It's a beautiful hotel. Rooms are comfortable. Location is fantastic.
Some/most of the staff are not great. In fact, they were often downright rude and annoying--especially the front desk at night and early morning.
I was allergic to the hand soap provided, so I went down to the shop just off the lobby to see if they sold any other. They did not, but they thought the sister hotel (Aloft) might, so they sent me on a long walk of a wild goose chase to that connected hotel--a good staff would have called over to the sister hotel to check for me first. The staff at Aloft was much nicer and far friendlier, but they still had no soap. Even though Aloft is a different concept, it looked interesting, and we will probably select that hotel over this one next trip, just based on the staff.
We asked for a late checkout at the front desk (late at night) while checking in. They said they put it in the computer, but the morning staff began bugging us at the usual checkout time because the night staff hadn't entered the late checkout in the system at all. And they were rather rude about the entire issue.
We went exploring the area in the morning. I had a business call and didn't quite make it back to the room in time because my key had stopped working by the time we returned. We called down on the phone in the hall near the elevator on our floor (another guest let us up to the floor). Again, the front desk staff was curt and seemed bothered by our request. They called the security or management (can't remember which) person who just happened to be on the floor, walking down the hall in the opposite direction from our room. We heard the radio call, with the front desk calling us a rather insulting name over the radio. And the person on the floor said they would deal with it "in a bit." Since we heard the call, we called after them that that was us, and we did indeed need to get into the room sooner rather than later. They told us, as we were let in, that even for an approved late checkout, one needed to go back downstairs to the front desk in the morning to get a new key before the normal checkout time. That's a new one on us (long-time lifetime elite-tier Marriott Bonvoy members).
Also, we left an item (iPhone) in the room by accident on our departure, and tracing it down entailed six or seven phone calls back to the hotel, being extremely insistent with the people answering the phone, and being transferred multiple times to different people, only to be disconnected. They also told us to use a website to report it as a left item at the hotel, but the site wasn't working. When we called back about that, they finally took our report and called us a short while later to say they found the item. It should not have been this difficult.
Rooms are comfortable but smallish. But if you are going to run a boutique (Tribute Collection) luxury hotel, then your staff needs to be top-tier. Not what this staff is. read more
