Nothing says ‘5 star’ more than a plastic plug

I’m on one of my regular trips to Adelaide, staying at the Intercontinental Adelaide.

Price Drop

I got the room a few weeks ago when the price dropped dramatically to AU$134 per night. It looks like it is where delegates to COAG (Council of Australian Governments) are meeting this week. Maybe they didn’t need their full allocation of rooms.

Intercontinental Adelaide – I love-hate you

I have a love/hate relationship with this hotel. I always get an upgrade as a Gold Ambassador member. Mind you, I pay a membership to get that. I usually get very quick check-in, although this time I had to wait for ages, and then they wanted to see some picture ID (momentarily I said in my head ‘Don’t you know who I am?’). Given the number of times I stay here, there is almost an expectation that the staff would recognise me – and sometimes they do.

Honouring preferences

My permanent preference is ‘high floor, away from the lift, feather pillows’ – to which has recently been added ‘don’t put me on the side where they are constructing something hideous between Parliament House and the Festival Theatre’ because “I can’t stand the cranes, outside my window!” (apologies to Tina Turner). Last time I stayed, there were two cranes outside the window, that had very bright lights on them, and the construction noise was annoying during the day when I was trying to work.

Well I got my preferences – except to avoid the cranes and building noise – I am now near the lifts.

Anyway . . .

Nothing says ‘Luxury’ more than a plastic plug

It’s like Intercontinental, or the buildings owners just don’t want to spend any money on making the hotel better. The hotel really needs a massive refurbishment, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen while there is a quality room shortage in Adelaide.

Let me catalogue the hotel crimes the Adelaide Intercontinental is guilty of:

• removing the custom ‘triangular’ fridges, and replacing them with nothing
• spack filling walls badly and hoping no-one cares
• placing low quality, energy inefficient, and worst of all noisy fridges in the room cabinets
• Replacing metal plugs, and integrated bath plugs with cheap plastic crappy ones
• cheap synthetic, and foam filled KAS cushions on the lounges
• Analogue bedside clocks

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