Two Way Hard Three | Las Vegas Casino & Design Blog

Great, well-written, and polite letter. Will be very interested to see her response.

Well done. Problems are to be expected but with an opening as high profile as this, you would think they'd be a little more attentive. Lets hope they get things in order.

Posted by Dave

Good, reasonable letter. The response you get will say a great deal about the management. Some of the problems seem to be simple technical issues, while others, like the need to take a cab with your bags to Aria, are organizational problems that can be corrected.

Um...I've attended many hotel grand openings, including Bellagio, Wynn, Encore, and Aria. New hotels are full of problems. Over the course of the next several months, most of these things will be fixed. I recall over 1000 people being locked out of their rooms at Bellagio, due to a computer glitch. At Wynn it took over an hour to get bags up to the rooms. And this past week at Aria, they couldn't even issue room keys for a extended period of time, because the system that makes activates the keys was down and not functioning. These are normal things for brand new hotels and systems, you have several problems, you have brand new buildings, that people are not familiar with, and you have many new employees, several of which I encountered, were not even from the hotel business, prior to this one. I had someone so rude to the front desk behind me, that I gave them a piece of my mind, at Aria. They proceeded to tell the agent, how horrible service had been since they hit the garage, I told them this was a brand new hotel, and if they wanted perfect service, then they should have stayed at Bellagio, not a brand new hotel on opening day. Now I realize that Vdara has been open for a few weeks, but a few weeks is nothing in this resort business. Wynn almost 5 years old, and I still see problems. I'm sure the hotel manager is getting a ear full from current guest on issues, let alone hearing from previous guest and hearing their issues. I don't know, maybe I'm too easy on people, I just don't see anything super out of the ordinary here where I'd spend the time and energy to let them know, that their brand new hotel has problems, they already know this. What I found interesting, while I didn't love the buildings, I actually found the service at both Vdara and Aria to be on par with Wynn during their opening. In fact, I'd say the housekeeping dept was much better at Aria and Vdara than during Wynn's opening. I'm also hearing there are some several problems with the server based slot system at Aria, tickets not being printed out, system crashes etc. This too shall pass. Lets give City Center six months, and then give it a review, that's much more fair. I had dinners that took almost 3 hours at Aria, but these things will be resolved in time. Checkin times will with get shorter, food will come out faster, tickets will print, sinks will drain, all of these items will be corrected in the coming months. Like I say, maybe i'm just to laid back, and easy going, but I saw nothing out of the ordinary at City Center, besides the lack of experience that all employees face opening new properties.

FWIW, the ARIA bell desk offered to have my bags brought to Vdara's auto valet (where i parked it four days prior.) I figured coordination would be more of a hassle than simply carrying them myself and did so.

Posted by Hunter

Yes Brian, I think you're letting them off the hook too easy.

As long as they charge market rates for their services, they deserve to be compared to others that do the same. They're not saying 'come see a preview of our hotel and pay less', they are saying 'we are setting a new standard for service on the Las Vegas Strip'.

If I was the GM, I'd want to know about this stuff - that's why I wrote the letter. As I said, I'm not looking for anything from them... but I certainly *do* think that people should know that it's not ready for prime-time.

And BTW, having to be escorted to your room each time you wanted to enter was a royal pain in the ass.

Posted by Hunter

And yes, I will try CityCenter hotels several times in 2010. If things improve, as they probably will, I may start to recommend Vdara but until then, I cannot.

Hunter, excellent. It reminded me of a letter I wrote to Richard Cotter, Executive VP Wynn Las Vegas several months after Wynn opened. Cotter's reply was textbook perfect because he specifically acknowledged each of my issues and apologized for them.
On a subsequent trip to Wynn, later in 2005, everything was exceptional, so I wrote Cotter again to tell him so. I concluded the letter by telling him he didn't need to take the time to reply, that I just wanted him to know how satisfied I was with Wynn. Well, he did reply, saying how much the kind words were appreciated.

Those experiences confirmed to me that Steve Wynn and his staff are totally committed to exceeding customer expectations. I hope you get similar attention from Vdara.

