Way below par for Fairmont
I have repeatedly stayed at several Fairmont resorts in the past — Château Lake Louise, Château Montebello, Manoir Richelieu, Château Frontenac… — and have been accustomed to expect a certain level of experience quality. Unfortunately, Fairmont’s Château Tremblant was well below par.
My family and I booked a suite over the weekend of Sept. 12-13 of 2020 and I was astounded by the various shortcomings, none of which are COVID-related by the way, both in terms of service and infrastructure. For instance, on the infrastructure side:
- The toilet in the room was dysfunctional: It took 10 minutes for the tank to fill (we told the hotel and they did fix it but when you’re a luxury hotel, this is not something customers should have to flag).
- The umbrellas were broken: While it is appreciated that a hotel would lend umbrellas to its guests (I think this is actually expected from high-end hotels, though), it would be nice if said umbrellas were actually 100% functional.
- The suite was not very nice: It was OK… for a Comfort Inn. There were no amenities (except maybe for bathrobes and shampoo!), and sincerely, it felt like a bad trip to the late 1990’s in terms of style, and the furniture’s condition felt like it dated from that era.
- Some big-ass wires were dangling from the roof: As we were marinating in the (very nice, I must admit) exterior pools (probably the best amenity of this hotel), we noticed what looked like big, 3 in.-diameter wires badly attached to the roof… the kind of detail that makes you feel your high-end hotel isn’t exactly high-end in terms of detail-orientation.
- Internet access was troublesome: So, first, I still have a hard time believing that a high-end hotel, in 2020, would still have you pay $15 per day to get Internet access (that’s a first strike right there). But then, I’m a member of their ALL loyalty program so was told I would get access for free… which only worked for one single device (second strike). But then, whenever logging on to whatever page was displayed upon opening a browser after logging on to the hotel network, I would see a page that looked like it didn’t have a CSS or style sheet… it was only text. Not very high-end… and a third strike with regards to Internet connectivity.
And then there was the service. While I did appreciate the responsiveness from the staff the two times I asked for assistance through a text message (nice!), I was not impressed by several instances, like:
- The staff in the restaurant: Upon ordering food, I needed advice about which wine would best match both our very different — and harder to pair than my own experience and knowledge about wines allowed — meals. The waitress’s answer was to read me the wine list… (I can read, thank you!) By the way, selling somewhat cheap, SAQ-available $18 wine bottles for $58 while not even being able to talk about them is not only a ripoff, it’s almost a fraud.
- Also in the restaurant, kids ordered apple juice… that was served in their original MinuteMaid container. I mean, I appreciate the honesty of not trying to sell this cheap juice look like it was home-made, just-pressed apple nectar, but if you’re going to price your juice at $5 a bottle, it would kind of deserve a glass.
- No pillows for the sofa-bed: While it was clear from the get-go that, because there were 4 of us in the suite and only one double-bed, my 2 kids were to sleep on the sofa-bed, my experience with other high-end hotels around the world (like Germain hotels or also Accor-related Sofitel chain) had me expect that the sofa-bed would have been taken care of without me having to ask for anything. While the sofa-bed did have sheets and a duvet in it, there were no warm covers and pillows to be found in the room… and so I had to ask for them to be delivered to the room.
- Then there were several little incidents, like when we asked for some Advil to be delivered to the room and, after waiting for an hour, we inquired about when we should expect delivery, only to be told that someone had in fact come up and no one had answered. (There were 4 of us in the room, and no one ever heard a knock… so that had to be a lie. Plus, you would expect that, should nobody have answered, they would have called the room to inquire if we were still interested in said Advil, right…?)
- Or the fact that, when I showed up with a dog, the people at the reception never said anything about a $40 fee. (I don’t care about the charge… I would’ve appreciated knowing about it, though!)
But I think the worst part was when, upon checking out, the lady at the counter asked how had been our stay, and I started explaining what you just read above. Despite being served essentially the whole story, there were no apologies, no indication that someone higher-up would contact me for further information, no additional comment then ‘’Thank you for telling me. That’ll be $1000. Would you like to use the same card you used upon checking in?’’
This hotel is exceptionally well below-par in terms of service, especially in light of the expectations they set on their website. There are nice things to this hotel — the pools, the big fireplace in the lobby bar, the location — so book it if you must, but manage your service expectations accordingly.
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