Le Meridian Montreal
Two weeks ago, one of the Starwood hotel brand, Le Meridian started a promotion, which you get 1000 extra star points after your first stay, and any subsequent stays will earn you 2000 points. Due to my current schedule, this promotion totally motivated me to pull the trigger and booked more than ten reservations from November till December. Roughly, I will be earning more than 20,000 star points, which can transferred to any airline for 25000 miles. I normally would redeem a long haul flight with the miles that worth normally more than a thousand dollars. So it totally offsets my expenses. As a SPG Platinum member, I also get bonus star points by riding Uber here.
I am normally not so big on reviewing hotels, because even I do not live hotels as many other travel hacking bloggers, I have stayed in enough, and I have lost all my expectations when I staying in a North American hotel. The most I would do is to give a good review on their corporate survey. I recently stayed in Sheraton Toronto Downtown Centre, and It was way above my expectation for a North America middle high-end chain hotel, but that’s it. The only positive experience I had so far in past X several years.
At this point you may can guess, something went wrong terribly, at least in my opinion. The irony is, I still have to stay there for several stays, because I really do not have any other opinions at this point. Now I will go through the first three stays one by one with a number of photos (DISCLAIMER: some photos may not suitable for public viewing)
Overall Impression:
Le Meridian is a small, boutique like hotel in west of downtown Montreal. It is next to Concordia University and the Fine Arts of Museum, and now major streets are under construction for next years celebration of X years of Montreal. (you get the idea right). The hotel has a small lobby, and is next to the bar/restaurant. The gym has two treadmill and one bicycle cardio machines, and some free weights. It only has one bench and two yoga mats (Gym is important. I could just write one post to check all the hotel gyms I have used, but I never took any photos). Other than that, the building itself is quite old like any other buildings in Montreal, but the rooms were recently renovated, so it almost still in good shape.
First major issue(maybe) i found, due to the size of the building, all the employee also use guests elevator. It is not a huge issue for me, but it also gives you an idea how small this place is. One side note that, Quebec is the only province in Canada or North America that I have seen, showing a star ratings for hotels. This one has four-star rating, and it is so much like the ones that are independent-run four star hotels in China (another type of hotel you absolutely want to avoid).
My First Stay:
I got upgraded to a deluxe room from a standard room (as a Plat member, no junior suite, though), it is bigger and has a king size room. The room itself is quite nice, except some dirty patches on the carpet and the panel under the window. As shown below:
This room is very spacious, but it does not give any amenities you would expect, like a coffee machine or a kettle (yeah I am an Asian).
I think this room is next to a mechanical room or some sort, so you can hear the sound of constant water flowing. I like to go to a spa to recharge myself time to time, so I can stand it for one night, and I am just pretending I am at a relaxing spa place and going through a meditation if you think I am being serious.
Then, the worst time comes: I found a hair from the shower towel: A PIECE OF LONG FUCKING HAIR!!!
I have been voluntarily being bald or close to bald for almost past five years, so there is no way that belongs to me.
I talked to the reception when I was checking out, and all I got was, “please make sure to tell us immediately and we will replace it for you?“
WTF?
Who trained these people? Do they seriously think I would call them naked and ask them to give me a new towel? Seriously, I am screaming inside of my body as I am writing this. This concludes the “highlights” of my first stay at this property.
My Second Stay:
I worked quite late in my office on my second stay night, and the property was quite busy that night. So I did not get any updates this time. So I was in a shitty room has no views, and the desk doesn’t even have a lamp. At the time I have arrived the hotel, it was too late, and I was not going to work anyway. So I didn’t bother to ask. Interesting enough, I noticed a combo of coffee machine and kettle sitting outside of my room. For seconds, I thought they might hear my inner voice? Anyway I did not take it with me, see photo below:
When I opened the room, the hotel marketing promo or instruction whatever for the room was inside my bedding as shown below:
I don’t want to guess how clean or dirty this thing is: I WOULD FIRE THIS EMPLOYEE ON SPOT. It is simply meaning that this employee hates his/her job.
Another major issue is very intangible to show or explain orally, but destroy your stay experience: see them picture below, see the where AC ventilation is. It is next to your bed. I think the window sealing of this room is somewhat bad, so I had a really bad night of sleep because I can keep feeling hot air and cold air flowing through my face entire night. Now I know that I will insist on not getting a room like this for my future stay!
Lastly, the most interesting or downside of this stay, the toilet is wobbling… Can you imagine how Quebec Government gives star ratings? How can they give a four star to a hotel with a room that has a wobbling toilet? I do not want to get into details, but imagine when you sit down and stand up, the feeling of insecurity. I have a video below to show you how much ‘flexibility’ it can move around. Again, I told the reception during the check-out, they promised they will check it out, but again, nothing for the guest who has suffered the worst shitting experience at their property.
Le Meridian Montreal Wobbling Toliet from Allan Yong on Vimeo.
My Third Stay:
My latest stay was a small improvement, I got upgraded to the top floor, even though it was a standard room. It is slightly bigger than the second stay. The room is not renovated but kept in very good condition. It is actually in the middle of two penthouse suites and it has connecting doors to both rooms too. I can hear the dude next to me being extremely mad after Mr. Trump got elected as 45th President of the USA around 1AM that night. So there is that.
One minor issue during this stay was the water sink that has a broken thingy that will not allow me to get a sink of water to wash my gym clothes.
Other than that, as my expectation has adjusted to a correct level for this property, I am quite satisfied with this stay. Oh, it also has a nice Keurig coffee machine in the room, which is a first. Still no lamp on the working desk, though, which so far I only had a working lamp once from past three stays.
The Fourth Stay
I was lucky enough to have a junior suite, which has an amazing view towards to the Royal Mont, though I was on 8th floor, so all I really see are the building forests.
The room was actually nice, though I lost coffee machine by going to non-SPG preferred guest floor. I did not bother to call them to get one as my office has an identical model.
At this point, I am at the 4th stay of my 12 stays. I thought after all the hassles and unpleasant incidents from the first three stays, and I finally got a suite upgrade, things may go smoothly. However, it seems I have underestimated the Murphy’s Law again.
After I finished my work and dinner, I came back to my room and realized that the hotel WIFI was down. At the time of this post being written, it is the end of 2016, where we have almost anything hooked up to the Internet. How can I do work without Internet connection? Moreover, it was not only down for the night, it was down the next day as well. Here is a video showing what happens when you connect your tablet or laptop to the WIFI. I also have a nice photo (presumably) showing how the process indicator kept spinning.
When I checked out the hotel, I mentioned to the front desk, and there was no word of compensation in any sort. I still remember that I got a box of nice chocolate from one of random IHG property in China, due to some very minor complaints, and I have no Elite STATUS with the IHG whatsoever!!!
<img class=”aligncenter size-large wp-image-6628″ src=”https://www.pekflyer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/11/IMG_0147-600×450.jpg” alt=”img_0147″ width=”600″ height=”450″ />
<iframe src=”https://player.vimeo.com/video/191432709″ width=”640″ height=”360″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen=”allowfullscreen”></iframe>
<a href=”https://vimeo.com/191432709″>Le Meridien Montreal’s troublesome wifi connection:)</a> from <a href=”https://vimeo.com/allanyong”>Allan Yong</a> on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.