Well, what do you know? We discussed this here at the time:
http://www.ratevegas.com/blog/2005/07/wynn_las_vegas_18.html

Its like a new restaurant, besides these grand openings, I try to NEVER eat any place that's just opened. I try to give them a few months to get things the way they need to be. Typical big business, where you get different stories from different people, but as with Chuck, they told me, they bell man could take my bags, and "hand them off" to a Aria bell boy. After I saw how short the walk was, I just lugged my crap over, and went about my day.

I'm sure having to have them let you into your room was a pain, but they did upgrade the room, and give you a credit. That's all one can expect.

Posted by Hunter

They didn't have much choice about the move - my room wasn't really habitable without a working lock.

Let's be honest - a $40 credit, while better than nothing, is a token gesture. If I was working during the time I was waiting for the lock people I would have billed more than twice that.

So many of the rooms have construction defects (I heard from quite a few people about similar problems) that it's hard to believe they did any sort of serious inspection and the place has been open since 12/2. That's certainly enough time to determine if some rooms should be closed or fixed, especially in a slow period with low occupancy.

This is not MGM Mirage's first rodeo. The vast majority of the employees came from other properties. They need to be doing it BETTER than anyone else given the incredible obstacles they need to overcome with their debt service going into 2010 and beyond. An undercurrent of bad news about a hotel can seriously damage its word of mouth.

Every new hotel opening should be better and smoother than the one before it. That's not unreasonable to expect from "one of the world's leading and most respected companies". 'Other people sucked when they opened too' is not a good enough excuse for me.

Also - did anyone *ever* get turndown at Vdara? I never did in three room nights despite it supposedly being part of the 'resort fee'.

I would guess the GM wishes she had more time before the opening. It is likely that upper MGM management pushed to get it open at all costs. Those decision makers should really be the ones held accountable, but I'm not sure how to make that happen. Of course, if Vdara or Aria only get 4 stars instead of 5, I suspect somebody will lose their job.

Hunter could view the $159 nights as a soft-opening discount, but for $309 I would have held them to every service claim they made in the marketing materials. I have no problem letting people know my displeasure when someone fails to deliver an implied level of service that I have consciously decided to pay more for.

I stayed at both Encore and Palazzo about a month after opening and had no issues. I will be staying at Aria next month and expect most of the major issues have been resolved. If not, I will let them know and probably not frequent CC for some time.

Posted by Hunter

I'm certainly not trying to say this is all Lester's fault, she's just the person that gets to deal with it.

My message was supposed to be courteous. Bottom line: "this shit was broken in your hotel and it shouldn't have been and maybe you'd like to know about it".

Anyway, I'm starting to feel like I'm screeching about this and that's not what I intended. I expect I'll get a nice form letter in reply, which would be fine. If I get nothing, well, that'd be really bad. If I get something more, i.e. a personal response, that would be fantastic.

In regards to your video checkout problems, I haven't actually checked out from a hotel in years [maybe a 100 stays]. I've never had an issue with being overcharged; although I do confess to checking my account balance on the TV the night before.. Sometimes I even remember to leave the keycards.

On an only tangentially related note, Cris Angel said he is tweaking Believe to to add 7 new illusions in February to the 4 tricks that he currently performs. The point being that sometimes it takes longer than others to work out the minor issues. I certainly hope it doesn't take a year to work out all the Elvis issues.

Hunter - Don't laugh. Jen was told even though it was included in the Resort Fee, you have to request turn down service, as well as the free bottle water. :) We did get turn down service, and we got it one of the two nights at Aria.

I don't know how many of you have cruised before, but I've thought for years that the housekeeping dept's in Vegas could learn a lot from the cruise companies. The room stewards on cruise ships are just amazing, its almost like they have a camera in your room, and know when you're gone. You never see them, but they are always stopping buy and making things perfect.

Posted by Hunter

FWIW, we did get turndown at ARIA. That part worked perfectly (something that often doesn't work right at WLV).

Brian-

"Its like a new restaurant, besides these grand openings, I try to NEVER eat any place that's just opened. I try to give them a few months to get things the way they need to be."

