The stay itself was actually fairly nice. It wasn't the best, but considering how much we paid for it, it was pretty good. It's what happened after we checked out that has turned me off from ever staying there again (which is a shame, since now the next time he visits we'll have to find another hotel, and there aren't many as conveniently located).
The day of my boyfriend's departure (yesterday), we got to the airport and realized he didn't have his passport. It's the only ID he has, so at that point we were in trouble. We sped back to the hotel and explained the situation to the front desk clerk, who gave us a key to the room. The weird thing is... when we got up to the room, the deadbolt was stuck out in such a way that we didn't need the key, the door was just propped open. The housekeeper was a few rooms away at that point, so I assumed maybe she had propped it open for easier access while she was in the process of cleaning it. (The room already appeared to have been cleaned, but I wasn't sure... I figured maybe she needed to come back to it for some reason? I don't know, just that the door was propped open when we got to it.) We scoured the room, but still couldn't find it. I left the door exactly as we had found it, with the deadbolt propping it open, because we figured it was like that for a reason.
We went back down to the front desk, returned the key, and ran back out to the car. We searched his bag thoroughly again, searched the car thoroughly, searched all my bags, and still couldn't find it. Then it occurred to my boyfriend that the housekeeper might have picked it up, so we went back inside the hotel, told the front desk person that we were going to try to find the housekeeper to talk to her, and went back upstairs. When we entered the second floor (the floor with our room), the housekeeper wasn't outside, but the door to our room was still propped open. We checked the room for the housekeeper, but she wasn't there. As we were exiting the room, the woman from the front desk approached us, yelling that we had propped the door open ourselves to get back in later, that we had lied to her about where we were going, and that we needed to "get the fuck out" before she called the police on us for trespassing.
... Okay. I can see where it might've looked like we had some kind of ulterior motive. It was probably stupid to check the room for the housekeeper when we had left the door propped open ourselves, but again, that's how we FOUND the room the first time we went up there to look, and we were panicked. It didn't occur to me. Secondly, what motive would we have for sneaking into a room that we had had key access to... five minutes before? Stealing more toiletries?
I don't know, but we did what the woman said and got the fuck out.
We drove back to my house, and my boyfriend called the hotel and asked to speak to a supervisor. Due to some past issues I have a strong physical reaction to being yelled at and threatened like that, so at this point I was sort of out of commission and just let him handle things. Apparently when he talked to the supervisor, he/she found the housekeeper and spoke with her. The housekeeper did, in fact, have the passport -- she just hadn't brought it down yet since she was in the process of cleaning. We drove back to the hotel, boyfriend went in to retrieve it while I waited out in the car. When my boyfriend got back, he wouldn't tell me exactly what went on while he was in there because he knew it would upset me, but he said the front desk woman was... still very rude, with her supervisor standing right there.
He missed his flight, but was able to catch a later one. My stomach still goes into knots thinking about the whole thing. I realize we may have done some stupid things in the process of all this, but we were both panicking, and I'm 20 and he's 18, so neither of us really knew exactly what to do. I don't know what the front desk woman thought we were trying to do, but I really feel like her response was *completely* out of line. Am I wrong? I've honestly never had to deal with something like that before.
I would like to write Holiday Inn corporate about this issue, but I can't find an address. Their website provides a form, but I would rather send them a snail mail letter, and the only addresses it offers are for individual hotels. Some of you are really good at coming up with addresses, so could you find one for me? Also, should I ask for any kind of compensation? I spent the whole rest of the day feeling really sick (and still somewhat today), and while the day was bad enough because he was leaving, it pretty much soured the last two hours we had together. I would definitely like an apology, and an apology from the front desk woman in particular would be nice, but considering I can't remember her name that might be out of the question. Would anything else be appropriate to the situation?
It's possible my boyfriend and I were just really out of line and didn't know it, and if that's the case I can live with being mocked/
stupid_free'd. Like I said though, neither of us knew how to handle this, so yeah. Feedback would be appreciated.