Our stay started off well, but there were some glaring employee issues that I think need to be addressed. The gentleman who checked us in Friday night was phenomenal. Friendly, funny, efficient, etc. Nothing but compliments to the hotel on that. When we got upstairs, the room was clean, but many of the lights did not function properly and the room was roasting. The AC did not work right. Even so, the room was overall OK.
The big problem came later in the night our first night, when the fire alarm went off. There was no announcement, no nothing. Just blaring alarm. So we went downstairs, and found all of the hotel guests huddled in the lobby. The two women behind the desk did nothing to update anyone. They did not do any sort of announcement. They did not tell people to go outside, they just let them congregate in a huge mash of bodies in the lobby. Obviously, this is not appropriate if there is a real problem. The people should be made to go outside. In the alternative, if they knew there was NO problem, why not turn off the alarm and send people back upstairs? That did not happen either. We all just stood, in the lobby, with no answers, for probablly close to 20 min. Finally, one of the women behind the desk said the fire dept. was on the way (by the way, the fire department would have been way too late had anything actually been wrong) and she said that the firemen would just be shutting off the alarm because it was obviously some kids that pulled the alarm. But it made no sense how the desk employees could know that, especially since it did legitimately smell like smoke in the lobby. When the fire department people came, there was still no announcement, or any sort of update about what was going on. Finally people just kinda started going back upstairs, kind of assuming that it was OK to do? We were all looking around, wondering, clueless.... No one ever gave any instruction. No one told us to go back upstairs. No one told us NOT to go back upstairs. It was basically a mess. The hotel needs to train its people better. If there had been an actual emergency there would have been some SERIOUS injury and liability issues. And even in a case like this, which apparently was not actually an emergency, it was just dealt with very badly. People were really irritated, and rightfully so.
Less importantly, but on the same theme: when I called down on Saturday night to see what time check out was the next day, and asked for late check out (I am supposed to be offered late check out automatically because of my BonVoy elite status), the woman seemed flustered and not at all aware of hotel policies, either regarding normal check out, or BonVoy elite benefits. I got late check out so there was no problem but it was just very clear that her training had been super lacking.