Funny that you mention this, since I went to The Strip last night to try Silk Road. There were definitely some service problems that hopefully will be fixed in the coming weeks, as well as other weird issues, like being charged for an entree while receiving an appetizer, that I hope they'll examine.

All in all, I liked the flavors of the food here. And hopefully with a more easily understood menu and more solid service, this will be a top-notch restaurant.

Hunter-

Your letter was very polite and most certainly appropriate. Hopefully, Vdara will respond properly and address these problems.

Posted by mike_ch

It's not just Hunter that isn't happy. Vdara's rating on yelp is 2.5 stars after 3 reviews and their TripAdvisor rating is doing better, though if you read the reviews people do have problems, they're just more forgiving than Hunter and the Yelpers.

Hunter, how was the spa, btw? Basically none of the hotel reviews yet mention the spa, guess because it's probably the least notable of the three(!) spas at CityCenter. I know you got walkthroughs of all three (right?), why did you choose Vdara over Aria? (we'll just assume price wrote out MO.)

Very nice letter - hopefully you get a response. Appears that the FD manager was trying to assist you - which i see as a possitive.

Also - is there direct access (walkway) to aria and the casino. I read there is a walkway to bellagio, is the correct ?

Great site

Posted by Hunter

The spa at Vdara was very clean and nice but also very small. I was the only person inside in the ~2 hours I was there.

Posted by Hunter

There is direct access to Aria from Vdara, yes. It's outside and uncovered but not far at all.

There is also a walkway to Bellagio, yes. It's partially covered and also fairly short.

Thanks for the quick response. Will be in vegas end of Jan and will check out CC.
Any restaurant recommendations for CC ?

hopefully even if the GM does not see this letter (by the way she is featured in the new Vegas magazine) - they must have some e-commerce manager that scans vegas sites daily looking for sites like yours and reviewing comments.

Posted by Hunter

My favorites were Julian Serrano and Jean-Georges Steakhouse.

A well written letter Mr Hunter, as a former manager in the customer service biz its letters like yours that make a difference. It's funny when we would get a letter in that was clearly fishing for free stuff, and then one that was generally disappointed and wanting to bring to our attention problems. Those are the ones that hit home and make a difference ultimately

Some guy posted a video detailing his Aria problems.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XXqgwgFQ7s

some time later they realized that their room was actually 22124...

Posted by Hunter

It's funny you say that - the room numbers at ARIA are such that you could make that exact mistake.

here is a thought outside the box -
as there has been some talk about Gilley's coming to TI... well maybe this a completely new Gilley's. A collaboration between Gilley's and Cirque du Soleil, in support of a new Cirque themed "Urban Cowboy" at TI. Imagine the possibilities...
1. Cirque ditching the music theme, and going with a whole genre - movies (just like broadway)
2. Of course the mechanical bull would play the central figure of the production.
3. Other ideas from the movie, such as Bud dangling from the fractional distillation tower, aka, The "Frac Tower of Terror"...
4. And... other scenes, such as the "Double-Wide of Death"

This would open up Cirque to a whole new audience.

Merry Christmas!

While glitches are to be expected, one would have hoped that this was anticipated and rectifying them quickly was part of the opening plan.

Since you were a paying customer and paying full-rates, you had a right to expect full-service. Given the number of problems, a refund of a room-night would have been in order.

I can't be so quick to hold the inability to transfer guests from one building to another as they probably were not anticipating people splitting their stay between multiple CityCenter hotels in one visit.

However... it is obviously something they should address.

December 31, 2009

Dear Mr. Hillegas:

Thank you for providing me with details about issues that you encountered during your recent visits to Vdara. Feedback such as yours is critical to evaluating and enhancing our hotel operations.

I am truly sorry that your experience was less than satisfactory. I have since fully researched this matter and communicated individually with my staff and CityCenter management to address the concerns that you raised. Additionally, please be assured that it is Vdara’s policy to respond to all guest concerns with a personalized response.

