A couple nights ago we lost power in our house. My son was under the weather and my wife was working late. So of course, being the uber-proactive guy that I am, I did nothing, while it got darker and darker. I assumed the power would return pretty quickly. Hydro teased us with blips of power as everything would turn on suddenly only to turn off just as quickly. Meanwhile, my son was napping so I wasn't too concerned... Eventually it got so dark (amazing how that happens) that I was using the light of my laptop to walk around looking for candles. Too late. The candles had been moved from their hideaway (in one of my wife's "reorganization projects") and I was clueless as to their whereabouts. At least my son was still asleep and not panicking at the fact that there were no lights. Without knowing when the power would come back on, and needing a place to stay that would be reasonably comfortable (remember: my son is under the weather, and you don't mess with a kid that's sick), I decided we should go to a hotel. It didn't really matter which hotel, we'd just be there for the night. The Delta Hotel is fairly close by, so we packed up what we could (in the dark) and drove off. The Delta Hotel in Montreal is a 4-star place, so I figured it would be fairly swanky. And it's not too cheap either: $179/night. I've seen worse, but I've also seen better. Now I didn't ask the guy if that was his cheapest room, let's face it I was embarassed. And the whole time I'm thinking, "This room is going to be grand, and we'll get a kick out of it. A wee treat." It was on the 25th floor too! Well to make a long story short -- the room sucked. It wasn't terribly large (although the bed was massive) and there were hairs in the bathroom from whoever had stayed there before. In a 4-star hotel there shouldn't be anyone's hairs in the bathroom. Not from their head, balls or anywhere else. Simple as that. The bathroom was dingy. Old. Not renovated. Pretty disappointing. I've seen similar bathrooms in a Howard Johnson before. As we settled in, the kid was running around mucking with everything. At least he was having some fun. Then we realized we needed some milk for his bottle. I hadn't picked any up from the house, in the dark. So I called room service to order some. I figured it would be easier than going around looking for it. Guess how much it cost? No, seriously, guess? $6. I had to tip her, so the total was $8. For a 8oz. glass of 3.25% milk. Are you freaking kidding me? That's just gross. To top it off, and this frustrates me about most hotels, is the fact that parking is insanely expensive. It shouldn't cost $18 to park my car overnight in essentially an empty lot. It just shouldn't. I realize that's probably a great cash grab for hotels, but this guy could have easily offered to pay for my parking; he saw how bedraggled we look, he could see my son crying in the background...come on you twit, pay my parking! With taxes and everything included, I'm out about $239 for a night in a crappy room with a hairy bathroom because Hydro Quebec couldn't keep the power on in my house. Gggrr... Now this brings me to the other point of this post. The power of blogging is that it lets people like me (and you), very easily, publish our thoughts online for the world to see. We can praise great companies, products or ideas, and we can bash others. And we should be able to influence others. And we do. I know for a fact that many people look to their favourite/respected bloggers for advice on all sorts of things before going to mainstream media or elsewhere. That's amazing and incredibly empowering. And companies out there should be paying attention. I highly doubt anyone at Delta watches the blogosphere for positive and/or negative comments such as this one. But they should. There are companies out there that offer this service. Even if you don't pay a company, it's not that hard to do. Take Technorati, Google Blogsearch and a couple other services and you can pretty easily see who is talking about you and what they're saying. So for anyone thinking of staying at the Delta Hotel in Montreal: don't bother. There are plenty of hotels close by, or even a bit of a distance away (in downtown Montreal or Old Montreal) to choose from. Personally, I won't stay at another Delta unless it's strongly recommended by someone I trust (that's the power of one negative experience, if you ask me.) And for the record, I did complain about the room, but only after I had paid. He had my credit card number, it had been processed, and I could have made a bigger stink about it, but sometimes it's just too frustrating and too much of a hassle. So instead I can use this blog to rant about it, perhaps dissuade others from choosing the Delta, and get some satisfaction in that. (Technorati Tags: delta hotel, blogs, hydro quebec)