First I want to say I always try and give a somewhat balanced review of a place, unless they really cheese me off... then no holds barred! :) The positives first: good location across from St. Charles train station (parking is bad if you're driving, but the hotel has parking inside). Nice new construction, cool modern design, nice facilities. The complimentary all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet is really good.
The staff was not particularly friendly, nor informative and their English was poor. We arrived late after a whole day of traveling, really tired. When we got to the room we couldn't switch on the lights. After fumbling around in the dark with our luggage and having to go downstairs to reception the girl at the front desk told us "oh, you have to insert your security card into the slot next to the door" - why didn't she inform us of this when she gave us the keys?!?!? Ludicrous omission. Kind of a silly system! I have never ever seen anything like this anywhere in any hotel in the world. Really annoying.
Then, just as we fell asleep and hour later an alarm goes off at 12:30 am saying "all guests must evacuate". So everyone's scrambling out of their beds in their pajamas to go downstairs to see what was going on only to be told by the front desk staff "sorry, false alarm, someone was smoking in their room and the smoke alarm all throughout the hotel went off" - now, this is for someone just smoking in their room, the evacuate the entire hotel at 12:30 am!!!! What?!?!?
The parking lot in the basement of the hotel was incredibly tight. We didn't have a huge car and took forever trying to park it without scraping the walls and columns they have in there.
The shower head was kind of a trickle, not really flowing properly to have a good shower. The drain didn't drain properly, so one is standing in a pool of soapy water in the tray after a while. Nasty.
The "Free WiFi" was ludicrously complicated to use and would only allow ONE DEVICE to be logged in with a room / guest specific password. I used my iPhone to retrieve some info in the evening and then in the morning I wanted to fire up my laptop and use the Wifi only to be informed when I tried to log in that the account was already in use (!!!) WHAT!?? I have never experienced anything like this silliness anywhere else in any other hotel in the world and I travel a lot! Again, if you say you provide free wifi, just provide it without login/password silly complications and unnecessary waste of time and stupid restrictions. All other hotels do. What if there are two guests and two laptops or devices the guests want to use? The manager later explained I could have asked the front desk for another login for another device. OK, so make me work for it some more, call the front desk or go downstairs in person because the staff's English is so bad I can barely talk to them on the phone. A great waste of my precious time on holiday. Thank You. read more