Property: Sofitel Melbourne
Status: Accor Plus Platinum
Rate: Accor Plus Flexible Rate ($320/night)
Room booked: Superior room
Room upgraded/type: No
Early check in/late out: Arrived at around 2pm and no problem checking in at this time. Checked out at 12pm.
Welcome drink: Yes, in app
Welcome gift: Chocolate coated pretzels in room
Just got back home from a 2 night stay here for a short work trip. During the first night, there was a ticking noise coming from the wardrobe that I suspect was coming from a motion sensor for the in-wardrobe lighting system. It would tick ~10 times with 5 second intervals, stop for a while and then repeat. This really disrupted my sleep, and yes I could have contacted them during the night, but the likely outcome would have been moving rooms after midnight, which didn't appeal. I called the front desk first thing in the morning to explain the issue, and was told that someone from the engineering team would fix the issue. At the time, they did enquire when I would be back, and advised it would be late evening. At no point was an apology or change of room offered - simply engineering to attend the room.
I had a busy day at work, followed by a dinner, so got back to the room at around 9pm. I fully expected a note to have been left, a voicemail on the in-room phone, or contact via my mobile/email advising that engineering had attended and resolved the issue. There was nothing. No communication whatsoever. I called the front desk at 9pm, asked for an update and told them the lack of communication was incredibly disappointing. The front desk told me that it is not protocol to leave a note in such circumstances. I told them that was a service failure on their part. I was assured the clicking noise had been resolved.
I'm sure you can guess where this is going, but by 2am I was woken by the clicking noise. After tossing for a few hours, I called the night manager at 5am and advised him about the ongoing issue. He proactively offered a room change, not realising I was checking out that day, which I declined. He then offered a 50% discount on the second night, which I told him deserved to be extended to the first night given the same issue. This was agreed to. The final outcome was acceptable, but the recovery took far too long, the communication was poor and I would have much rather had 2 decent nights sleep than a 50% discount on the stay.
The club lounge was nice, but access was a bit of a pain. The lifts too were incredibly slow despite their being 8 of them. Service in the lounge was great, with the waitress remembering me by name at breakfast on the second morning and not requesting my room number. That was impressive.
Not sure that I'd return here to be honest. The rooms are spacious, but looking a little tired. The shub was incredibly narrow, and I'm not exactly large (6 foot, 70kg). No upgrade received as a platinum either.
