Service Specific Comments on the Asia trip
These comments were written for my TA, so they are very focused on the service side of the the hotels and cruise. This is probably not of general interest.
The short version via pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/mpquinn/Asia2010
The narrative version:
4/7 – 4/8 Dallas to Singapore
4/9 – 4/10 Singapore
4/10 From the Ritz Carlton to the Seabourn Pride
4/11 – 4/12 At Sea
4/13 – 4/14 Laem Chabang
4/15-4/16 Ko Kood and at sea
4/17 – 4/19 Ho Chi Minh City (Siagon)
4/20 Da Nang
4/21 – 4/23 Halong Bay
4/24 Hong Kong
4/25 Homebound
Service Specific Comments on the Asia trip
Ritz Carlton Millenia Singapore
We were very happy with the Ritz overall and I think we made use of more of the hotel services than we normally do when we stay at a hotel.
My wife is really picky about her pillow, and her taste in pillows might actually be unique. She wants a pillow that is almost flat, but she doesn’t want to sleep without a pillow. She travels with a pillow, but the travel pillow we brought ended up not being good enough. We requested a slim pillow and the butler arrived with a thick foam pillow. After explaining what we wanted to him directly, he came back with a child’s down pillow (I assume), which worked great. Odd request satisfied.
We ate in the restaurant 3 times, and although they have an interesting idea of what an omelet is, the food was very good. Considering the humidity in Singapore, I was impressed with the pastries on the buffet. There was a problem with the service in the dining room between regular lunch and dinner. We were eating lunch around 3pm as were two gentlemen from Australia, and for about 15 minutes service completely stopped while all the service staff were at the back of the restaurant having a meeting. Eventually one of the Australians got up and fetched someone to close his bill because he could catch anyone’s, other then me, attention. Service at breakfast depended on seating location. Sitting in a high traffic area meant a full cup of coffee always, while sitting on the outskirts of the room might be a repeatedly empty cup. Overall the food was good and the service was hit or miss.
We also ordered room service, which can be a challenge with gluten free restrictions. I placed an order with a fair number of changes from what the room service menu specified, and everything came up as ordered without error.
I do not think the staff at the Ritz Singapore quite get service. They are trying really hard to provide good service, but they lack the leadership and experienced staff to set the example of what that is. I was never worried that I wasn’t going to get what I wanted, but it seemed like almost every staff interaction, the staff fumbled around trying to provide the service. Nothing was simple and effortless when dealing with the doormen, reception or the random staff in the halls.
Two simple examples. First, when walking down through the lobby, there are six staff members and three ask about my day, in series, about 10 feet apart from each other, as I walked by. I laughed at the third as I had just repeated myself once. Second, I was going to get on the elevator and one of the staff gets in my way trying to hold the elevator door for me (actually happened a couple of times). I don’t remember the details of the check in, but I do remember that I wondered if we were ever going to get to go to sleep.
One example really frustrated me. Brook was suffering from exhaustion having gotten little sleep since starting the trip. So the goal was to get her from the Ritz to the ship (aka bed to bed) ASAP. I went downstairs and checked out, but I needed to keep my keys so I asked if I should leave the keys in the room or bring them back to the desk. This actually took a while to explain, but I wasn’t offered a standard procedure, which surprised me. She wanted me to drop the keys off at the desk, no problem. I went upstairs, gathered up Brook, and the plan was that she would drop off the keys while I got a cab to the cruise center. As I got off the elevator with Brook, we were intercepted by a doorman, who was happy to take our bags but once I told him we wanted to go to the cruise center at the harbor front, he completely stopped. He double checked about 5 times what I told him and I finally gave up and told Brook to go with him and get a taxi I would drop off the keys. I go to drop off the keys, explain to the girl that I have already checked out and was told to drop off the keys, she is baffled. The girl who processed my check out originally frees up and takes my keys, so the problem was solved.
All minor things that were comically except for the checkout experience.
This is an awful lot of detail about some very minor issues and we would happy stay at the Ritz Singapore again.
InterContinental Hong Kong
I was impressed with everything about this hotel. If I have a complaint it is that I didn’t stay another day. The service was flawless, smoother than Seabourn even. The room was very nice and surprising large considering we were in Hong Kong. The view was very impressive. Not that we had time to take advantage of it, but the location looks great for shopping as well as easy access to the ferry for heading into central. We very much want to return to Hong Kong and stay here.
Seabourn
Seabourn was a joy. We have taken 1 Royal Caribbean and 4 Princess cruises, all 7 days and usually about day 5 I am bored and ready to go back to work. For some reason I was never bored on the Pride, and I really didn’t DO anything.
We definitely made use of the dining services and ate in the dining room for every meal we could. Dining with Brook is usually a chore because of the need to research the restaurant before hand and go over the menu with a waiter who may or may not care once we get to the restaurant, and then hope for the best that flour doesn’t accidentally get dumped in an otherwise gluten free dish. Brook NEVER got sick the entire trip. I am amazed and you have no idea how hard it to go 2 weeks cooking at home without some form of cross contamination happening. Early in the cruise, we asked for table 38 because we liked Imre (waiter), who would just stop by and go over the entire menu telling Brook what she could have off the menu, what needed to be modified and how it could be modified, and what there really was no hope for. The kitchen had gluten free bread for Brook which Damir (assistant) thought to have lightly toasted for serving with dinner. I am a bit of a foodie and there were a few dishes that I was so impressed I couldn’t believe I ate it, let alone on a ship. There was a potato crisp served with the first lunch where I am still shocked that a potato crisp had that much flavor in it. Brook’s favorite dessert of all time was a half dozen fruit sorbets at Alan Wong’s in Honolulu, and that is the dessert that she judges all desserts against. The mango sorbet (she tried most of the sorbets on the ship) was deemed Alan worthy and was the only dessert she ordered more than once.
The staff was overall impressive. It is obvious that a lot of the staff are new, but the redundancy in how the dining room is managed means that the worst the passenger experiences is pepper being cracked from the wrong side of the plate. Watching the interplay of the staff in the dining room was very interesting.
I was frequently asked about how I like being the youngest on the cruise and I did point out that there was an 18mo on the cruise. The biggest difference between us and the other couples on the ship is that we are not at a point in our lives where taking two weeks to cruise in Asia is easy. I am sure the average age on the 7 day cruises are much lower than the 14+ day cruises for this reason. Being the youngest cruiser actually was not very noticeable to me.
As for the facilities on the ship, everything was quite adequate. The suite was an impressive use of space, there was plenty of storage and the shower was good sized. The gym only seemed to be crowded in the morning and then was empty for the rest of the day and had enough equipment to keep me entertained for an hour or two the days were doing something in port.
The one negative was the wireless access to the internet. The wireless did not work in the staterooms the entire trip. The computer guy came down to my stateroom to try to get my laptop to work the first day at sea and could not even after trying his own wireless card. He said he would give me a call and let me know what he figured out, but I got no call. Later, someone told me that the wireless wasn’t working anywhere but in the business center, and when I took my laptop to the business center, it connected fine. I left the computer guy another message with reception about the problem. No response and I was never able to connect to the wireless from the stateroom the rest of the cruise, but if I took my laptop down to the business center, it would work fine. The other problem was that it always seemed like two of the four computers in the business center weren’t working.
We have no idea about the nightlife on the Pride. We were always up for early breakfast, but never caught a show or had after dinner drinks. I don’t feel like we missed anything.
