the customer is always...riiiiiight.

So there is many an opportunity in any country to question the customer service values and standards within the service industry. Much like the concept of Human Resources, however, in some countries the concept of "customer service" doesn't actually translate.

We traveled to Dalian for a few days over the Spring Festival (Chinese New Year/Lunar New Year) holiday, selecting a decently priced hotel by US standards for its great location, pool and fitness center, spa, and rotating restaurant. We arrived at said hotel to find a lovely, relatively clean and upscale hotel, with all of the amenities completely shut down. To be fair, the rotating restaurant was open for two and a half hours each day, though it was a different two and a half hours, despite a staff who were being paid to sit at an empty table while the restaurant offered a panoramic view of the city to its zero customers, and informed us each time we visited that we needed to come back in a few hours. Which we did and were turned away again.

The fitness center, pool and spa were not only completely closed, but the elevator wouldn't even go to the completely dark floors where these things were located. The front desk staff informed us in rather frustrated broken English that it was a holiday. To which my friend replied in similarly frustrated but slightly louder English, "Yes, that's why we're ON HOLIDAY."

Admittedly, it is a fairly western expectation that a hotel - or any business for that matter - will actually provide what it has promised, especially during a holiday season. Also, it was somewhat surprising to us that the fitness center and pool were actually owned by a different company who had elected to close down for the holiday independently of the hotel, which was clearly open. This was potentially beyond the control of the hotel staff. But unfortunate for us nonetheless.
We were told to check back with the desk to see when these services would be open, and to see about potential compensation given that we paid for a hotel with all of these services and we weren't warned anywhere that they'd be closed when we booked the room for those dates. And we were asked to pay a deposit the equivalent of twice the total room price when we arrived, probably because they half expected us to realize we'd paid for a room that wasn't what was promised and go somewhere else instead. They insisted that this was standard for any hotel in China - which we know isn't true, since we are not, as they probably assumed, tourists, and then finally conceded that it must only be standard for hotels in Dalian. Granted, everything in China is negotiable, so we only paid one room night at a time and a small deposit for our room key. And by the time we finished at the front desk, they probably would have preferred that we go somewhere else. But this just illustrates how absurd our expectations must have been. Given their response, which clearly indicated that they were astonished we would give them such a hard time, and that they found us to be completely unreasonable, there are about six levels of cultural disparity going on here.

To be honest, in most of my China experience (and, I've come to find out, in other countries' opinions of China), the best and often only way to get what you want is to pitch a fit about it until they concede. When this doesn't work, it's probably logical to assume that what you want is completely absurd to the other party involved. Interesting.