Best Western should take the franchise away from the owners of this property.

I booked this hotel for an 8 day stay in July, while I attended a trade show and scientific conference. This particular hotel advertises a variety of amenities, including air conditioning and a complimentary breakfast. When you phone, the message advertises that their rooms have been newly renovated.

So how was our room? We checked in at 1130 pm on a Thursday night. Despite the fact that the thermostat was set as cold as it could go and the central air unit was roaring, the room was hotter than 80 degrees, and very little cool air was coming out of the air vents. The carpets were heavily stained throughout. The bedspreads were stained. There was a foot diameter white crusty stain beneath the sink outside the bathroom, presumably caused by a sink that had been leaking for some time. The top drawer of the night stand between the two beds was coated in a red sticky residue - presumably from a drink that had dried. But the main problem was that the bathroom door was locked, and we couldn't get in. We called the front desk, and they asked us to try jimmying the lock open. We weren't about to do that, so they sent over a maintenance person, who tried jimmying it open, and eventually succeeded in getting us in, at 2 am.

The manager called to apologize at 9 am, waking us up. He was very courteous, and for our suffering gave us a whopping $25 discount on that night, and moved us to a suite for Saturday night. The suite was clean and the carpet had clearly been recently replaced - with the cheapest quality carpet imaginable - and they had not been properly laid because they didn't lie flat. The bedspreads must have been picked up surplus, because they were the cheapest and most inappropriate I've encountered in some time, and beneath them were thick, coarse fiber blankets. Worse, this room was even hotter than our previous dirty room: the thermostat read 80, but that was the high end of its range, and I developed a sweat standing in it. So I asked to get keys to whatever open rooms they had, and ended up looking at four different rooms in two different buildings. In every case, the thermostat had be set to as low as possible, and the temperature was above 80 degrees - at 10 am in the morning! So we decided to stay in the suite we had been assigned - which meant sweating continuously. I encountered other guests complaining at the front desk about 85 degree temperatures in their rooms.

It was a warm week in Salt Lake City, but I called six other downtown hotels and spoke with at least 15 people who were attending my conference, and no one else had any problem with controlling their room temperature. There was clearly a major problem with the air conditioning at the Best Western. Moreover, one of the managers indicated to me that this was not a new problem, but had been ongoing for some time. None of the staff had bothered to call an air conditioning maintenance company in response to all the complaints while I was staying there. My conclusion is that the owners/management decided that it was cheaper to just let their customers - who were unlikely to return in any case - swelter in the heat than to repair the air conditioning.

Sunday morning at 4 am I was awoken by intense thudding (like a body was being dropped onto the floor) and by shaking of my bed. I eventually realized from the shouting (which I could barely hear over the roar of the non-functioning ac) that there was a fight in the room next door. I called the front desk, and security came to my room 20 minutes later, came in and felt the thudding in my room, and then managed to get the thudding to stop about twenty minutes later.

Sunday morning I went to the office and complained vehemently to the manager, pointing out that they advertised air conditioning and were not providing it to any of the people in at least two of the five or six buildings on their property. The desk person told me that all the available rooms were going to be just as hot. I then went to have the complementary breakfast. It was 915 am Sunday morning, and a few other guests and I wandered around what seemed to be the breakfast room, but there was no food out. I went back to the desk, where a family from France was explaining that when they booked the hotel they were told there would be a complementary breakfast. The desk person told them that the breakfast ended at 9 am! I told the desk person that, in my 30+ years of traveling, I have never encountered a hotel with a complementary breakfast that ended at 9 am on a Sunday morning. The person at the desk scowled at me and said: "Sir, it's a **complementary** breakfast," with emphasis on complementary. Huh? I asked another desk person why on earth they would stop their complementary breakfast at 9 am on a Sunday, she explained "Because our regular restaurant is open until 1030 am. " So it was clear: they stopped their complementary breakfast before most of their customers were likely to wake up so that they'd have to pay for breakfast!!!

We moved next door to the Metropolitan hotel, which was $15/night cheaper, had very clean, nicely appointed rooms, great beds, great ac, and a complementary breakfast at standard hours. So this isn't a Salt Lake City problem - it's a Best Western problem.

I called customer service at Best Western and told them about the problems. They agreed that there was no reason for the hotel to be so hot and not to make accomodations for their customers. They were as surprised as I was that the complimentary breakfast ended at 9 am on a Sunday.

What all of this tells me is that the owners and senior management are focused entirely on extracting the most money from the business, not on providing the best service to their customers. Moreover, they aren't willing to offer basic services, maintain their property, or properly train and - most important - support the front line staff who have to deal with their selfish decisions. I really expect better from Best Western. The owners should be stripped of their franchise.