Dr M J Blunden sent a message to Arne M. Sorenson – President and Chief Executive Officer of Marriott International, Inc. – Email Address that said:
Highcliffe bournemouth
I am afraid that I really must raise my concerns about the poor customer service we got last weekend , getting married is stressful enough ( we had a beach wedding on 11th September) but your hotels service made this more stressful than it should be . I came away feeling that this hotel is living off location and the Marriott brand with none of the customer service you would expect from a 4star hotel. I wonder if the mantra is take as much money and hope for few complaints.
To start the events team were not present and had left no handover to the weekend team , we had almost 30 rooms booked on Saturday under the name Nadarajah but no one on the front desk seemed to know this leading to early arriving guests phoning us saying there was no booking. They could not initially find the booking for the bride to be ( who had booked and paid for the rooms) and then put her in a terrible cramped room in the Dorchester wing ( this was an annexe with a broken lift) , when I complained they offered a suite with a view of the car park or twin with a sea view .
The following night they did offer under pressure to move us to a double ( it was our wedding) but then the receptionist gave us a key to a room which was already occupied . We ended up in a cottage room which was cramped and poor views. I spent an hour of the wedding day moving rooms in the afternoon and was late for the reception .
They also tried to bill us for this pleasure , the car parking was frankly poor , we were told that there was ample parking but not that the other weddings taking place that weekend meant it was overflowing leading to more stress . Also we were told we could use some storage all weekend and then told to vacate it on Sunday ( more stress plus the weekend staff did not know where the stuff we had driven down with on Friday was stored) .
Finally the Dorchester wing , many guests referred this as the servants quarters because it was clearly not the standard of the main building in terms of room size or views or working lifts. It was also above the Saturday night reception venue where the disco went on past midnight. The irony that the night before my wedding I got a double with my brother and was moving to a twin for my wedding night was lost on me. I twice asked for the room to made into a twin but to no avail .
In summary either you staff are poorly trained , incompetent or don't care. I think the management of this hotel and its team need to take a long hard look at themselves , and maybe go stay in some hotels in other parts of the world where customer service is not lip service