I apologize for the inconvenience caused by your door lock not being repaired promptly. Being a new system, with more advanced technology, we experienced some technical glitches and have been working steadily to address. We also have established procedures to ensure this will not happen in the future. In regards to the response time to fix the problem, we greatly apologize for the added inconvenience and have addressed that with our team.

In response to your concerns about the phone message, your interaction with our phone representative clearly did not meet our service standards. We have since increased the number of representatives who answer the phones at Vdara to handle the high volume of callers, and conducted a re-training program with our switchboard employees to ensure that the service is consistently prompt and efficient.

I’m glad to hear that you enjoyed your upgraded room, but apologize about the dirty windows. We have systems in place for constant maintenance and cleaning but unfortunately the rain around that time period impacted the cleanliness.

We have received many compliments regarding our in-room service, and I am pleased to hear that you enjoyed your meal. We do log and monitor food service timing and ask that our staff alert management whenever they fall behind in service. Please be assured that the delay in your service was a very rare exception to our standard delivery practices.

In response to your concern about just one wastebasket in the room and the stopper in the sink being in disrepair, we have since addressed these matters with both our Housekeeping and Engineering personnel. Each room is equipped with two wastebaskets, and I apologize for the oversight by our Housekeeping staff. Additionally, the sink stopper has since been repaired.

Since opening ARIA, we also have addressed the needs of guests to transfer luggage between Vdara to ARIA and apologize for any inconvenience caused.

Many of the concerns that you raised are symptoms of a new operation that we are constantly evaluating and refining to suit our guests’ needs. I am hopeful that your overall opinion of Vdara is not confined to your recent experience with us, and that you will visit us again at some point in the future.

Thank you again for your letter. I greatly appreciate your input and the opportunity to put it to use ensuring consistently superior service for our guests.

Cordially,

Angela Lester
General Manager – Vdara Hotel & Spa

Do you have her email address? I've been asking for it at the Vdara and no one will give it to me. I wanted to write her an email as well about my experience at Vdara.

Posted by Hunter

I'd suggest sending a 'real' letter to the hotel. That typically gets the most attention.

Maybe you're right. They kept on putting me on hold and asking why I needed to email her. So they suggested me emailing the front desk girl I was talking to and she will forward it to her. And I asked her how am I certain you are going to forward it? She just said it will be forwarded.

I did enjoy your letter...you were too nice haha

Highlight of my stay was sparks of fire coming from the microwave....it was like new years fireworks in my room lol

Living with a department head who works at Bellagio. They get a lot of email and a lot of just-short-of-death threats. There are a lot of crazies and already knowing her name is the first step. We know what she looks like - Step 2. You can see where this leads.

Anywho.

Your email would have been forwarded. She's not Tom Cruise, it's her job to keep her ear to the grindstone.

