HotelChatter

Meet Brian McMahan. He's a road warrior, and a patient man so he doesn't set his expectations terribly high for hotels. But when they do fall short, be believes in making it known.

At a recent five-night stay at the Holiday Inn Atlanta Airport North he'd had enough by night three. We can only imagine the look on his face that led the manager to ask, "Should I get a notebook?" when Brian asked if he could tell him about his stay so far.

And well, yes, the staffer should get a notebook. Starting with rude check-in staff, indifferent sales people more interested in commiserating with each other about their colds than in helping Brian arrange a meeting room, a loudly dripping shower, malfunctioning air conditioning (in Georgia in July!) and a dirty toilet with the towels stacked on it (the towel bar had been ripped off the wall), Brian had a whole list of complaints.

The manager duly made his notes then promptly had Brian moved to an upgraded room (one wonders why, as a platinum member of the Priority Club he wasn't automatically upgraded to begin with) and loaded his Priority Club account with 50,000 points.

We don't know about you, but for that kind of swag, we'd deal with annoyances like that for a day or two. While we're in no hurry to stay there, a letter (the old-fashioned kind in the mail) arrived shortly after Brian's stay, apologizing and encouraging him to return. Maybe they put a towel rack back on the wall after all.