Hello,
This is to inform you of the terrible and shocking experience that my family and I had during our recent stay at Le Meridien, Bangalore. For your information, I made reservations at Le Meridien, Bangalore India for 3 nights from 30/04 upto 03/05.
I wish to bring to your kind attention, the complete lack of hygiene at this hotel. To be precise, we were in room no 154 and almost every evening noticed that the fresh Bananas placed in our room had holes in them which we guessed was due to some insects. On the night of 1st may’09, my 3 year old boy was hungry in the middle of the night and wanted to eat a banana and my wife had to cut off the portion which had been nibbled at and fed him the rest of it.
However on the night of 02/05, when we returned to the room, we found that not only the bananas but also a plate of cookies (which was clingwrapped) had a hole in the plastic film and the cookies were also partially bitten. This surely could not have been due to insects and we called the hotel authorities to inspect the two food items. To our utter shock and dismay, the hotel authorities casually confirmed that it was a “Rat” which was nibbling at the foodstuff in our room.
As you can imagine, we were dumbstruck and took down the names of the hotel personnel who had witnessed and verbally confirmed that this was an attack caused by rats. We politely asked them to give us a written apology enable us to take up the matter with higher authorities in Le Meridien but they flatly refused and asked us to wait until the morning for any further action to be taken. As any father would be, I was irate and called the local police to assist me in this matter as I was concerned for my son’s health due to the possible consequences from being exposed to the unhygienic food at the hotel. Following the inspection and intervention by the local police, I received a strange letter not even on the letter head of the hotel but on a plain paper just informing that they have received from me a complaint for an alleged Rat in the room. The hotel authorities just calmly offered us a night’s stay on complimentary basis which in my opinion is a very vulgar and obscene proposal considering what we were going through.
The next morning, no one from the hotel bothered to contact us or check if we were comfortable. I was completely shocked by their poor attitude and called up Le Meridien in Mumbai to speak to my company’s regular contact, who immediately informed her higher authorities in Mumbai. Only following their intervention did I receive a call from the Front Office Manager at Le Meridian Bangalore (not the General manager who was apparently not traceable) apologizing verbally. Following this at the time of checking out from the hotel, an invoice was raised without including the room charges for one night without my consent for this. I insisted on paying for my stay in full and definitely did not require any favours to overlook such a serious matter of hygiene and health.
For your benefit, I have enclosed some photographs of the foodstuff which was quite clearly attacked by one or more rats.
You will appreciate that in the wake of serious health issues already affecting the world critically, such unfortunate incidents will completely shatter the confidence of guests to use your properties in future. Needless to say that if a rat can make it’s way into a hotel room, I wonder what could be the situation of the hotel kitchen……..
Needless to say that I would also like a proper compensation from the hotel authorities for this very serious lapse in maintanance of proper health and hygeine standards for their guests.
I look forward to your kind assistance in this regard.
I have enclosed some photos for your kind perusal and evaluation.
Best regards
Prasanna Rao
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