Terrible Guest Services
The hotel is very pretty, the rooms are nice and the food is delicious. However, the service is terrible. I recommend staying at the hotel but avoid hosting events there.
My wife is from the Rochester area and we stayed at the Woodcliff Hotel and Spa the week of our wedding along with over 100 close family members and friends. We had our rehearsal dinner in the hotel's conference room. Using the room required a $9500 minimum and we did not have that many people so we worked with Guest Services Manager Sarah Yannello to create several grazing stations (i.e. salad station, meat/carving station, pasta station, etc.) and other specific expensive food items to meet the minimum amount required for the room.
Unfortunately, when we arrived for the dinner, we quickly realized that Ms. Yannello had failed to communicate our specific requests to the chefs and servers. Instead of getting the specialized items we had asked for, we ended up with boilerplate items for each station. While these items were delicious, it was not what we had ordered and we were very frustrated. After receiving our bill of over $13,000!!!, we asked Ms. Yannello for a discount representing the missing items and other grievances we had with the dinner. She admitted that the missing items were her fault but completely downplayed their value and would only offer us a discount of $320, which we felt was grossly insufficient.
The following is a list of the specific grievances we had with the dinner:
- We ordered lamb to be served at the carving station at an exorbitant additional cost. It was never delivered. We were still charged for it.
- The only plates available at the carving station were small salad plates. When we asked the servers to get larger plates they failed to do so.
- We requested imported cheeses, fresh berries and whipped cream for dessert along with cookies for an additional cost. Only cookies were provided. The servers brought out whipped cream that had spoiled so we sent it back. New whipped cream was never delivered.
- There was no soy sauce provided at the sushi station.
- The bartender served our guests top shelf gin even though we had instructed him and Ms. Yannello to only serve house gin to all guests other than my father. This resulted in a higher bar bill.
- We had specially ordered wine for the event. We quickly realized that it was not being served and had to ask Ms. Yannello to get it.
- We had to ask several servers for mustard before it was finally delivered.
While these grievances may seem trite, I do not think that I am being unfair when I expect the service to be impeccable and everything to be as close to perfect as possible when you are paying over $13,000 for one meal. Further, no groom wants to spend the night before his wedding asking servers about items that aren't being delivered. And while I understand that things inevitably go wrong and are beyond people's control, all of the errors made at our dinner could have been avoided with better preparation, communication, and organization from the Guest Services Department. Ms. Yannello is a pleasant person to talk to but she is clearly unorganized and not good at her job.
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