Stayed their for a training class for a few nights. The experience was bad right off the bat when we pulled up at the hotel and the valet or doorman was no where to be found. We waited a moment and then I went inside to find the doorman coming back from God knows where. I asked him if he could grab a valet for my car and he said "which car?" and I said "the one that's sitting there." There were no other cars other than mine. No "good evening" or anything else from him, he says it's taken care of and doesn't hand me a ticket and gets in my car and drives off.
The lobby is undergoing renovations which did nothing to improve my opinion of the place - so lesson here is - if you are undergoing renovations, do whatever you can, including good service, to distract your guests from the fact that you are under renovations. Failed. We go to the front desk and I begin checking in, the agent seems confused and I tell him that I did not get a valet ticket and that confuses him even more. He asks me who took my car and my colleague jokes some guy wearing a hoodie did. So the agent tells me (AT RITZ-CARLTON mind you) that when I need my car I can just describe it to the valet and we can figure it out from there. I told him that would not work and he would need to figure it out now. We get that sorted out and I ask the agent a question, I can't remember what exactly and there are now several other people in our area and he calls me by my last name and then in the same phrase gives my room number. STRIKE 2. The second rule of hotel security is you never give both of those out where someone can overhear it. The first being you don't grant access to a room without verifying identity.
The rest of the place looks good and the room is nice. However for the remainder of my stay I never ONCE got a bottle of shampoo in my amenities, I did get two body washes, and the first housekeeper didnt replenish my bottles while the next one did. My last day they decided I shouldn't get a Wall Street Journal either. We also had to wait 30 minutes for our car to be delivered from valet the first night.
Knowing this, I was prepared for check out. Now the hotel knew since our group had booked a majority of the rooms that we were all checking out en masse this day. So I called ahead 30 minutes in advance to have my car pulled up and I told my colleague we would rush to get our luggage from Bell before anyone else had a chance. I knew Ritz would somehow screw up our attempt to make it to the airport on time. Well that's where they got us, at the Bell Stand. My luggage was available but they had brought my colleagues up to another floor and he had to wait 15 minutes for his luggage while I sat on Broad Street waiting in the car dialing furiously to get Ritz Customer Service - which the hotel understood as the Sales Department at that hotel who then fumbled to deliver me to the main Marriott switchboard in Maryland who then delivered me to someone's voicemail. Wow. Either you don't have enough problems to be organized on that front, or you just don't care.
Ritz Carlton, you have NOTHING on Four Seasons or Kimpton except for a regal name and an impressive looking logo, we'll see how long that will hold you up, you have lost my business indefinitely.
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC.
