Questions and Answers

Hello from beautiful Casablanca,

I was staying – as a SPG loyalist – at Le Meridien N’Fis, and what happened amazes me, so not angers me. I had a pretty long traveling day with a delayed flight and a VISA outage in Europe where I – as a European VISA card user – had major problems with. Fortunately, I do have a MasterCard, so all was fine.

From the airport to the hotel, it’s only five minutes driving, but being tired and all, I was ripped off by paying 200 dirham (approx. 20 dollars). I checked in the hotel, was hungry, and ordered room service. Forty minutes later a guy came with the room service, and asked me to pay cash only (the woman on the phone said it would be put on the room), so I found it strange as I only had 70 dirham left (a little less than 10 dollars). The price was 170 dirham, but the guy then told me to give the 70 to him. Which I did, thinking it was going to be subtracted from the total bill upon check-out.

So, I checked out and it was not subtracted from the total bill, and once I mentioned this to the reception they did not believe me. Basically, they called me a liar, and it really upset me. I still had to pay the 170 dirham, and the guy – I think – thought the 70 dirham as a “tip”, but it’s quite unusual to tip hotel staff, right? Plus, a total bill of 170 dirham, and tipping an extra 70 dirham, is 40% tip! Quite unusual, I’d say!

When I asked for the manager, the woman behind the reception got very nonchalant, and just said, the manager “was not here”, while checking her phone. I’m not going to break my neck over 70 dirham, but the way I was being treated as a customer and hotel guest is just beyond my mind. So not SPG / Le Meridien-worthy …

How would you have handled such a situation?

Could it have been a miscommunication/language barrier? I think your guess that the staff member thought it was a tip is probably accurate…