hotel Gardenia Country Inn, Manado/Tomohon: DISORGANIZED, OVERPRICED, ...

Summary

We stayed at Gardenia Country Inn in on December 27-29, 2008 and had the following pretty bad experiences.

The rate USD 104 is ridiculously high (I am of course talking about the local Sulawesi standards here!): it should be in the USD 40 to 50 range. (In 2009 Gardenia claims to charge USD 160 with double occupancy: this is a rip-off!)
We as hotel guests experienced disrespectful and insulting treatment from the owner of the hotel.
Hotel charged us the hotel bill twice: once in cash and once (by mistake) through a credit card. Gardenia never refunded the money despite the staff repeatedly telling (see emails) us that they would. We disputed the payment with our credit card company and got the money back from the credit card company in June 2009, six months later, without any cooperation from Gardenia. Gardenia also has not apologized for the incredibly poor service in any way.

Full story

On a two week vacation trip to Sulawesi I stayed (with my wife and my parents) 2 nights on December 27-29, 2008 at the Gardenia Country Inn in Tomohon near Manado (Sulawesi, Indonesia). The hotel is in a garden setting, with big lawns and pools with fish and frogs.

We were charged USD 104 per bungalow per night. This is very high by local standards: the fancier (four star) places in Sulawesi charge under Rp 1000000 (less than USD 100) and Gardenia is not a four star place. The bungalows (which have room for 2 persons) are OK but very basic and smallish, equipped with a bathroom and a small television, and nothing that could possibly justify the price. The hotel has a restaurant with a basic breakfast and lunch and dinner (restaurant prices in the USD 2 .. USD 3 range are on par with the quality/service, of which we have nothing to complain about!) Considering the other hotels we stayed in during the Sulawesi trip, Gardenia should charge at most USD 40 or USD 50 per bungalow per night. For example, the Sedona hotel near Manado charges less than USD 60, has a much better restaurant and lots of other services, and is luxury when compared to Gardenia.

Anyway, our stay at Gardenia was acceptable, and it was only the events after the check-out that made the experience unacceptable. We first spent 30 minutes trying to pay our bill with 3 different credit cards. The staff said the hotel's credit card payment system is not able to charge the payment from any of the cards, which seemed to be a technical issue with the card reader, as the staff tried to swipe the cards in different ways (it was very apparent that it wasn't the first time they had problems with their equipment.) We agreed to pay the bill by money transfer as soon as we get to Jakarta, and left the hotel as we had flights to catch to Jakarta and Singapore.

From this point on things first turned absurd and then very unpleasant. First the owner of the hotel, who had been told about the problems with the credit card payment system, phoned our driver and asked him to return us to the hotel immediately. Of course, we would have missed our flights this way, and the driver of course did not take this request seriously! The driver handed his cell phone to us. The owner first said that it is impossible that none of several credit cards work, and then he very directly suggested that the reason for the failure of the payment must be that we did not have any intention of paying, i.e. we were intentionally using credit cards that did not work, and were trying to steal his money. We ended this phone call very quickly.

At the airport a couple of men were waiting for us under the instructions of the hotel's owner. Me and my wife were escorted to the ATM inside the terminal to withdraw money (maximum withdrawal in the ATM was 1.2 million rupias, and we had to make several withdrawals, which led to the ATM freezing and me not getting my ATM card back!) Simultaneously, my parents and our luggage were guarded by some guys who in regular intervals reported to the hotel owner by phone that the luggage is still there and the highly respected guests are still under their control.

Obviously, having been accused of trying to steal the hotel's money, and being the targets of an attempted "hijacking", and being threatened by not allowing to board our flights were extremely unpleasant experiences. We can only recommend staying away from the Gardenia Country Inn, and use some other hotel instead where the guests are respected.

Additional events

One of the hotel staff showed up at the airport and demanded that we pay almost 1 million more for something that they had forgot to charge us at the hotel. I refused to pay because she was not able to explain what that 1 million was for. Later the hotel explained that this was their mistake and that these 1 million was in fact other guests' bills.
After we got home, it turned out that one of the credit cards had actually been charged. The hotel staff has repeatedly promised that the owner returns the money. The hotel staff initially assured that the money will be returned, but the refund would be made by the owner (who called himself Dr. Ratulangi) and he has not returned it. We have not got any apology or explanation why the refund has not been made. In the last phone calls and emails the staff were talking about the "accounting department" not returning the money. We finally got the money back after 6 months in June 2009 after disputing the payment with the credit card company. We think it is a very fair interpretation of these events that the hotel would have kept (= stolen) our money if they just could have, as there was no attempt from their side to return it.

We find all of the above events incredible. The hotel makes a sequence of mistakes (credit card system not working; insults us; tries to charge us other guests' bills; charges us twice) and in the end shows no interest in fixing these problems or even apologizing for these mistakes. The complete lack of professionalism strongly suggests that other potential guests would be much better off staying somewhere else.

Jussi Rintanen