Whether it be serviced apartments in Sydney, luxury apartments in Brisbane or cosy bed and breakfasts in Melbourne, Australia has a number of great accommodation options available. However, despite our top-notch accommodation, many of us have had at least one holiday ruined by a bad accommodation experience.

What shall be explored below are some of the most common complaints people have about booking and staying in accommodation. Furthermore, what shall also be discussed are some of the things you can do to combat accommodation issues.

1. Hotel Staff that Ignore Patron Complaints

Many hotel patrons complain about bad customer service and staff ignoring their problems. Patrons are often met with the usual staff statement of “I’m sorry there is nothing we can do.”

Hotel staff can often ignore patron complaints and choose to do nothing because they are too embarrassed to acknowledge that an error has been made. They are also often unwilling to accept liability. A lot of the time, however, they just lack the necessary customer service skills to deal with patrons.

If hotel staff are ignoring your complaints — stand up for your self! Ask to speak to the person in charge and if that doesn’t get you anywhere, threaten to black list their hotel name on many of the accommodation websites that are dedicated to naming and shaming poor accommodation.

2. Unclean Rooms

Most accommodations have trained professionals to clean each room before new patrons begin their stay. However, there have been numerous cases of holiday-goers experiencing filthy accommodation conditions.

I once had a bad experience on the annual family holiday, where we walked into our usual booked apartment and found rubbish and dirty clothes strewn throughout the entire place. We had discovered that someone had been illegally squatting in the hotel room. When we contacted the hotel staff they offered us a new room (without hesitation) and threw in a couple of free nights’ accommodation.

Whilst I can’t fault the way they handled our accommodation problem, you would have thought that they would have sent someone to check the apartment before we arrived to make sure everything was clean and in working order.

If your room is dirty, do what I did! Contact the hotel service desk immediately and by rights they should either hire staff to clean your room right away or put you in a clean apartment.

3. Booking Cancellations or No Booking on Arrival

Many would-be-holiday-goers have rocked up to their accommodation only to have the hotel staff tell them that they don’t have a booking under that name.

This occurs more often than what you’d expect and it can be caused by a number of things. Firstly, it can be put down to human error, where the person lodging your booking has failed to put it accurately in the system, or they have accidentally overbooked and (as a result) your booking was cancelled. It could also have been a computer or server malfunction and this can happen when making bookings online.

As such, when making any kind of booking, ensure that you get confirmation that your booking has been placed and bring that documentary evidence with you when you reach your accommodation. Also, consider ringing the hotel staff the day before you arrive, just to make sure everything is ready for your arrival.

4. Noisy Rooms (and Noisy Neighbours)

Some accommodations have very “thin” walls and ceilings and you can hear everything that happens in the rooms above and next to you. Some holidaying neighbours may have screaming kids, have loud parties well into the night and can keep you awake at all hours.

When dealing with noise related issues, if you don’t feel comfortable in personally confronting your noisy neighbours, take your complaint to the hotel staff and ask them to raise the complaint with the other tenants.

5. Inaccurate Star Ratings

There is nothing worse than being confronted with a “5 star” hotel that looks more like a run down shack. A complaint, regarding star ratings, usually occurs when the star rating is based on the personal opinions of the hotel owner (as a way of drawing in more patronage) and not a third party organisation.

So, when looking at accommodation, ask and make sure that their star rating is an accredited star rating, made by an independent organisation, and is not just a personal rating.

Thanks to Wien-Vienna for the photo from Flickr!