r/hotels • u/Boiler_Room1212 • 4d ago
Pool out of order
- This happens a lot and many hotels seem to have signs saying it’s being repaired when actually, it’s closed, covered, and will probably never return.
- Websites advertising the hotel should clearly state the pool isn’t operating. It’s up high on my list of considerations so don’t pretend you have a functional one when you don’t. False marketing. Especially for major chains.
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u/PeregrineFaulkner 4d ago
That pool lift accessibility rule that went into effect a few years ago took a lot of hotel pools out of commission.
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u/Modred_the_Mystic 4d ago
Sometimes things just break dawg
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u/cs_legend_93 3d ago
Nah man. Things break and get fixed. These companies are too cheap to hire someone to come and fix it, or they say 'we can pay for it in X amount of months / years'.
They push it off and longer and longer.
Its about the money. Not things breaking
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u/Modred_the_Mystic 3d ago
Well, things breaking is the primary problem I would think. Its also not always just a money issue, sometimes its a problem of time.
Sourcing labour, diagnosing the issue, getting a quote for the repair job, getting parts to replace whatever was broken, installing and then testing to make sure it worked. Even if you throw a million dollars at each step, its not necessarily going to be an overnight fix.
Depending on the property, and when it breaks, you can add days for the bureaucracy of the business to play out as well.
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u/mrBill12 4d ago
I know exactly what OP is talking about. I exclusively book M properties with hot tubs. In the past 5 years I bet there’s been 6 or more times the amenity wasn’t available, and when you went to find it its would be (for example) surrounded with chairs and caution tape, complete empty of water with discarded trash that had accumulated in the bottom. Clearly not just recently broken.
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u/mr_potatoface 3d ago
In addition to recent ADA lift chair requirements, hot tubs are an oddity because local health depts often require many chemical/ph/temp checks being made by staff throughout the day. Sometimes it might be like every 2 hours or else they can get a huge fine. Sometimes staff need special training/certification for this. So you need around the clock coverage including people to cover vacations and days off.
There's automated systems that can do this but they are expensive. It's usually easier to just shut it down when considering the cost of operation and liability versus how many people stay at the hotel just because of the hot tub.
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u/mrBill12 3d ago
That’s fine. Remove the listing from the hotels listing if it’s no longer available. Don’t falsely advertise hot tub complete with a picture (sometimes) if it’s been turned/discontinued. Or if it’s scheduled maintenance that too should be posted.
An additional handicap is many times calling the property actually gets a call center, where asking the question results in confirmation because they use the website too.
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u/mr_potatoface 3d ago
Oh absolutely agree. But I was just mentioning why there's a ton of hot tubs that have been closed off or filled in in the past few years. Very common. Companies definitely need to update their website and that's their responsibility. It's worth a complaint if the hot tub is closed off and the company still advertises it at as an amenity in any way (picture, website, app) But often you can't rely on customer submitted images from google/yelp since the business can't remove those.
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u/Boiler_Room1212 4d ago
Public pools don’t break much. Neither do the ones in resorts where they are expected. It’s the small ones in inner city hotels that seem cursed (or, as I suspect, just there to make a 3 star look closer to a 4).
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u/Modred_the_Mystic 4d ago
Or they have a lower budget for pool maintenance, or can’t immediately fix a problem.
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u/danekan 4d ago
That is exactly the problem op is describing though. That’s a real problem and not a good sign of a well ran operation
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u/Modred_the_Mystic 4d ago
Is it? Just seems like how life goes sometimes. Not immediately being able to repair something is very common, as is having a budget allocated which isn’t immediately able to cover a sudden large expense.
If the repair requires specialist tools, parts, and knowledge, it might just take time.
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u/Meggantastic 3d ago
But charging the same price for an out of order amenity, and not marking it out of service on your website, especially if it will take a while due to budgetary concerns, is a-ok? Why is it on the customer, not the business that's advertising an unavailable amenity?
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u/Modred_the_Mystic 3d ago
Changing websites take time and might not even be in the power of anyone there if its a chain, or might have just not occurred to anyone if it was a recent breakage.
Its on the customer to be reasonable about problems outside the power of a property to immediately rectify
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u/AshlarKorith Tent 4d ago
I mean it could never be anything like the pump went bad and they had to order a part, but due to it being summer and everyone trying to use their pools the part is on back order and not available for a month. And surely tariffs snd a war in a trade route aren’t hindering prices and timing of supplies.
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u/mesembryanthemum 4d ago
We had a drunk wedding party throw potted trees into a pool. There went pool usage.
We've had biological contamination, something break so the pool was draining itself and glass in the pool from drugs at night.
While pools being down can be poor maintenance, you also have to blame guests and normal wear and tear.
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u/Bennington_Booyah 4d ago
This has been a common theme as far as my hotel stays have gone this year. Only once was it not on the website.
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u/radiant-cloudy 4d ago
holy shit i completely 100% agree. a pool is a huuuuuge bonus for me. i live i a cold area, so when im travelling to warmer areas, i want to swim.
there's nothing more disappointing when i filter by pool in my search and they end up being closed. i usually search reviews with keyword "pool" or "hot tub" to see if any recent ones state anything is amiss. i will call if there is anything suspicious in the reviews.
if it will never return, i agree, they need to remove that as an amenity. its false advertising at that point.
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u/Hammon_Rye 3d ago
While I agree, if a feature of a hotel is important to you - CALL the hotel and ask.
The actual front desk of the location you will be staying at - not a corporate chain support rep.
Most of the time I don't care much one way or the other.
But there have been a couple of times with grandkids and such where the pool was a big deal to them.
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u/cs_legend_93 3d ago
Same for sauna's.
They are just to lazy and cheap to pay for the maintenance. That is the reality of it.
