While in Miami last week, I stayed at the Gale South Beach, Curio Collection by Hilton.
It was not a good experience.
The hotel, except for my room, was mildly air-conditioned. Friends came on Sunday to watch me speak and couldn’t believe how poorly air-conditioned the public spaces were.
We spent about two hours in the lobby before heading over to the convention center, and it was uncomfortable and annoying.
The elevators, by contrast, were exceptionally hot, like unadorned saunas capable of vertical motion.
The hotel also has no desks. Noting in my room. Nothing in either of the two lobbies. If you wanted to sit down and do some work, it was happening on your lap, which was the case for me for four long days.
I’ve never stayed in a hotel in my life that didn’t have a desk somewhere in the building for guests to use.
My room was also less than ideal. It was small, containing a bed, a half-sized closet jammed with a safe and refrigerator, and a single nightstand with three drawers for my clothing.
That was it.
My bed also lacked a fitted sheet, even though I had taken the bed apart twice and left a note for housekeeping. This meant that every night, I found myself on a sheet that was eventually twisted, wrinkled, and disheveled.
All of this was terrible, especially given I was in the hotel for four days, but the worst part was this:
I arrived on Friday before the 4:00 PM check-in time, so after spending a couple of hours in a poorly air-conditioned public area, I went to the front desk to claim my room.
No rooms were ready, I was told.
“It’s four o’clock,” I said.
“That’s when check-in begins,” the man behind the counter told me.
“Begins?” I asked. “I travel a lot. That is not a thing. Check-in and check-out are actual times. Not the suggestion of times. You’re not being honest with me.”
“Fine,” the man said, apparently conceding the point. “But no room is ready yet, sir. We’ll text you once we have a room for you.”
After waiting an hour for a text message, I returned to the desk at 5:00 and was told that one room was ready, but it had no windows. “I can give it to you,” the man said. “But I wouldn’t take it if I were you.”
I agreed. Four days in a windowless room in Miami?
At 5:25, I was told two more rooms were ready, but neither had a working television. I wasn’t sure if I would be watching any TV during my stay, but two rooms without working televisions isn’t a great look.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll take one of those.”
“Give me a minute to get things ready,” he said. He returned to the counter, and then a minute later, he said, “Mr. Dicks, another room with a working TV just became available. Windows, too.”
He sounded excited.
I was not. I should’ve been given a room 90 minutes earlier, and windows and a working television seem like the bare minimum to expect from any hotel.
Here’s the worst part:
There were five young men behind the counter during the entire time I waited, doing nothing while housekeeping furiously cleaned rooms throughout the hotel.
Five men handling a single desk at a hotel while guests waited for rooms that should’ve been ready long ago.
It was apparent to me that the manager on duty of the Gale South Beach, Curio Collection by Hilton sucks. Maybe not as a human being, but absolutely as a manager.
One person—possibly the manager—should have been staffing the front desk, while the other four staff members, regardless of their position, should have been cleaning rooms or assisting housekeeping with room cleaning.
When I managed McDonald’s restaurants and we needed more Big Macs than my grill team could produce, I went to the kitchen and began flipping burgers alongside my team.
When the drive-thru wasn’t running efficiently because the orders were large or the team wasn’t cooperating, I stepped in and helped.
If I saw trash in the dining room and had no one to clean it, I cleaned it myself.
I swept, mopped, cooked, and cleaned, and did everything else necessary to ensure my customers had the best experience possible.,
At the Gale South Beach, Curio Collection by Hilton, at least half a dozen people were unable to check in at 4:00, but we all watched as five men behind the counter twiddled their thumbs instead of getting rooms ready.
It was a joke—a poorly run disaster of an operation.
Good managers are willing to roll up their sleeves and work like hell when necessary to ensure an outstanding customer experience every time. The manager of Gale South Beach, a Curio Collection by Hilton, failed in this regard. He stood side by side with his employees as they did nothing to rectify the situation.
For several reasons, I will not be staying at Gale South Beach, Curio Collection by Hilton again, and I may reconsider staying in any Hilton property in the future. But the primary reason will be that I don’t trust the people running the place to look out for my best interests and work hard to ensure a quality stay in their establishment.
I can forgive many things, but I cannot forgive laziness, dishonesty, and neglect of basic customer needs.
