Quote:
The Majestic Hotel was our favorite hotel during our whole trip.
Five years ago, when we stayed at the Majestic, the quality of service can best be described as "surly" and "not caring." My, how five years of constant improvement has changed the quality of service!!! Rather than picking up your bowl of fruit when you exit the elevator, your fruit is now proudly displayed in a lacquer bowl, next to the card filled out by the staff person who cleaned your room.
The front desk staff is young, enthusiastic, and wanting to please. The bellhops won't let you touch your bags the minute you walk in the lobby. The young women in their "ao dais" are happy to walk you to the elevator and push the elevator button for you.
The rest of the staff bent over backwards to make you happy. When we arrived earlier than the 1pm check-in, the front desk staff did its best to get us into a room right away. When we got to our rooms, the cleaning man apologized profusely for not cleaning the room quickly enough for us.
SaigonTourist -- the government entity that runs most of the big hotels in Saigon -- put much effort into bringing back the colonial architecture of the hotel. No mildewy smell (typical of most eastern-block style runned hotels) existed. Rooms were cleaned constantly. The turndown service not only had a piece of chocolate, but also a bedtime story (a Vietnamese folk tale) printed on a piece of paper, which was rolled up and tied with a string. When we arrived on the day after Thanksgiving, Christmas music was piped into our room. A big Christmas display was in front of the hotel, with elves, Santa Claus, and of course, presents. The breakfast buffer was fabulous!
SaigonTourist is working on romodeling the Grand Hotel, and aim to make it just as good as the Majestic. If they continue doing this with all their other hotels, Saigon will have the most colonial hotels in Southeast Asia.
From journals
Sizzling Saigon