OK, I get it. The W is not a hotel that caters to business travelers. More accurately, they're a well-branded hotel for traveling partiers that used to be high end, but now seems to be getting by on name recognition alone. Here's the skinny:
1) The location of the W Lakeshore is awesome. Spend the extra money and get a lakeview room. You'll thank yourself each morning when you wake up. You can still walk to Michigan Avenue in 10 minutes.
2) The rooms are a slight bit undersized, which is to be expected in a downtown hotel...expecially a W.
3) The staff is nice, and charmingly aloof. Keep in mind that this is the W and it's important that the staff be as hip as the clientele. Caring too much would be uncool.
4) The place is packed. I was here Labor Day weekend, so that's likely to blame, but the lobby and facilities are not built for the amount of traffic the common areas sustain.
5) The lobby bar is nice, but not private and doesn't offer a lot of ambiance. What you lose in ambiance, you'll make up for in 16 dollar coctails.
6) Speaking of 16 dollar cocktails, the roof top bar, as it was described to me, is not on a rooftop. It's a tiny room with a curtain for a wall. Nice enough views on 2 sides, but nothing spectacular. I don't know if the bar usually features an outside area, but without it, the bar is something to skip entirely, not wait in line for. You're better off heading over to Drumbar at Hotel Rafaello.
7) The one bright spot other than the location was the concierge. They are exceptionally helpful and can point you in the right direction for most anything.
8) Here's what killed me, and I'll repeat, I know the W is not a hotel for business travelers. That said, in my line of work, I'm never off the clock. That said, I had to purchase in-room internet service while on vacation in Chicago. That's just annoying. In a $200+/night room, it should just be included. My Holiday Inn Express in Barboursville, WV had complimentary in-room internet. Don't be outdone by the Holiday Inn in Barboursville, WV, W Hotel Lakeshore...in any category. Once I moved past that annoyance, I needed to print some tickets for a show. I went to the hotel's business center, which I soon learned charged even higher rates than the room. I explained to the front desk that I had already purchased internet access for the day and requested they bypass it. It was explained to me that there was nothing they could do for me. I left and asked the concierge to print it for me, which she graciously did. It just leaves me salty that a hotel would repeatedly rake their customers over the coals to nickel and dime them.
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