With a relatively captive audience, it almost seemed like the hotel restaurant had little incentive to provide proper service. In addition, it wasn't the first year the restaurant's service had failed on multiple levels. Will it ever change?
During the last several days, I attended a convention at the Best Western Royal Plaza & Trade Center in Marlborough. The main restaurant for lunch and dinner within the hotel is the All Star Bar & Grill. Due to the scheduling of the convention, time for lunch and dinner was somewhat limited, so many of the participants chose to dine at the hotel rather than drive elsewhere. They have a rather simple menu, from chicken tenders to burgers, nachos to steak tips.
Now, connected to the Trade Center, you would expect this hotel often hosts numerous conventions, so that the restaurant would be used to dealing with large crowds of customers. It is more of a medium-sized restaurant, and based on their menu, they should be able to handle a full house, especially if they do so on a regular basis. And if they had service issues before, you would expect they would work to correct those problems to prevent them from happening again.
However, the restaurant failed. The same way they failed last year. They didn't learn anything from their prior failures.
Last year, at the same convention, I and many other participants, encountered multiple service issues. Lengthy wait times, receiving the wrong dish, lost orders, surly servers, and more. This year, it was as if nothing changed. All of the same service problems, and plenty of irate customers. I had service e issues last year and once again, had them this year too. Little seemed to be done to remedy problems or alleviate dissatisfied customers. A total failure, for a second year in a row.
This is unacceptable, especially for a restaurant which frequently deals with conventions. If they didn't have a captive audience, they would have very little business. And I suspect that next year, that "captive audience" is going to find ways to work around the restaurant, such as dealing more with delivery services, or sending someone out on a take-out run. I suspect this restaurant isn't going to change, and will continue to disappoint people in the future too.
This is a big problem in the US, although much less so in other countries. Believe it or not, it has improved a bit, at least for some hotel chains. Marriott seems to be firing on all cylinders with respect to their restaurant and bar program. You're not going to find SYSCO frozen garbage dumped into fryolaters - instead each menu is tightly tailored to the particular region where the hotel is located. Local beers, local seafood, even local distilled spirits! Hilton lags far behind but has made gains over the 80s and early 90s. The shocker is places like the Intercontinental which hold such promise, with exciting and interesting menus, but fall apart when it comes to just appalling service.
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