I just finished a 5-night stay at The Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites in Los Angeles. I had initially planned to a do a full review of the property, but a couple of days into the stay I decided not to. Here is why.

The Westin Bonaventure L.A. is a ginormous property with over 1,350 guest rooms and suites. The sheer size of the hotel & it’s downtown location near the convention centre means that it is highly sought after by corporates. As a matter of fact, there was a 700 strong delegation staying at the property while I was there.

In a facility as large as this with well over a thousands guests staying at any given time, it is practically impossible to provide an acceptable level of service. I constantly saw dozens and dozens of people milling around by the entrance or taking the lifts up & down at all hours of the day and night. It was hectic, 24/7.

In terms of the guest facilities, I found the rooms to be dated and the staff largely unresponsive. On the day I checked-in, I found a LIVE creepy-crawly in the bathroom sink.

The unwanted guest in my room

The unwanted guest in my room

I reported this to the front desk whose only solution was to switch the room. Since I had already unpacked and mentally prepared to stay in the room, this wasn’t ideal. I would have liked them to send pest control to take care of the bathroom, but that option wasn’t provided.

At the end of the day, it just didn’t feel like a full review was worth the effort, specially since it would have been largely negative.

The missing Brown Paper Bag

There is however one particular incident I want to write about, which happened on the 2nd morning of my stay.

I left my room at about 9:30 am and went down for breakfast. While I was gone, the housekeeping went in and serviced the room. This happened everyday & it was something I quite admired. I wish more hotels were thoughtful enough to discreetly do this while the guests were out and about, so as to avoid causing any disruption. Anyhow, back to the incident.

About an hour after I returned, I realised that a brown paper bag (similar to the one below) with some dry snacks & medicine was missing from it’s place.

A brown paper bag went missing from my room

I searched for it everywhere but did not find it. The food was easily replaced so I wasn’t worried about it, but the medicine wasn’t. I had actually got it from a compounding chemist before leaving Australia. This wasn’t something a Walgreens or CVS could sell me off the shelf.

I called the front desk and explained the situation. They said they will follow up with the housekeeping and come back to me within an hour. The hour long wait turned into two without as much as a peep, so I called again. Again I was assured someone will get in touch with me soon, and yet again I was left waiting.

Feeling frustrated and let down, it would take a third phone call before the Housekeeping Manager showed up. After repeating myself for the 4th time, he proceeded to physically search every square inch of the room (which I was ok with) and came up empty.

Outdoor Pool, The Westin Bonaventure Hotel – Los Angeles

He apologised for the situation, took down my phone number and promised to provide me an update within 15 minutes after talking to his colleagues. That phone call never came. Later that evening I dropped by the reception and asked for the manager. I was told he had finished work and gone home for the day 🙄

The overnight manager was on duty who came out to see me. I went over the whole situation again with him which was extremely annoying. He asked me if I had the script for the medicine, I didn’t. Luckily I had a photo of the script on my phone which I texted him. He promised to call around and see if there was a pharmacy that could provide me with a replacement. Unsurprisingly, I did not hear from him or anybody else over the next 3 days.

So a couple of hours before I was planning to check-out on the last morning, I decided to go down and confront who ever was the most senior person on duty. That would be the Assistant front desk manager.

I narrated the whole saga to him. To his credit, he took ownership of the situation and assured to resolve it before I left the hotel. He offered to have me stay another night at the hotel, complimentary, but this didn’t work for me as I had a flight to catch later that afternoon.

As I had to head back to the room to finish packing, he promised to call me with another resolution within 30 minutes.

Booking

Before I get into the resolution, I want to talk about the booking. This was a redemption stay which I had booked prior to the introduction of dynamic pricing. Under Marriott Bonvoy’s now discontinued award chart, this was a Category 5 property with redemption costs ranging between 30,000 – 40,000 points per night.

I had initially redeemed 155,000 Marriott Bonvoy points for the 5-night stay as cash prices at the time were well north of A$ 550 per night. Later on with dynamic pricing, the price dropped to 145,000 points. I cancelled and rebooked, saving 10,000 points in the process. Thankfully, this property does not levy a destination fee, which means I did not have fork out any cash.

The Resolution

On this occasion, as promised I did receive the phone call. This wasn’t the assistant front-desk manager on the line, it was a different person who I presumed was higher up the hierarchy than him. I believed it to be so because he said he was authorised to make decisions his colleague could not.

He mentioned that I was a frequent traveller and he could see I had previously stayed at the hotel. I responded that I hadn’t and that this was my first time here. I could feel where this discussing was heading and I did not want that, so I politely but firmly said that I do not have any plans to return to the hotel.

After about 30 seconds of silence, he offered to comp the stay and refund the points. He queried if that would be a satisfactory resolution? Not wanting to prolong the conversation, I accepted the offer. He promised to send me an email confirming the offer, which I received shortly.

Email confirming the refund of points

He advised that the points should go back into my account within 7 days, possibly sooner. A few minutes later they showed up in my account.

It only took a few minutes for the points to be refunded

My Thoughts

At the end of the day, this was the only option that made sense. They could not have replaced the medicine or admit that the house keeping had (accidentally or otherwise) removed the bag from the room. The thought that anybody other than the housekeeping had access to the room would have been even more damning.

What they could have done however, is be more responsive and go a little further in trying to locate the missing bag. They could have reached out to me, as they promised they would on numerous occasions. That said, I do appreciate them for not scrimping and offering a full refund.

What do you think of the way the hotel handled the situation? Leave a comment below.