Recent poor experience of services at this self-claimed 5-star hotel, Nest Hotel Paris la Défense.
We checked in close to mid night on Friday night due to delayed flight into Paris. We bought two rooms, one suite and one deluxe room. The deluxe room was fine but the Air Conditioning in the suite didn't work. A front desk employee, W, only offered a fan and kept telling us that the hotel was full and there was no other room available. After we insisted on a real solution, her colleague, A, offered to move us to a deluxe room which had a working A/C (A took the initiative to check that room before coming to us with this solution). While we were downgraded from a suite to a deluxe room, a working A/C was a must-have during the heat wave in Paris. So we still appreciate A's help and effort. It was a great contrast of service attitude between W and A.
On Saturday morning, when we went to the restaurant for breakfast, the male employee who met us insisted on putting us at a table that we didn't like although the entire restaurant was wide open without many customers. The worse part was that when we ordered sunny-side-up fried eggs, he insisted that he knew what a sunny-side-up was. As soon as the fried eggs were served, it was clear that he didn't know. Fortunately, the female employee who brought the eggs to the table understood it. So she went back and did a perfect sunny-side-up. It is OK if the male employee didn't know something because nobody knows everything. But his attitude of he-knows-everything-and-the-customers-are-dumb is the big problem.
On early Saturday afternoon, I went to the front desk per A's recommendation in order to speak about the downgrade of room and compensation / refund. There were two employees at the front desk at that time. When I asked the female employee to speak with someone in charge, she just told me that no one was in charge until Monday. This is absolutely against the common practice of how a 5-star hotel is managed. In any 5-star hotel, there is always someone, manager / assistant manager / supervisor, on duty so that this person can stand in front of the customers taking responsibility and solving problems. Her attitude was perceived that she didn't want to help us and kept pushing us to Monday so that we are no longer her problem. And the fact that she didn't even ask us what problem we experience the night before clearly shows that she doesn't care about the customers. Then, I had to speak with the male employee who helped to create a case and a request in the system for refund due to the downgrade of a suite. He agreed that a refund is fully justified due to downgrade and promised that the manager will look into it on Monday.
Now here is a pattern. We had close encounter with six employees in three different occasions at Nest Hotel Paris la Défense and half of them failed to show proper service / help attitude. This 50% failure rate once again falls way below a 5-star hotel standard. Plus, so far, one week has passed but we still haven't received a confirmation of refund due to the downgrade. It is very disappointing!!!
