Fairmont Ambassador Seoul in Seoul

This past Chinese New Year, my family and I stayed at this new hotel in Yeouido for four nights. Honestly, I was absolutely fuming from the moment we checked in on the first day.

Having stayed in five-star hotels for many years, this was a first for me.

My family of five had booked a "Premier Two-Bedroom Suite" through Trip.com, which clearly stated '1 King bed + 2 Twin beds' (highlighting this point). However, during check-in, the initial female front desk agent insisted that the maximum occupancy for our room was 3 people. We were completely bewildered, wondering if that meant the king bed was only for one person?! We began to argue that this was unreasonable, but she stubbornly maintained that it was their policy and we’d have to book an additional room. She even scribbled down prices for us, with the cheapest room being 3100 RMB per night…

At this point, a male front desk agent, who had been jovially chatting with a Caucasian guest the entire time, came over. He introduced himself as the manager and then mumbled something to the female agent. He then offered us another option: an extra charge for the additional two people, which he explained was a certain amount – still cheaper than booking another room. His Korean accent was incredibly strong, and I found it very difficult to understand. So, while I was painstakingly trying to follow along and calculate prices and exchange rates, my mom brilliantly suggested we look at a picture of the room. The manager then went into a small room nearby, retrieved an iPad, and showed us a picture. And what a surprise it was!

It wasn't even the same room type at all!!! As I mentioned, we had booked a suite with two separate rooms, but the picture he showed us was of a single room with a king bed. No wonder he said it could only accommodate a maximum of three people! It turned out they had messed up our room reservation from the very beginning. After this clarification, the manager didn't seem particularly apologetic, just mumbled something about an “error” in their hotel system and third-party platforms. He then stated that we only needed to add an extra person charge because the maximum occupancy was now 4 people. I mean, come on?! This whole ordeal had already taken half an hour, and I was incredibly tired and annoyed, but I tried to keep my temper in check and asked if they could compensate us by waiving the extra person charge or offering us complimentary breakfast, especially since their mistake had wasted so much of our time. He just smiled and said, “NO 😊.” Fine, whatever, let’s just get this done. I was too exhausted to argue further, just hoping to finalize things quickly now that it was (seemingly) sorted.

But wait, it got even more ridiculous. He then fiddled with his computer for a bit and asked us, “Is it okay if we switch to a different room tomorrow? Meaning, we stay in this one tonight and then move to another for the remaining three nights, because they’re fully booked.” We stared at him in disbelief. He must have thought we didn't understand, so he repeated, rather meanly, “Is it okay…?” My mom immediately said, “We refuse!” He looked at me, seemingly incredulous that someone would refuse him so directly, like a baffled potato with charmingly small, wronged eyes. I cut to the chase and said we wouldn't accept that. We booked this room a month ago; how can you say there's no availability now? Just process our check-in quickly! Shocked by our firm stance, he then started to theatrically say, “Okay, okay, let me check, check.” He pretended to check for less than half a minute and then announced, oh, he managed to find an available room for us. I directly interrupted his self-congratulatory speech and asked for the room cards already, please, and three of them, thank you.

Final bizarre incident: After check-in, he was supposed to escort us to our room. We were dragging our luggage behind him when he pressed the elevator button. Then, it seemed he saw more people at the front desk or something and suddenly went back to the front desk for some unknown reason, completely leaving us stranded by the elevator. We couldn't even get into the elevator when it arrived (no room cards!). He finally came back to lead us to our room after two minutes of us just standing there…

⚠️The check-in process took almost an hour, and throughout the entire time, no one offered us water or a place to sit and rest. We had been traveling all day, were exhausted, and then had to stand for another hour.

I am truly speechless. First, they made a mistake with our room. Usually, even a three or four-star hotel in China would offer compensation, like a free room upgrade. Although our room might already be the highest category, as compensation, they couldn’t even waive one extra person charge or offer breakfast? For 6,000 RMB a night, is this the service we get?? With the extra person and breakfast, it would have been almost 8,000 RMB a night…

And I strongly suspect that the alleged lack of rooms, forcing us to switch the next day, was just a ploy to save the rooms for Caucasian guests. He even pretended to be polite when asking, probably not expecting us to be so blunt in our refusal. 👊🏼

💣In summary: Poor professionalism + low efficiency + mediocre attitude + suspected discrimination.

They cleaned my room, and somehow a vape pen appeared. When I told the hotel, they casually said someone from housekeeping must have accidentally left it behind after cleaning other rooms??? Don't stay here, just don't! It's terrible.