Your stay at Vdara seems like a dream compared to mine. I have a horror story for you. I would like to warn anyone who is considering staying at Vdara not to. Here we go....We stayed at Vdara for two nights (189.00/Fri night, $199/Sat. night). When we booked the room we informed the agent that we are cash paying guests and we do not bring our credit cards with us to Vegas (my fiancee LOVES to gamble and this just makes it safer). So we payed for the first night up front on our debit card and told the agent we would be paying cash for our 2nd night and incidentals when checking in. This was suppose to be noted on our reservation. One week later, we show up at Vdara and find out that we "need a credit card to check in" and there was no notes on our reservation. After we explained to the front desk our situation and how we had arranged everything with the booking agent, the manager on duty that night decided it would be okay and they'll make an exception. Whatever! Now here comes the icing on the cake! We came with about $1,000...about $500 in cash to pay for the 2nd night and deposit for incidentals and about another $500 on our debit card for pleasure, food, gas, etc. When we checked in we owed the hotel $468.00 (we payed them with all our cash). When checking our debit card's availability on Saturday afternoon, we found out that Vdara put an authorization for the same amount on our debit card. We only had $22 on our debit card!!! And we had no cash since we gave everything to the front desk. So basically Vdara took the entire stays amount, x2. We were furious because we knew that even if they took that authorization off our card, it would take several days for our cash to be available to us. We had no idea what to do. We were in Vegas with no credit cards and Vdara took all our money. When we checked in we payed for everything up front and then they went behind our backs and authorized our card for the same amount after we had payed for everything up front. We called down and spoke with the manager (who was not helpful at all). She basically told us that she made an exception for us and we could go screw ourselves. My fiancee argued with her for about 20 minutes before she realized the situation we were in. But she still didn't give two sh*ts that all our money was gone and all we could do now is sit in our hotel room and stare at each other. We didn't even have enough money to eat. Please keep in mind that we usually stay at Wynn or The Hotel, we always travel with just cash and we've never had anything like this happen to us before. So basically all the manager at Vdara would do was give us back our $200 cash that we left for incidentals and remove the authorization (which stayed on for several days). Even with our $200 cash back, we had to keep in mind that $90 of that $200 had to go towards filling up the gas tank of our Escalade so we could get back home. We ended up leaving Saturday night because we didn't have enough funds for the rest of our stay. Our entire trip was ruined and Vdara did absolutely nothing to compensate us for their huge mistake. Even though we explained how we were basically stranded now all the manager did was give us back our $200 incidental deposit which was rightfully ours to begin with since they authorized our debit card for incidentals when we checked in. I'm not even going to bother writing to the manager of Vdara to complain because they don't give a doo-doo. And there is absolutely nothing they can do for me. I will never stay there again (even if they offered me a lifetime of free stays in their penthouse), and I will warn everyone I know and come across to never stay there either. Oh and get this, they don't even have 24 hour in-room dining even though their menu says "24 hours". THIS IS VEGAS and you're located on the strip, how could you not have 24 hour in-room dining? We had to walk across to Aria to pick up our late night dinner on Fri night and our order was wrong (but that's a whole different story). So basically the people who work at Vdara are one-wayers, they don't give a doo-doo about their guests and only themseleves. SCREW YOU VDARA!

Posted by mike_ch

Szannee, take it from an expert: I saw your future difficulties right at the start of your story because of the "I do not bring my credit cards to Vegas" thing. I have seen one-star rants about Wynn and other hotels from people who come to town on the same principle and then find that they can't check in and have to spend a day and a half getting their affairs in order.

They need some kind of plastic to have incidentals like room charges or stolen furniture covered and the like put against, and I would recommend you get a card with a low limit for the use of travel if you wish to take the (admittedly wise) move of not being able to access your next egg in the resorts. A card with something like $500 on it should help you check in while making sure that you don't gamble your savings away.

Geez, only $500 in spending money, not enough in your account to cover emergencies or errors, can't control your credit spending, and yet you drive an Escalade. Something's not adding up here.

While I think Suzanne's Vdara issue was a gross miscommunication understandable in a situation as unique (or ridiculous) as her's, it's definitely not Vdara with the problems here.

You say you usually stay at Wynn (or the hotel), but I have known Wynn and Encore to do basically the same thing as Vdara at check in. We stayed at Encore for 6 nights, and had to pay the FULL room price, plus deposit, etc. We had an offer, but the fine print states you must pay for the full amount of the stay at check in, which gets refunded at check out. So our room which was supposed to cost us around $500 total, cost us quite a bit more at check in than we were expecting (it was over $2000 and seemed to keep growing every time they checked their computer). This was our fault for not checking into it more, but thankfully the people at Encore handled the situation for us, got us an upgraded room, and apologized for the misunderstanding (apparently it had happened several times that day). So, I really don't understand your logic here that this is all Vdara's fault. I don't know a hotel in Vegas that just takes cash and not a credit card.

Wow! Just WOW! My recommendation would simply be this. If you or your traveling companion isn't responsible enough to travel to Las Vegas with your credit cards, then I'd recommend you don't go at all. Traveling without credit cards just doesn't make any sense these days. For one thing, assuming your responsible adults, its 1000 times safer. We're becoming a cashless society, traveling without credit cards is getting almost impossible. And what if the cash got lost or stolen? How would you even be able to pay for gas to drive home?