My husband and I recently spent a weekend in Al Husn to celebrate my husband’s birthday and for our dinner in Asia restaurant on November 11 I requested to have a special table decoration or a cake for my husband. I was there in person when the receptionist in Al Husn made a call to pass my request to Asia yet when we went for the dinner, nothing was made to make that dinner special in any way. After a cake of my choice was served and my husband didn’t get anything at all, I spoke to the manager of Asia if my husband was getting any special cake or at least a candle. He answered they did not receive ANY special requests regarding our dinner and he didn’t even offer to make up for it by preparing at least a last moment birthday candle. The only thing he could say was “It’s not our fault, there’s nothing registered in our system”. He didn’t care about how it made us feel and didn’t try to fix this situation.

When I went back and spoke to the person in Al Husn reception who personally passed my request to the restaurant, he was unable to explain what went wrong. Instead, he began to lie to me. At first he said that

– the restaurant wasn’t sure what was the special occasion and they didn’t want to write a wrong message on the cake (for example, “happy anniversary” instead of “happy birthday”). So they chose to do nothing instead. Such a ridiculous lie, since the restaurant manager himself told me they had no request on ANY nature marked in their system),

– It was my fault since I didn’t tell him explicitly it was for a birthday (quite an arrogant thing to say as I still remember how I said “it’s my husband’s birthday and I want to make a surprise for him” and how he passed this message over the phone to the restaurant repeating my exact words including “birthday” keyword),

– when I made my request, I told him “Every day is a special occasion, let’s celebrate!” and he didn’t understand I was serious about it…

Instead of simply apologizing (to err is human and I can understand it), he kept on telling me one lie after another and after that last phrase I got *really* annoyed with his blatant arrogance and taking me for an idiot. I told him “I’m really disappointed that you don’t understand English” to which he replied “So your husband doesn’t understand English?”

I could go on and on, but the bottom line is that I find this kind of “service” unacceptable for a 5* hotel and Shangri La chain in particular. Actually, I find it unacceptable for any hotel! We had great experience in other Shangri La hotels but unfortunately this one wasn’t one of them. No one has apologized to me for ruined special occasion, offered and solution or tried to make up for it. No one seemed to care at all.

I had to insist that a birthday cake would be served at least for our in-room breakfast and while doing that, I wasn’t even sure if I was understood or not.

I hope that in the future they will hire more professional people or at least train them how to do their job.