Morning Friends, It's been a couple of months since we held our Son's and his new Bride's…read morereception at Hotel Glorieta. To be fair, this is a long story best told over drinks. TLDR - place is a dumpster fire and I'm convinced the staff is trying to run it into the ground.
For context, I officiated the wedding, and was a primary planner with respect to the reception, and I paid for the wedding party's rooms. Organizing this with HG's sales staff started in November. Many frustrating meetings, poor/lacking communication, unprofessional responses when communication did happen. Short story, I reached out for over a week/half in January to get some kind of response, left messages with sales manager, and front desk, when she called, she raised her voice at me over the phone "if you don't stop calling me I'll drop you!!". I picked the hotel for it's stage/musical venue (my Son and DIL, wedding party, family are all musicians. I also bought the venue which became 5 hours of wonderful concert...) so I was not about to lose it; hat in hand I had to eat shit for the next 5 months leading up so I didn't 'get dropped', the wedding was more important than her touchy personality as a sales manager. But wait, there's more. I'll try to be short and set aside the many 'miscommunications' that I had to apologize for to fix (even though I have it all recorded...)
- I booked rooms Thursday through Sunday for wedding party, including myself. Many coming in at different times. I signed a contract to pay for said rooms. I had to have 6 different arguments, including for myself and my wife because the front desk gave our rooms away for a couple of late arrivers (no call no show, despite a contract, and I'm sure hotel will jump in on this and do a tap dance to make it seem like I'm the unreasonable one).
- My room was a standard room. Not to act important, but I bought... I'm the officiant of the ceremony. Father and Mother of the groom... I asked for the suite for many reasons, hosting family, dressing the groomsmen.... Nope..
- My closest friends that came to assist from out of state had PAID for early check in. Of Course the room was absolutely not ready. They had to get dressed in the lobby restroom! (I had a chat with sales manager at this point over several things that were falling apart the morning of the wedding. I was told to be nice to the two front desk girls "they're just babies". To be fair, no one was yelling, or raising voices. I will happily admit that I was extremely frustrated given it was go time, wedding day and nothing was going right. I think I held it in quite well)
- My wife's aunt and uncle, mid 70's, traveled from Washington to join us. Single towel in their room (yes.. 1 single towel). She told me over breakfast that she was just taking towels from the pool area back to their room.
- Groom and Groomsmen were there for a couple of nights. Not a single housekeeping check in, no towel refresh, NOTHING. No one expects full service, but the men couldn't even get clean towels.
- Food - awful, truly. Restaurant staff has no clue how to provide any level of service. Fun side story. The coffee was bitter and clearly had been sitting in the pot for hours (anyone who drinks coffee understands this). I commented on it as did my wife and asked for a fresh pot (we were the only one's in the restaurant at the time). The waitress told me "Sir, we put caffeine in our coffee, that's why you don't like it" (and I quote...). I never saw another cup of coffee that morning or offer for anything else.
- More food fun. Uncle - 75+, dietary restrictions, simply asked
"can I have a breakfast burrito with no meat please". "Well Sir, I don't know, that's a special order! Where do you want the eggs?' (and I quote). Our confusion was obvious. "In the burrito?"
- Reception. What started out as an $800 room turned into mandatory booze minimum, food minimum and staff minimum. There was non stop line on the bar all night, but we still didn't hit it because the bar couldn't sell drinks fast enough. (In defense of the GM, she did take this part of the bill off conceding we did try to drink to the unreachable money line). The snacks were laughable. Bagged lays potato chips, costco cookies, single plate of actual made cheesecake finger bites. I'll leave out the actual bill on that but it was 10 fold what the food cost.
I'm leaving out a dozen stories, and NOTHING could have ruined that day. It was a wonderful day despite the hotel's lack of interest in hosting us. The hotel is genuinely historic and wonderful and a great venue. There's so much potential there, SO MUCH POTENTIAL. But I objectively feel like the staff doesn't care, isn't being taken care of by management, something because they are trying to run it into the ground with the lack of service and general apathy.
It's a 5 star hotel with Motel 6 service. Run while you can.