I usually are very happy with Novotel. However, the Novotel Santa Fe has some serious management issues. I booked for 3 nights for a business trip together with a colleage. The location itself is nice, besides that there is a really next construction site next to the hotel (another hotel being build) - this results in some outside areas of the hotel to be closed, and lots of noise. As the room windows are good, that's not a big problem though.
The problems however started when we wanted to eat. In the hotel restaurant at the first evening I ordered chicken cordon bleu. The chicken I was served had been fried several ours ago, and even already got cut in the middle at the point. They just warmed it up. The cheese therefore had already been gone hard instead of being melted, color was orange, the meat itself was extremely dried out. I could not finish this. I complained to the waitress, who also was shocked about the dish. I then was served dessert, and this was REALLY bad. I ordered flan, some kind of creme caramel - it involves raw egg, so this has to be really fresh. But it also had gone bad already. I just took one bite, noting immediately that the egg had gone bad - still I had to stay quite a lot of time on the restroom that night. The next morning the breakfast again was really bad - the scrambled eggs again appeared to be several hours old etc.
In addition to that, the room cleaning hasn't been really good - when we arrived, the windows were really dirty. In the morning at 8am, someone was waking up everyone on the floor by knocking on each door asking if we had some clothes that need to be cleaned - terrible idea. It took until 4pm until room cleaning showed up.
While I had booked for 3 nights, at this point I decided I'm not getting myself food poisened another time, and booked another nearby hotel. We went to the front desk to tell that we were checking out, telling them in detail on what had happened to us. We didn't get an excuse, instead we were told we could not check out because we had booked for 3 nights. I demanded to speak to the manager. I was told excuses that the manager would not be in the house, then after half an hour someone turned up telling us he is the assistance to the manager (which was a lie) and basically they did everything to make sure we would not speak to the manager. I had to threaten them to charge back the full amount from my credit card until after an hour they finally called for the real manager. He did excuse a lot, promised to investigate, and made sure we were able to check out paying only for the single night we had stayed.
All in all this has been the most unpleasant stay at a hotel ever for me. This hotel needs to get a audit from Novotel urgently. While the hotel would be nice, at it's current state I can not at all recommend going there.
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC
28 June 2010
Dear Mr. Simon
We appreciate your comment posted few days ago. Unfortunately for an error in operational procedures, I was not informed on time about your experience in the hotel. I apologize for the inconvenience caused and as I have said p erson ally , We withdrew the restaurant charges and have cancelled the two nights reservation,even if you have booked for three nights non refundable .
Our compromise is that these situations would not happened again & I personally will encourage our employees to make their posible for not having this kind of situation again.
We wish we could have you with us in an other opportunity to compensate the bad experience you had. Please accept our apologies and do not hesitate to contact me at +52 (55) 91 777701 if you think you could give us a second chance.
Sincerely
Douglas Goncalves
General Manager
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This response is the subjective opinion of the management representative and not of TripAdvisor LLC