Our family recently stayed at a Hyatt Place for several days and we had known going in that the place was in need of some upgrades. Well, they made some and it caused some problems for us!
Hyatt Place Improvement Made Our Door Difficult to Open
This was at the Hyatt Place Washington DC/National Mall. The location was perfect for our time in DC so we were willing to deal with customer reviews that said the place was dated and in need of some upgrades and renovations. But, being a Globalist, one of the nice things was having access this close to the mall with free parking so that helped also!
Well, it appears that the hotel is trying to improve in those areas – who doesn’t like improvements! Turns out that we didn’t since they didn’t make the improvements in the right way. Here’s what happened.
The Door Wouldn’t Open
A fresh coat of paint can make a lot of things look nicer but there are some downsides to painting your doors – like, the paint is still tacky and then sticks shut. We got to our room on the 5th floor of the hotel (apparently, they didn’t have any double queens available on higher floors when we checked in) and I used the key card. It disengaged the lock but the door would not budge – not even a bit. I thought this was pretty strange and kept trying and even pushed the door a bit. Nothing. So, I called down to the desk.
While we waited for someone from the engineering staff to come up, our new neighbors came to their room and went back in and pushed against the door a bit. So, we figured it was a problem with the fresh paint and I gave our door a big hit with my shoulder. After a couple of such hits, it finally opened (I know, I’m no NFL player!).
Obviously, this wasn’t ideal so we waited for the hotel rep to come up and he said “this is strange” and said he would fix it. Well, there was no fix coming that day or night so I revisited it with the desk rep the next morning.
Not Just an Inconvenience – But, a Safety Issue
This wasn’t just an inconvenience – this was a clear safety issue. When I wasn’t in the room, my wife could not open the door from the inside. I had to really pull very hard to get it to open. From the outside, eventually, a good hard kick made the door open (which isn’t great for the new paint job but we need to get in our room!).
This situation also made it not possible to leave the room quietly – at all. So, that meant no earlier morning runs for me since it would wake the family to merely open the door.
We were there for 4 nights and we were never moved to a different room and the problem was never fixed. It became a bit easier at one point when they tried but it wasn’t anywhere close to what it should have been. I let the staff know several times that this was a safety issue and they were very kind but nothing was ever done. At checkout, they said they weren’t able to move me because they never had another double queen open.
No Fix
I never asked for nor tried to get any thing for this – I just wanted the issue resolved. This was a clear safety issue in several ways. One was that my family could not open the door from the inside so they had to leave the door slightly open when I wasn’t there. Another was that I saw others on the floor with their doors not completely shut late at night and randomly during the day, probably because they were assuming that, like most hotel doors, when they shut it, it shut. Having a door that was not completely shut during the night or when you were out during the day is not safe (as I saw one couple mention when they returned and were surprised that their door was not shut).
So, yes, improvements are good but they definitely need to be done the right way. This was not the right way and I was very disappointed in this Hyatt Place for not making better efforts to get the problem fixed while we were there.
I will say that the hotel was great in other ways – it had great employees, a nice breakfast (though it got incredibly crowded – I counted 120 people waiting in line on our last day!), a nice pool, and great location. And I’m sure after a few more guests have stayed in this room and the paint wears down a bit, it will improve there as well. 🙂