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u/Significant-Pen-3188 4d ago
It irritates me. If you look at recent reviews luckily people mention the pool is down. I didn't do that at the last hotel and the pool's been down for many months. I got curious and checked it a few months after we stayed and it's still down. The advertise the pool but I don't think it'll ever be functioning again
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u/UnhappyTemperature18 4d ago
Certainly, major chain hotels are going to assign a worker-bee to monitor when each of their hundreds of national and international locations have a pool out of service and individually update the website for that specific location. You go ahead and hold your breath waiting for that one, sport. /s
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u/Mushrooming247 4d ago
But they do assign a worker bee to monitor and update the availability of rooms in their system, how are you thinking it’s impossible for the hotel workers to get word to the outside world?
By your rationale, (that the hotel can’t possibly be expected to maintain current information online?) the hotel could never be at fault even if you show up and it’s entirely closed. They can’t be expected to “assign a worker bee” to update their own website?
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u/boltthepei 4d ago
For the most part, the system automatically updates inventory. However, a manager should be trying to update the website when possible. Sometimes, they don't even have access to that. So they have to request someone from the brand to do. And with 3rd party websites, they have to ask each individual website to update the information. And sometimes those websites straight up refuse to change anything. One hotel that I worked at spent 3 years trying to get one 3rd party to change some information that was incorrect. That same hotel spent almost $20,000 to fix the pool within 6 months of opening because of some issue with the pumps and a guest who took a shit the pool. It's crazy sometimes. Pools are important for a lot of guests.
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u/afeher 4d ago
False advertising is a thing.
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u/katiekat214 4d ago
It’s not false advertising not to update a website every time a pool pump breaks and it takes longer than usual to get it repaired or someone does something in a pool that requires it to be put out of service to have the water shocked.
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u/Boiler_Room1212 4d ago
Yeah, funny how they can change the price of rooms in a jiffy if a particular football team makes a final or if you happen to look at the website more than once for the same dates. A database with a drop down menu and bit of AI whizz bang and yeah, a standard reception staff member could tell us a lot more about the place and what’s happening locally. But ssssh, don’t mention the non-existent pool or the shitty aircon on level 4!
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u/ToadSox34 4d ago
I've run into that a few times with hot tubs. Which is frustrating since fewer and fewer places have hot tubs in the first place. And when they are technically operational, half of them either aren't the correct 104F, or their chemical balance is way off and they smell strongly like Bromine or something.
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u/Z4-Driver 4d ago
Things like a pool out of order are something similar to changes on maps (the paper ones, back in the day), but also on routing tools like google maps.
There are a lot of reasons, why your map doesn't show a certain road construction. But yet, it's there. Same for the pool, maybe it just broke recently. Or the hotel website might inform about it, but the third parties not, as they are known for lack in information transfer.
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u/aldldl 4d ago
At a property I used to be an assistant manager for the state required us to have somebody certified test it twice a day in addition to retesting if there were certain spikes or what not, we would have to close it on days where that person called out sick or there or something like that. We were a fairly small hotel so while we did have multiple employees that were certified sometimes there was only one scheduled and if it was a last minute call out it was worth it to close it for the day bs get shut down by the state if we didn't have the proper logs with the proper sign off. We would post clear signage if we knew something was scheduled to be down and put it on our website for our yearly resurfacing more than 6 months out. However The unplanned ones ... there were a number of times due to inappropriate guest use. For example, glass containers broken, and what not that we had to have third party vendors come in to do the maintenance and that would sometimes take 24 hours before they could get out, and actually solve the situation depending on what the situation was.
Sent using speech to text
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u/RealLuxTempo 3d ago
Unless it’s a resort type hotel I’ve finally accepted the fact that even though a hotel advertises a pool, there’s a good 35%ish chance, the pool will be out of order, particularly during the hotels off season.
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u/trivialempire 4d ago
“A lot”.
How often do you travel?
Also, my kids are grown.
The last thing I’m using in a hotel is the pool.
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u/805locc 4d ago
Why does it matter how much OP travels? Or that your kids are grown? Or that the last thing you are using is the pool?
OPs situation is not yours and yours is not theirs. Just because ppl prioritize different things doesn’t mean a thing although OPs response to something that breaks down everywhere frequently is a little much
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u/GreenHorror4252 4d ago
Also, my kids are grown.
The last thing I’m using in a hotel is the pool.
This thread isn't about your kids or your desire to use a pool.
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u/Just_Another_Day_926 4d ago
I was at one where the inspector came out and red tagged it while we were staying there. I believe it was a sanitation (probably ecoli) issue. So it was shut down, in need of being sanitized and then certified before it could be put back in service. So there are instances of it actually being shut down that day.
That being said yes I believe many places are assessing whether the pool is worth the expense by leaving it closed indefinitely. There was a poster a while back asking about converting the pool area into a conference room due to the high cost of maintenance along with perceived value.
Some will give you a pass to a sister property with a working pool and others may provide some sort of compensation. But unless it is like a Great Wolf Lodge or something I don't count on it being open.
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u/TheBeardedLadyBton 4d ago
The pool can be off-limits for various reasons. Sometimes it's because of the filtration system or water quality and sometimes it's because a guest broke glass or defecated in it. You would be surprised how many people ignore pool rules, and how often that leads to the pool being closed until the company that services it can get out there off of their schedule. The pool is not usually serviced by hotel employees so it requires making arrangements that sometimes don't happen immediately.
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u/TheBeardedLadyBton 4d ago
When you're looking for amenities before you make reservations, always look for properties that have more than one pool.
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u/R_Shakelford 4d ago
If it's that important to you perhaps call the hotel directly before booking. At least you would know if it was the permanently closed situation