Road Trip and Some Disappointments

Right after work on Sunday morning, I prepared myself for a road trip to Los Angeles, California with my parents. My mom has some concerns regarding her retirement pension back in the Philippines and she has to visit the GSIS branch office located at the Philippine Embassy in Los Angeles. I had made some arrangements with our hotel reservations online for Sunday night in a downtown LA hotel. I wouldn't want to specifically mention the name of the hotel but definitely would give a much less than perfect review for it.

Anyway, our trip from Las Vegas which was close to 5 hours of driving (excluding our stop over at Barstow for restroom and lunch break as well as gas) went fine. I was driving a little bit slow on the highway as there were lots of cars on the road leaving Las Vegas. These people, definitely Californians, spent their short vacation in Las Vegas over the weekend and Sunday was usually their return trip in time for work or school on Monday. Armed with my car's GPS, I didn't have difficulty locating our hotel. I usually use my GPS for out of town driving specially going to California since I am not and probably never will be familiar with the highways and streets in big metropolis like Los Angeles.

Locating and checking into our hotel was a breeze, but surprise awaits us when we actually get inside our room. There were no towels in our room. This is the second thing that I usually check whenever I get into a hotel; the first one is to check the exit doors. It's kind of automatic for me. Also, another thing that I noticed was that there was no shower curtain on the shower area and having a shower would definitely leave a pool of water all over the floor. I called the front desk and I was disappointed when the clerk told me that they didn't have extra towels for us. Maybe he heard me wrong so I have to repeat what I said and clarified to him that I was not asking for extra towels but there were really no towels in the bathroom when we got in. I also called his attention with regards to the shower curtain. I did not need any explanation from him but definitely I expected a good customer service from him or from the staff for that matter. Fortunately, without much pressure from me, he assigned us to another room and he personally went to see us and gave us the new card keys. Another thing that I always expect from hotels in big cities is their internet connection. It is already quite common for hotels to provide complimentary internet connection to all their guests. This hotel has a free Wi-Fi connection but unfortunately the connection was so slow. In fact I wrote this entry on Sunday evening inside my hotel room but uploaded it only when I was back in Las Vegas using my own Wi-Fi connection. Maybe I need to do some tweaking on my browser settings but I never remembered ever doing this while connecting wirelessly in my home, in my workplace (shhhh..I sometimes go online while at work) or on any public hot spots.

I booked this hotel online using Hotels.com and users always get the opportunity to rate and review their hotel stay. I definitely would give a low rate for this particular hotel but not really the worst rating one could ever give. There are some positive things that I have seen; the room is definitely clean, even the first one given to us. I requested for a non-smoking room and we got the right one. They have free parking, some room amenities like fridge, cable TV, microwave oven, coffee maker and ironing board. The front desk staff was helpful enough with our dilemma of our first room. By the way, breakfast is not complimentary. Should I still recommend this hotel to others? Yes, especially for those who love surprises LOL. How will I rate this hotel? Probably 2.5 out of 5. Now, am I too tight with them?