Many times I write about good experiences I have at hotels and will highly recommend staying there. However, this is a story of a rather bad experience I had recently at the Hampton Inn - East in Indianapolis. At this point, stay away from this place at all costs.
First of all, I'm a Diamond level member of the Hilton Honors frequent customer club. The Diamond level means that you stay at a Hilton property a minimum of 30 nights a year. I can do that in three months, so I've racked up a lot of points that can be used for free night stays. And since I have over 400,000 points at this point, I'm sort of indentured to Hilton hotels. Right now, we have enough American Airlines points and Hilton points to go to Hawaii free for 10 days. All we'd have to pay for would be food, drink, and a rental car. I'd like to do that next year.
Now, I also want to point out that rates at Hampton Inn's have risen tremendously over the past few years. I remember when I first began to stay at Hampton's on a regular basis about nine years ago, most of the rooms were around $69 to $79 a night. When I started with my present company and we were told that we had no limit on our travel expenses, I started to stay in Hampton Inn's or other Hilton properties almost exclusively. Prices for a Hampton Inn have gone from $89 to $99 to nearly $130 dollars and higher for a night's stay.
A few of the Hampton's have upgraded their rooms, but the precipitous rise in room rates haven't meant that all Hampton's are in great shape. Case in point - one of the first hotel properties I wrote about on this blog was the Hampton Inn in Addison, IL. The hotel had just opened about four years ago and each time I went into Chicago, I always tried to get a room in there.
The last couple of visits I had to that Hampton Inn have been far from stellar. Suddenly, a number of things are starting to show some wear and tear - torn and dirty carpets, peeling wall paper, room chairs that are increasingly uncomfortable, refrigerators that don't work properly. I couldn't believe that place was only about four years old the last time I stayed there. I haven't been staying there all that much when I've been going into Chicago.
I usually spend my nights in Indianapolis at the Hilton Garden Inn up in Fishers. It's a nice place and it's close to my dealer in Castleton. Plus - there's a Hampton Inn literally two blocks away from my dealer, but the Hilton Garden Inn is actually CHEAPER than the Hampton Inn. However, on this trip, I had to do an all-day presentation for a distributor on the east side of Indianapolis and I decided to stay at the Hampton Inn - East.
I got into the hotel around 10 p.m. and checked in at the front desk. The lobby area looked nice and I was hoping the room was just as good. I usually try to get a room on the first floor, but they only had a king room on the second floor for me that evening.
When I got into the elevator, I noticed the floor was stained and it looked like the inner doors of the elevator had been dented by someone kicking at them. I didn't think much about that, but that all changed when I started to walk down the hall to my room. The hallway carpet was torn and stained, doors looked like they'd be beat on and there were chips of wood missing on many of the doors.
But when I got into my room, I certainly wasn't ready for what I saw. All the lights in the room were on. Both the TV and the radio were on. All the drawers in the dressers, night stand and workspace were opened like someone had been rifling through them. And the bed looked like it was made backwards with the bed spread turned down at the end of the bed instead of up by the head board.
I was sort of perplexed by all of this and I wondered what the hell was going on. I then looked at the door and it looked like it had been busted in at some point and then someone did a half-assed repair job on it. Well, by this time, I'm beginning to think, "What in the hell have I gotten myself into?"
I thought about going down to the front desk and telling the desk clerk that the room wasn't acceptable, but it was late and I didn't want to hassle with having to either move from the room or move to a different hotel. I'd stayed in worse hotels before and was no worse for the wear. But I certainly didn't expect that from a Hampton Inn.
As I went around the room to turn the lights off and to close the drawers, I noticed wall paper peeling away and the curtains were torn. And then when I went to turn off the light by the couch, it didn't have an on-off switch. I had to reach behind the couch to pull the plug out of the wall.
I went into the bathroom and noticed tiles near the tub were missing, as were bits of wall paper. And there was sort of a black stain - possibly mold - that was on the grout in the tub area. I thought, "OK, I know I'm supposed to be here two nights, but I'll find another place for tomorrow night."
As I was setting up my computer, I looked around for a plug-in for my computer's power supply. The closest receptacle was behind the dresser with the television on top of it. And I would have either had to unplug the television or the desk lamp to plug in the power supply. That is, if I would have moved the dresser out with the heavy television on top of it. So I stretched my power cord over to an outlet over by the bathroom. Thankfully, the power cord that comes with my power supply is about eight feet long. But still, most hotels I stay in have a desk lamp that has an outlet for computers on the base of the lamp. It was like the work space in this room was almost an afterthought.
One other thing, and it's not all that big. I'm a Hilton Diamond member, meaning that I've stayed Hilton properties enough that I get some perks along the way. At Hampton Inns, I'm to receive a bottle of water and a snack. The snack I don't care much about, but the bottle of water is big to me. And, of course, there was no snack or bottle of water to be had.
I booked a room at the Hilton Garden Inn up in Fishers for the next evening and went to bed. But before I went to bed, I shot off an e-mail to my colleagues blasting this Hampton Inn and expressing my dismay at Hampton Inn's as a whole for escalating prices.
The next morning, I got up, prepared for the day, packed up and checked out. I went to the front desk and I told the desk clerk that I was checking out a day early. She said, "Was everything satisfactory with your room?"
I said, "Well, actually, no." And I went on a two minute diatribe about all the things that were wrong with the room and how I found it when I walked in the night before.
She looked sort of puzzled and then she said, "Ohhh... I know what happened." And she proceeded to tell me that when a housekeeper finishes cleaning a room for a new guest, they're instructed to turn on all the lights, open the drawers and turn on the TV and radio. Then the head housekeeper is supposed to come in with my bottle of water and snack, and she'll turn off some of the lights, TV and radio, close the drawers and the closet door and then finish with the bed. The desk clerk said, "I'm guessing that didn't happen in your room."
I'd never heard of that procedure before, but I guess it does make sense. They want to make sure the previous guest didn't leave anything in the drawers and that all the electrical products work for the next guest. But it was sure a weird way to find this out.
Now, at this point, I fully expected her to say, "What can I do to keep you here tonight?" Or, at the very least, "What can I do to make you happy?" Hampton Inn does have a 100% satisfaction guarantee and she didn't even bring that up. She handed me my receipt and she said, "Have a nice day, sir."
I thought about pressing it with the Hilton corporation, then thought, "If she was so indifferent to the whole thing, then that's a hotel I'm just crossing off my list."
So later in the week, I'm traveling along and I got a phone call from my colleague, Simon, who was traveling in New Jersey. He said, "Man, I thought about you last night. I checked into my room at a Hampton Inn, I opened the door to my room and it was exactly like you said the other night. Lights were on, television and radio was blaring, drawers and closet doors were wide open."
I told him what the deal was and he said, "Well, that's what they told me when I called down to the front desk to complain. The next thing I know, here comes some Hispanic lady to the door and she proceeds to turn off the lights, close the drawers and finish making the bed. It was kind of funny."
So, that's my story about the Hampton Inn - East in Indianapolis. I'm beginning to be sort of disillusioned about some of the Hampton Inn's I've stayed in recently. Many have undergone some nice upgrades, but a few haven't and they continue to charge what I think are exorbitant prices for their rooms. There's a lot of places to stay, and people aren't travel all that much this summer. You'd think you'd want to put your best foot forward and spruce up the place. Obviously, this place didn't want to.
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