A room at LK Metropole turns into LK Royal Suite

[Scoot 1]

Greetings all, just returned from a 1-week trip. The kicker about this trip for me was that it was ALL VACATION!!!. As I’ve stated before, I frequently travel to Thailand (BKK and Pattaya) for business purposes. As delightful as this all is, with the exception of a few days on the front or back end of the trip, it still is work and we still have to be up by 6:00 am and ready to function. The purpose of this post is to warn others that if you take advantage of the LK Metropole FLB rate promotion, be sure to triple confirm your reservations in both phone AND electronic confirmations. My pal and I left Japan on the evening Red-Eye and arrived at BKK airport at 1:00 AM. After customs and all, we finally arrived at LK Metropole around 3:30 AM.

 

A word about Thai hotel staff, they certainly always have the “B-team” on the late night shift. Even the higher-end hotels we stay at on business has generated long early morning checkout times because the security guard had to go wake up the receptionist who then had to manually tally my bill whilst wiping the sleep from his eyes- this despite the fact that I had correctly submitted the ‘Express Checkout Form’ the previous day…

 

Back to LK though…

After we walked up to the desk the reception boy fumbled with his computer a while, then looked at us and said “No Hab reservation”. I pulled out the hardcopies of my reservation and confirmation and showed it to him. Now, in my experience, possession of printed hardcopy usually far outweighs absence of electronic softcopy by leaps and bounds, but this was not to be. He looked over my papers, tried the computer a few more times then shrugged his shoulders repeating “No Hab” again. I replied “Yes I do have a reservation, here it is” showing him the papers again. He punched a few keys again and said “No Hab in computer”. Now, a mistake I can understand, but the receptionists non-action was infuriating. He seemed to say “sorry pal, I can’t find it in this computer therefore you’re on your own.” And all this at almost 4:00 AM, our transport had since departed; what were we to do? Stroll around Pattaya at that hour trying to find a hotel room somewhere? I phoned a few of the hotels we stay at on business, but they were 30 percent overbooked.

 

Did we speak to the Manager? We tried!!! We told ‘No-Hab-Boy’ to get the manager. “Cannot, Manager home sleeping”. “Well call and wake him up!!!!” We countered (this was definitely a get-the-boss-out-of-bed-and-get-it-resolved issue in my book).

 

The good news is that he eventually did make up for it. After some prodding and asking him just what the hell were we expected to do, ‘No-Hab-Boy’ called up other hotels in the chain and found us room at the LK Royal Suite further down on Soi Bukhaow. It was a nicer room than we had reserved at Metropole and did work out a discount for us. He arranged transport for us (the bellhop used the hotels golf-cart to drive me and our bags while the security guard transported other guy on the back of his motorbike.

 

Despite all I’ve said, this is NOT a slam at the LK group. The hotel we stayed at was more than outstanding if that says anything about the chain’s quality. I’m sure the majorities of customers go to the Metropole and experience no problems. For all I know, this chain might have a 99.9 percent successful booking rate and we were the unlucky 0.1 percent. It made for a very bad first impression, but it resolved itself greatly and we had an awesome time! Just be sure to have a no-kidding confirmation!

 

-Best

Scoot

[stevoman 2]

I agree 100% with your views that the LK group across the board have probably the best value for money rooms in Pattaya,however IMHO they also have by far the worst staff in their reservation depts.

Many times over the past 2 years I like many others have attempted to make advance bookins,even going to the trouble on various occasions to fill in their reservation formson their web-sites.Not even once have they had the good manners to reply and this aplies not only to the Metropole but also the Mansion.

They really are an ignorant crowd of wankers and I for one would not even take the trouble to attempt a booking again.

Edited November 27, 2006 by stevoman

[kev0184 12]

i agree, despite contacting them by mail 4 times i never got a reply until over a week later, by then i had booked and confirmed the RG with 1 mail, and Ib didnt even ask for a deposit, top man in my book, but also had similar problems with the arica lodge, so its not just the LK group.

[MC_Ldop 40]

They tried to do this to me too during my September stay, but I really prefer the area by the Metropole. I know it's not terribly far, but there are many places I look to walk to around the Metropole that are just a hop away. Plus the VW bar is totally boss.