Best Western Royal Palace Inn & Suites

Ms. Krell, We are terribly sorry that you did not enjoy your stay at our hotel. Although you have many criticisms, which I will address below, I hope that the location of our property was convenient for you. As you already know, we are on Sepulveda Boulevard, right where the 10 and 405 intersect, and half a block from the Metro Expo Line, which has stops as far west as the Santa Monica Pier, and as far east as Downtown Los Angeles. Within 7-10 minutes of driving, our hotel is a convenient center point to the following locations: LAX, Marina Del Rey, Venice, Santa Monica, Brentwood, Westwood, UCLA, Beverly Hills, Century City and Culver City. All of our rooms have comfortable bedding and linens, have HDTV flatscreens, in-room coffee, fridges, microwaves, and irons with ironing boards. We also have complimentary breakfast with a wide variety of items. With regard to your criticisms, which we take very seriously, we will address them below: 1. Ms. Krell's review did in fact show up and hotels are not permitted to "filter" reviews Ms. Krell, your allegation that we filter reviews to make our hotel look better is offensive and false. TripAdvisor does not allow owners to filter reviews. If so, each and every hotel would only have five star reviews. In fact, Ms. Krell, you did write a horrible review, but you wrote it on our Google review page. We have since responded to that review, portions of which we will append here. 2. Ms. Krell did not request a room change after not liking her bed or couch Ms. Krell, it is our standard practice that after the guest checks in, we call the desk in his or her room and ask them how they like the room. It is at that opportunity that you could have told us that you did not like your room, or couch, or bed, and we would have resolved your issue. I am sorry that we did not get this feedback from you at the appropriate time. Additionally, you stayed here back in early March, and on the time periods that you stayed with us we had at least ten vacant available rooms on each night. Had we known that you did not like your bed or couch, we would have happily checked you into another room or even upgraded you to a better room to accommodate the inconvenience. We suggest to Ms. Krell, and to all guests who consider staying here, or at any other hotel for that matter, if there is something wrong with your stay, please inform us immediately, and not online six weeks later. Additionally, I, the assistant general manager, the housekeeping supervisor, and the housekeeper regularly responsible for cleaning your room, all tested the bed and couch in the room you stayed in, and none of us could determine any issues you could have had with either. This is probably because our guestrooms were fully renovated in the Spring of 2016 indicating that our furniture that you complain of is still relatively new in the eyes of hotel best practices. 3. Ms. Krell could not eat our breakfast due to her dietary restrictions in spite the wide variety of options available You mentioned on our Google review page that you were upset we did not offer sugar free syrup. Our response on Google, which we continue to stand by is, "I'm sorry if we did not have sugar-free syrup at the time you stayed with us. Sugar-free syrup is actually one of the items we regularly order, along with regular maple, strawberry , blueberry and boysenberry syrup. As you know, we also have a variety of fresh fruits, cereals, eggs, sausage, hash browns, different flavors of yogurts, cheeses, ham, turkey and a wide variety of breads, including muffins, bagels, croissants and sweet breads. We hope that the other breakfast items we offer gave you a great start to your morning." 4. Ms. Krell's bill was not $100 more than quoted if you include taxes and valet parking Ms. Krell, to be 100% clear, you made your reservation on Booking.com. Booking.com quoted you the rate. The Booking.com website clearly indicates that the rate does not include taxes or valet and you are unable to book the room without clearly seeing this in big bold fonts. Additionally, I am looking at your bill in front of me, and there are $97.10 in additional charges beyond the $199 room rate you booked. $65.10 of those charges are state and local taxes, which we have no power to control. $34.00 of those charges were for two nights of our 24-hour valet service, the rate of which is clearly delineated on all web channels and also at our valet parking stand upon check-in. 5. Ms. Krell's car is valet parked in our outside valet parking lot Ms. Krell, we provide 24-hour valet parking service. The majority of our spots are in our outside parking lot. We are unable to control the weather and elements that may land on your car while with us. We are currently not in the business of washing cars for our guests. Additionally, reviewing our video at the time you checked-in indicates that your vehicle was less than pristine to begin with. 6. We provide daily housekeeping services Ms. Krell, we provide daily housekeeping services. Our housekeepers have been with us for many years and know exactly how to clean rooms and bathrooms. We provide them with industry standard cleaning products. If you believe you had to clean your own bathroom, then perhaps you left a "Do Not Disturb" sign outside your door, preventing us from coming inside to clean. Thank you for your candid review. We will use the feedback to continuously improve the level of service in the future. We are very appreciative of your business. Very truly yours, Aalok Sikand, Esq., MBA General Manager

Hello Meander00420280111, We are sorry that you checked out of our hotel based on your invalid assumption that there were bed bugs in your room. To be 100% clear, you were unable to locate or show our staff any bed bugs, however, we did not overlook this complaint simply because you could not show us any bed bugs. We take every allegation of bedbugs seriously since a beg bug infestation could easily shut down any hotel or any number of hotel rooms, which would hurt room revenue numbers and also deteriorate the guest perception of our hotel due to social media reviews. When you approached us demanding to check out and get a full refund, we performed a visual inspection of their room and found a total of less than zero bed bugs. Additionally, upon the check out, we contacted our pest control company, IsoTech, who did a comprehensive analysis of the room for bed bugs. The results of the inspection will be emailed to you as Tripadvisor currently doesn't have the capability for hotels to attach documents to responses. We regret that you are disappointed in Best Western but we think that your anger is misplaced. Best Western requires our housekeeping staff to complete bed bug training twice a year. Our housekeepers and housekeeping supervisors have been with this property for more than ten years. They know what bed bugs look like and they know what to do when bed bugs are found. We also have a second layer of protection in which we have a monthly contract with IsoTech Pest Control, and part of their monthly services include spraying all of our rooms for bed bugs. Our third level of protection is when a guest alleges the presence of bed bugs, we call IsoTech--as we did in this case-- who came in for a special visit to confirm or deny the guest's allegations of bedbugs. In this case, IsoTech, a neutral third-party vendor and expert in bedbugs, fully and wholeheartedly refuted your wrongful allegations. Had IsoTech confirmed your allegations, we obviously would have done all that we could to cure our wrongs by offering the guest some type of refund or Best Western Rewards points. Based on our gathering of evidence, we have determined that the you are not entitled to any type of concession, no matter how many times you wrongfully blasts us on social media. We would also like to inform you that researchers in Los Angeles County have determined that climate change, and our failure to do anything about it, is beginning to have a deleterious effect on seasonal allergies and their greater prevalence in Los Angeles. The amount of pollen in the air this spring is much greater than ever before and is causing spring allergy symptoms, including but not limited to itchiness, as you have experienced. We are sorry that you checked out. We are sorry that you experienced some type of itching. We are 100% confident that the itching was not caused by us or by alleged bedbugs in our hotel, but most probably by the springtime conditions in the city. We hope other guests will overlook this negative review, because we have all of the third-party documentation to prove that this allegations is misplaced. Respectfully, Aalok Sikand Esq., MBA (SBN : 248165) General Manager