asthma. When my wife called down to the front desk (where she spoke with a person named ``Leo,’’ she was treated with utter indifference. Leo’s first response was that ``some of the rooms on your floor are smoking, some are non-smoking.’’ When my wife pointed out that a sign reading ``This is a non-smoking floor’’ was on the hallway wall outside our room, Leo laughed, then said ``that’s not my problem.’’ Leo finally offered to move us to a room on the third floor. As this would have put us even closer to the loud, industrial air conditioners, not to mention largely eliminating our view of the beach, we took a pass. My wife, because of Leo’s indifference, had to walk down the hall and ask the guest who was smoking to put a wet towel under his door to keep the smoke from filling the hallway. This cut the smoke down a bit, but didn’t eliminate it entirely. This, I might add, was on my wife’s birthday. After my wife left a voice-mail message for the hotel’s manager to mention the smoke incident, she wasn’t called back.

The last straw, though, came during our last two days at the hotel. On each of our last two days, March 30 and 31, someone (a guest? a staff member?) had urinated in the elevator. The stench was unmistakable and overwhelming. On each occassion, it took several hours before staff members made the slightest effort to deal with the problem. The smell was still there when we checked out. Also, each morning we stayed at the Ritz Plaza, we woke up with a few more red insect bites. Given that we kept the windows closed while sleeping, these could only have come from the bed or somewhere else in the room.

In closing, please let me say that this experience has soured me on the Starwood chain, and ruined what could have otherwise been a lovely vacation. Had I known what disasters awaited me and my wife, we would have gladly spent our money somewhere other than the Ritz Plaza.

I look forward to discussing these matters with you, either on the phone or via e-mail.

Sincerely yours,

tuqueboy


As a post-script, we ended up getting half our money back, and a half-hearted apology. Someone also got fired, which we felt bad about.
(tuqueboy has been in a medically -induced coma since, Thu 2 Sep 2010, 23:42, Reply)