Flanders Hotel Ocean City (New Jersey)

The Flanders is a well furnished hotel. The experience it gives is not however very good. My wife and I booked our honeymoon stay at the Flanders last year (at 2007 prices). We booked one of their more expensive "Promenade Suites". Their website claimed that all promenade suites came standard with a whirlpool tub, along with other amenities. When we arrived we discovered that our room did not in fact have a whirlpool tub. We took this issue up with the front desk and were shown a copy in the hotels own paper flier which states that a whirlpool tub or double shower is standard (our room had the shower). We explained that the hotel website says otherwise, and that we were using the information on the website when we booked. The woman at the desk told us she would have the general manager come see us the next morning. The next morning we went down to the front desk again (we were told the GM would come up to our room, but she didn't). The GM was there, and was very apathetic about our situation, saying that the employee that had booked us was fired a while ago, and that they knew that there was inaccurate information on the website. She didn't have an explanation as to why the website had not been updated. When looking over our reservation she made a comment about how there was already a $100+ discount per night on our account. We booked at 2007 rates because we booked in 2007. This is not a discount, it was early booking. I pointed this out to her. The best she could do to correct our problem was offer us a free breakfast at the in-house restaurant. We booked a room, with specific amenities, and we were given a room that did not match what we booked. If it had not been for the tub, we would not have booked at the Flanders. Apparently the hotel management has no problem with generating bookings through false advertising on their website. I should also mention that our room was supposed to have an ocean view. Well, it did face the ocean, but instead of a view of the ocean, we had a view of the small amusement park behind the hotel, and could hear clearly the noise of the rides and screaming children until late at night.

Another issue we had during our stay was the inability to get on the hotel's wireless network. The rooms do not offer wired connectivity. The only Internet access is wireless. I could connect to the network, but was unable to maintain a working Internet connection. When I did get a working Internet connection, it would drop out after 30 seconds to 2 minutes. My wife happened to spot the wireless router out in the hallway, and being a network engineering major, I looked at it. The hotel uses a residential grade Linksys router to offer internet access. My guess is that they went cheap and the equipment they are using is unable to handle the capacity needed for a busy hotel.

On our last day, I guess as the cherry on top of this whole ordeal, we discovered ants in our room.

I would not stay at this hotel again.