It’s been said that social media is the Philippines’ default customer complaints desk. A five-star hotel in Bonifacio Global City, Taguig is certainly seeing this mechanism at work.
Don’t look now, but Shangri-La at the Fort, Manila’s official Facebook page has gotten a lot of bad reviews — but the reason doesn’t have anything to do with its accommodations or services. Apparently, the hotel has earned the ire of cat lovers.
Image credits: Shangri-La at the Fort (Facebook review screengrab) and Pexels (cat, for illustration purposes only)
In a post, a netizen alleged that the hotel had called in PestBusters Philippines to deal with the stray cats that had been wandering around its premises.
The cat lovers who read the post most likely thought that the worst had happened to the cats. They lost no time in expressing how angry they were at Shangri-La at the Fort, Manila’s alleged anti-cat move.
Many angry cat lovers flooded the hotel’s FB page with enraged one-star “reviews.” They condemned the hotel for taking away the cats from the area because the animals were believed to be instrumental in controlling the rat population in the area.
As of 8 a.m. on Monday, February 19, Shangri-La at the Fort, Manila’s FB page shows that it has an average rating of 2.3 stars. In an industry where five stars is the goal, that is a terrible rating, indeed.
For its part, the hotel had already issued statements clarifying that the cats were merely relocated to loving homes. The hotel likewise said that it was working with CARA Welfare Philippines to find the most humane ways to deal with the stray cats of the neighborhood.
Unfortunately, it looks like the hotel’s statements haven’t really appeased the incensed cat lovers, who are demanding to see proof that the cats are actually alive and well. So, let’s hope those cats are really experiencing lives that are worthy of five-star reviews.
