I have always enjoyed my stay with the hotels under IHG Group, In particularly, my favourite is Holiday Inn Express Shanghai Jinsha in China being one of my most memorable hotel – clean and great customer service with an amazing hotel staffs from the front desk, breakfast attendant and housekeeping were always very polite, helpful, very responsive towards all the guests. And yes, I’m talking about Holiday Inn Express in Mainland China, a mid-priced hotel that offering limited services like any other Holiday Inn Express across the world.
This time at Holiday Inn Express Kuala Lumpur City Centre the trip was even unforgettable one BUT for the wrong reasons. The accommodation was unsatisfactory in the following ways:
1) There was blood stained on the bedding in my first checked-in room #1303. Immediately, I have contacted the reception to quickly act on this since its almost 9:50pm and wanting to jump into bed and call it a night. Waited for the housekeeper who failed to arrive so I called the reception again and demanded to change room but the hotel staff said I need to wait for the housekeeper who will speak to me. I said No since I have waited and no one turn up so I insisted to change the room on immediate basis.
2) Finally the On-Duty Manager arrived, walked with me to the new assigned room #1527 and requested me to first check on the bed. When I opened the comforter with the present of the On-duty Manager and to my horror once again there was stains on the bedding!! I asked your Manager why are all the beds in Holiday Inn Hotel Express here, have blood stains on it? Do you keep such dirty bedding/linen sets and continue to use them? You allow your hotel guests to sleep on such bad and dirty conditions??? The Manager explained to me the stains that I found was a permanent stains (sound like it was on purpose to put stains on it) cause she didn’t feel sorry at all and not even embarrassed with the situation. The reason she gave me was not convincing and which hotel will do such things to spoilt their image by making their bedding look dirty? I told the Manager that I do not want to sleep on your permanent stains bed, please have it changed with a clean no stains bedlinen/protector sheet.
3) I was left to wait for the housekeeping staff but again, no one came. I decided to remove the bedlinen by myself and I found that the so called “permanent stains” the Manager had explained to me indeed was a blood/menses stains that were not properly cleaned and turned into permanent stains now. I was very angry and disappointed, I went down to lobby to check status. When I asked to be moved to another room again since the housekeeping staff was taking forever to arrive, the On-Duty Manager said “I’m afraid there will be the same issue”. Then, claimed that the hotel were fully booked. I was shocked by how the Holiday Inn Express On-Duty Manager has responded to me. She also keep iterating that this is “Holiday-Inn Express” so I shouldn't have expected too much from this hotel including the hygiene and safety level.....
4) The housekeeping staff finally arrived to change the bedding sets at 11pm. It took almost 1-hour for your hotel to offer me a decent bed to sleep in. Then, the On-Duty Manager arrived at my door to check and apologize to me, I appreciate her gesture so I do thanks her but I also told her that apology is NOT accepted.
5) The next day, I don’t hear anything from the hotel staffs. They have prevented nothing has happened! I’m also not sure whether my complaint was escalated to the next level for further action or improvement.
I would like to iterate a few points here: Sleeping in blood stained bedding is not acceptable and the way how the Hotel Staff has responded/handled my complaints.
• I’m not expecting full fledged service since this is the Holiday Inn Express but the hotel failed in delivered the basic clean, hygiene and safety environment to their guests and employees. Blood has the ability to seep deep into surfaces, and can be impossible to get out of porous materials such as fabric. This means that although a piece of fabric or carpeting may look clean after a few minutes of scrubbing, only the surface of the material is actually clean. As a result, the material can continue to harbor bacteria and potential blood-borne pathogens!
The hygiene standard in Holiday Inn Express Kuala Lumpur City Centre is highly questionable! Does Holiday Inn Express hotel have a duty of care regarding health and safety around these kind of things - Quality Control Inspections? Clear cleaning program such as the 5S program?? Didn’t the hotel management provide adequate training to housekeeping staffs to reject and not to put such dirty and contaminated bedding sets in the guest rooms?
• Customer relations / customer service – The worst experience I have ever encountered in hospitality. The customer service and the communications skills are worse than the cheap budget hotel I ever stayed. Being a Marketing and Communications profession myself I felt sorry to their hotel management and IHG Group that their own staffs failed to uphold your hotel reputation and branding. I didn’t expect in the eyes of Holiday Inn Express Kuala Lumpur City Centre the employees themselves felt that are the same level as the local no brand budget hotels.
