"Five-star service, followed by the most ludicrous hotel policy I have encountered in decades of travelling
We arrived at Rodos Palace at around 8am, several hours before check-in, courtesy of an early flight from Heraklion.
The reception staff were absolutely charming. We had an early breakfast, which was excellent, with equally good service, and then found a couple of sunbeds by the pool while we waited for our room.
When the room was ready, things continued in much the same vein. We had booked a suite, the accommodation was very nice indeed, and the front-of-house staff who showed us to it were first-rate. We spent a very pleasant afternoon by the pool, enjoyed some snacks, and received precisely the sort of attentive service one expects from a five-star resort hotel.
AND THEN, THE WEIRDEST THING.
Having travelled and unpacked, I wanted to iron a shirt and a pair of trousers before going out for the evening.
There was no iron in the room.
No great problem, one might think. Call housekeeping and ask for one.
Except apparently not.
My partner telephoned reception and was told, apologetically, that the owner does not permit guests to have irons because, on one or two previous occasions, irons had caused damage to rooms.
She naturally asked what guests were therefore expected to do.
The answer? Use the hotel’s laundry and ironing service. At additional cost.
At this point the whole thing moves from mildly eccentric to completely absurd.
My partner quite reasonably suggested that if a five-star hotel chooses, as a matter of its own policy, to prevent guests from ironing their clothes, then perhaps the ironing service ought to be provided without charge. The receptionist apologised and explained that the policy was the owner’s decision and beyond her control.
I telephoned myself because I genuinely thought there must have been some misunderstanding.
There wasn’t.
I have been staying in good hotels around the world since the late 1970s, for business and pleasure. In all those decades, I cannot remember ever encountering a supposedly five-star hotel that would neither provide an iron in the room nor supply one through housekeeping when requested.
Apparently Rodos Palace has discovered a problem the entire international hotel industry has somehow failed to notice.
So, a message to the owner: this policy is stark-staring mad.
Presumably the hotel has insurance. Presumably a guest who damages hotel property can be charged for that damage. Hotels somehow manage the risks associated with hairdryers, kettles, glasses, baths, electrical appliances and countless other things guests might misuse.
But here the chosen solution appears to be that because one or two people have previously behaved carelessly with an iron, everybody else is forbidden from having one.
It is the logic of the particularly unimaginative schoolteacher who, faced with one misbehaving child in a class of thirty, punishes the other twenty-nine as well.
Worse still, having created the inconvenience, the hotel then offers to sell you the solution.
That is not five-star hospitality. It is amateurish, penny-pinching and faintly ridiculous.
Which is such a pity, because almost everything else we experienced, particularly the staff, was extremely good.
The management should reconsider this ludicrous policy. Until it does, prospective guests who occasionally commit the extraordinary act of wanting to iron a shirt before dinner might wish to stay somewhere that treats adults as adults.
I certainly shall."
