Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Saturday Night at The Lofts

Review posted at tripadvisor.com and sent to the hotel. No response yet.


On May 30th my wife and I spent our honeymoon night at The Lofts. We expected a quiet and relaxed evening after a busy afternoon wedding celebration. We got a different experience.

I made my reservations a couple of weeks in advance and was treated with great professionalism by the staff. I was looking forward to the evening. However, when I went to check in on Saturday at noon, things began to change.

The meters in front of the hotel we all bagged, on a Saturday afternoon. I had to park across the street, and was accosted by a homeless person – which left me more irritated than uncomfortable. When I mentioned the situation to the staff after I lugged my bags across Nationwide Boulevard, I was told that there was construction being done on the Hyatt skywalk, over 100 yards away. Ok, fine. I could not help noticing that the meters were still bagged on Saturday night, and may have also been on Sunday morning. What was the story there?

When I checked in the room looked fine, but I was extremely disappointed that it cost ten bucks for wi-fi. While I had no plans on going online in the evening, it would have been helpful to make some last minute checks of email before the wedding as there was at least one cancellation that needed to be addressed. I can go to Wendy’s and get free wi-fi, how come I can’t get free wi-fi at The Lofts?



Returning to the room in the evening brought more little things that were wrong. I decided to use the valet service and was treated rather abruptly by the valet when I asked him what I thought was a simple question.

When we went upstairs to the room the key did not work. This was very bad form. I had to inconveniently go all the way back downstairs, leaving my wife by the door with our bags. Then I was told rather casually that the key may have been demagnetized by a cell phone. I do not have a cell phone, but was in no mood to discuss this and went back to the room after the key was repaired.

We are not coffee drinkers but enjoy tea. My wife is Scottish. Having a choice of only two bags of tea was quite cheap. That, and having to boil water using the coffee maker made our tea taste like coffee.

We were also not impressed by the noise level of the room. We felt as if we were sleeping in the middle of a factory.

Our experiences at The Lofts had two plusses, the bed was quite comfortable and the bathroom was very well equipped. The rest was quite lacking, a lot of style and very little substance. I really have no desire to stay here for any future special occasions and will definitely not recommend The Lofts for any out of town visitors.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

RAR. I find plenty to be indignant about with respect to tea service in the US, but that on top of folks clearly not interested in making your stay as pleasant as possible is infuriating.

I do hope you post this off to their management.

schroederjt said...

I promise to chastise them next time they come into our office. The ghost is one thing, but bad customer service is totally another!

Someone Said said...

I did sent them my thoughts, and have not heard back yet.

Someone Said said...

Heard back today and received a professional, fair response and apology. They're offering us a free room on our first anniversary, which we'd be foolish not to accept.

They did not address the wretched tea service though :)