Customer Satisfaction Survey Card for Hotel Nikko, San Francisco CA

This year, while attending Dreamforce 2008, I stayed at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco. Overall, it's a very nice hotel, although a bit too lavish for my taste. The spacious lobby featured soothing waterfalls running alongside marble staircases, a concierge with a lilting British accent (and really tight, curve-hugging slacks), and gorgeous cherry wood furniture. The room had a large floor to ceiling window with a great view of the city, was reasonably sized and very clean. What's not to love?

Maybe I'm overly provincial, but I associate extravagance with excess and waste. When traveling, I normally go for the Motel 6 flavor. Cheap, economical and comfortable -- for a place that you're mostly just using to get a few hours of sleep. I'd normally drive right past the fancy schmancy Hotel Nikko with it's $210 per night room rate (and that's with my Dreamforce and AAA membership discount) -- unless I was trying to impress my date.

I assumed that any hotel in the middle of the city was going to be charging high rates. Certainly, all the hotels on the Dreamforce pre-registration list were in that price range. I figured that was just the price of a typical room in the city. So I was a little surprised to open the curtains in my hotel room, and see a large sign hanging from a hotel across the street: $55 per night. Ah well, it was too late to cancel my reservation at the Nikko ... I was checked in and unpacked. I opted to stay where I was and splurge for the week.

The difference between these two hotels, aside from the $155 / night price difference and aforementioned decor? Not as much as I'd hoped.

Hotel Nikko didn't have a Customer Satisfaction survey card for me to fill out, so I'll just have to blog it:

WiFi: FAIL
For $210/night, you’d think I’d be able to jump on to the internet for free, right? All of the public WiFi connections were blocked, and my only option was to subscribe to the In-Room WiFi connection … at $12.99 per night! Internet Highway Robbery! I couldn't justify spending that amount of money for 2-3 hours of internet usage (that's how many hours I planned on being in my room during the conference, across 5-days, awake and idle). Ergo, no blogging until I got home.

Comfort: FAIL
The room was beautiful, I'll certainly admit that. Large king-sized bed, big fluffy pillows (about 8 of them, 7 of which I had to throw on the floor each night ... because who needs that many pillows on their bed?), gorgeous wall-mounted flat screen TV, lots of mirrors, big roomy bathroom. But the bed was soooooooo uncomfortable; I tossed and turned all night long. Some of that was due to the time change, I'm sure. My body never really acclimated to the 3-hour time zone change and 1-hour shift to daylight savings. My eyes popped open at 4:00am each morning, and I never really got back to sleep. After a week of this, I’m utterly exhausted.

Technology: FAIL
The programming on the TV Remote Control was teh suck. This was the week of the 2008 presidential election, and I really wanted to channel surf all the networks to catch their coverage of this historic event. I was thwarted by the Hotel Nikko Remote Control.

Here is the remote control button combination I had to press to get CNN: POWER, MENU, DOWN, DOWN, DOWN, DOWN, DOWN, DOWN, DOWN, DOWN, DOWN, DOWN, DOWN, DOWN, DOWN, DOWN, DOWN, DOWN, DOWN, DOWN, DOWN, DOWN, DOWN, DOWN, RIGHT, SELECT.

Seriously. There was no way to select a channel number directly. You had to navigate through a mass of fee-based programs (movies, porn, and three screens of other crap) to find the free channel television networks. Even worse, once you were on a normal television channel, you couldn’t cycle to the next channel. You had to go back to the MENU option, and start all over from the beginning. So I couldn't pop from CNN to ABC, to CBS, to FOX, to NBC, to local ... it was just CRAZY!

Oh, and the fee-based movies? It cost me $14 to see Hancock, which I'd missed at the theatres and wanted to see. $14 ... that's twice what you'd pay to see it on a real movie screen. Yowzers.

Ammenities: OK
There was a 16 oz bottle of water at the bedside, a cylindrical, new age container – looked pretty cool. But it if you wanted to drink from it, you were charged $6.00. Hello? The 1-liter bottle that I bought at the airport (still over-priced at $3.75) was filled with water that came from the same bottling company – how does Hotel Nikko justify charging that much money for that little water?

So why isn't this category a FAIL? I gave this one a passing “OK” grade, because the room did come with a free iron, ironing board, hair dryer, coffee maker, and coffee. I didn't use any of these, but it was nice to see I didn’t have to swipe a credit card to use them.

I did appreciate the New York Times dropped daily at my door.

Environmental Conscious: FAIL
Hotel Nikko had signs posted in the bathroom, asking patrons to help with the hotel's efforts to "Go Green". If you planned to re-use your bathroom towel, just hang it from the hook on the back of the door. I'm a eco-concious American, so I did that. Every morning. And yet, every morning Housekeeping took my towel from the hanger, and replaced them with fresh, clean ones.

A little card on the bed stand read, “Leave this card on your pillow if you want your sheets changed. Otherwise, leave it on the bed stand and we will leave your current sheets. Thank you for helping us Go Green”, or words to that effect. Housekeeping stripped my bed each morning and changed the sheets (don't ask me how I know, I won't confess; what happens in San Francisco stays in San Francisco).

The first day, I left a $3 tip for Housekeeping, and the gal came and thanked me personally. I had the impression that not many people leave tips for Housekeeping these days. I wonder if the reason she kept making my bed with clean sheets and replacing towels was because of those tips.

Security: FAIL
I liked the in-room security safe. After all my other experiences, however, I was surprised I didn’t have to stuff quarters into it in order to make it work.

The FAIL grade on security came Tuesday night, when I finished my dinner, reached for my wallet ... only to find I didn't have it on me. I had accidentally left my wallet (and room key) in my hotel room! My waitress at the nearby diner was gracious enough to let me run back to the hotel (I left my Blackberry as a collateral hostage). Once at the hotel, I approached the front desk clerk and explained my situation. She asked for my room number, confirmed my last name, and gave me a new room key.

Huh? No “please confirm your mother’s maiden name”, or “do you know the last 4 numbers of the credit card you reserved with?”, or “This is Bruno from our Security Staff. He’ll accompany you to your room and let you in. Once there, he’ll need to see your ID before we can give you a replacement room key.”

I appreciate getting a replacement room key (and my wallet) so easily. I was able to rush back across the street to clear my dinner tab. But the lack of security is a little concerning.

I should have tried the same thing the next night … "Hi, my name is Sonny Cloward, and I’ve left my wallet in my room … " =)

Overall, I enjoyed my stay, but I’m disappointed at the lack of amenities that come with the 4-night $620 price difference between Hotel Nikko and the dive across the street. I think next year I’ll stay at the dive, and that $620 I save can go toward something meaningful. Like getting Calista Carter hooked up with a phone she can Twitter from!