k13traveler
Google
I write with a great deal of sadness. My wife and I stayed at L’abbaye many times. Because of our love for L’abbaye, and our desire to introduce our children and grandchildren to your hotel and Provence, we planned a family celebration of our birthdays for this summer.|| Regrettably, L’abbaye fell far short of the impeccable standards of elegance we were accustomed to over the ||years. Service was subpar, the rooms suffered from a lack of quality control and functionality, and even the presentation of dinners lacked the artistic creativity and ||small but significant touches of refinement that always were present in our previous stays.|| Service. There were certain exceptions. Mr. Mongour ||was a pleasure to work with in planning for our visit and arranging our birthday party which unfortunately had to be canceled. He also was very cooperative when we checked ||in. The young women at Reception were also very helpful when they were there. Otherwise, there were serious lapses in service such as long waits for drinks in the late afternoon, ||at least three occasions when there was no one at Reception for extended periods and one instance when drinks were not restocked in the empty refrigerator in my ||son’s room. If memory serves, L’abbaye regularly served beverages before and after dinner in years past.|| Although there were suitable numbers of wait staff and ||assistants at dinners, service was still not up to the elegant standards we experienced during past stays at L’abbaye. A Sommelier who in past years always helped me select Var ||wines is no longer employed. In this connection, one night the server admitted she could not help me to select a wine. I asked her if there was someone who could help me. A few ||moments later, the General Manager came to our table and selected a nice wine. The server should have summoned him without my having to ask. |||| At breakfast, there must have been a misunderstanding between or among hotel management and servers. On ||several occasions, servers insisted that all members of our family be seated together at the same breakfast table after having been told emphatically that family members would ||rather sit at separate tables as we ate breakfast at different times. Also, at breakfast, we were not asked when we sat down if we wanted coffee. Coffee was often served ||several minutes after we were seated, and the coffee wasn’t very good. || Room Quality. My wife and I stayed in the same room in ||2002. While decorated differently, the upstairs and downstairs furnishings were almost identical. Sadly, the fit and finish of the rooms need work. The towel holder in the ||bath/shower fell apart and the toilet paper holder is rusty and in disrepair. There are too few electrical receptacles upstairs and down for charging smartphones, laptops or ||IPads. Finally, and most critically, the air conditioning even when working properly did not cool the upstairs levels of our rooms adequately. Although it was set at 20 ||degrees,the lowest level allowed by management, the temperature upstairs was always 25 degrees or higher--too warm to sleep comfortably. One night my wife slept ||downstairs on two face to face chairs because she could not fall asleep upstairs. I slept fitfully practically every night. We are all accustomed to sleeping at temperatures of 22 ||degrees or lower at home, so 25 and higher was unacceptable. Other hotels in France have good air conditioning. During the heatwave, we stayed at ||comparable hotels in Bayeux and Paris, and were able to set the air conditioning below 20 degrees.|| Finally, please do not be misled by the high average TripAdvisor rating of L’Abbaye. If you read the reviews since 2020 you will find that all too many of them found the same faults we did. Senior management appears to be unresponsive to these concerns. As I said, c’est dommage. || K13traveler
