Historian Ambeth Ocampo hopes a five-star luxury hotel in Pasay can continue providing premiere service to its guests after experiencing long queues at counters.
The historian last Friday shared his experience when he checked in at Sofitel Manila where he was greeted with a “long line” of guests at the counter.
“Sofitel Manila has the worst check-in experience. A long line with three personnel, each taking 16 minutes per guest. Getting to your room [will] definitely be paradise,” he wrote.
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His post caught the attention of Sofitel, which responded in the comments section.
“We are sorry to hear about your experience at one of our hotels. We take your concerns seriously and thank you for raising this issue with us,” it said, tagging him in its response.
“Your feedback has been forwarded to our Customer Care team to look into. They will be in touch as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience,” the hotel team added.
Ocampo told the hotel that while it has a “nice” staff, the “long wait” of guests was also what he experienced in a previous stay.
“I had the same experience last year, even with online check-in. I was being passed from online check-in counter to the normal counter with the long line. Little or no improvement,” the historian responded to the hotel team’s comment.
Ocampo shared another picture of the counter when he checked out on Saturday.
“Just when I thought check-in at Sofitel Manila couldn’t get worse than it is. This is check out just now. Looks like an airport counter with delayed flights,” he wrote in another post.
“Sofitel commented on yesterday’s IG [Instagram] post but didn’t get in touch as they promised. PR lang. Sad that Sofitel is a victim of its own success, they can do better,” the historian added.
PR is short for press release. It can also refer to public relations.
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By Sunday, Ocampo informed his followers that the hotel had acted on his posts about “long lines for check-in and check-out.”
“Left photo was check out at noon yesterday Saturday, right was check out today at 11:30 Sunday,” he explained.
“I hope both photos were not happenstance and that management continues to improve on providing 5-star [five-star] service,” the historian added.
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Fellow historian Xiao Chua also took notice of Ocampo’s post.
“When I go there, the lobby is like the Aurora Music Festival, hahaha,” he commented, citing the annual music and arts festival in Clark, Pampanga.
Sofitel is a known luxury hotel that describes itself as a “cultural oasis where elegance meets the sparkling water of the bay.”
It prides itself in delivering the Filipino brand of hospitality and the French joie de vivre, being under the Sofitel hotel chain of AccorHotels, a French multinational hospitality company.
The hotel was recently nominated in the 2024 Travel + Leisure Luxury Awards Asia Pacific for Best City Hotel, Best Hotel Pool and Best Hotel General Manager.
