Having read the rave reviews for this hotel I was really looking forward to our eight night stay. We regularly visit Chicago for business and pleasure, and this time around were traveling with my husband's business colleagues. Someone had phoned the hotel in advance to let them know we would be arriving late, but in spite of this the hotel had let our room go. While this may be a common occurrence, the handling of it was abysmal.
The guy on reception started off by saying that he had some really bad news for us, but it wasn't his fault! This was before we had even had a chance to comment. He then told us that we could walk the three blocks to another hotel...with heavy suitcases at one in the morning on a Saturday night. He continually told us it wasn't his fault, and our general impression was that we should just go away and shut up. I had to ask for the money for a taxi to the other hotel, and he then told me I needed to get receipts as he couldn't be seen to be just giving out money. It was only when I asked if he was actually sure the other hotel had a room that he bothered to ring them and explain the situation. Otherwise I think it highly likely that we would have arrived at reception and had to do all the explaining ourselves. He didn't even offer to get someone to help us outside with our luggage to find a cab...I had to ask, but according to him it definitely wasn't his fault!
After a very restless night sleep we returned to the Dana prepared to do battle with the manager. To be fair he did upgrade us to a corner room and was pleasant to deal with. The actual hotel was very nice and the room was clean and comfortable and the desk made working a pleasure. All the other staff were unfailingly friendly, and the doormen were particularly good, however the waiting staff at breakfast seemed very disorganized as we had to wait ages for a very simple order of toast and coffee.
While this hotel has a lot of potential to be very good, and the location is convenient, the staff could really use some extra training, and I would not feel comfortable booking this hotel for our next trip in September. I have traveled a lot and never had such poor service when checking in (or trying to!). In general hotels are not supposed to 'bump' guests who are staying for longer periods of time, and you are far more likely to get bumped if you only have one night booked...we had eight.
hotel reviews