I recently stayed at the Drake for 4 nights on a business trip. My experience was bad from the very start. The staff at check in was very inexperienced and unprofessional. The doormen and concierge were helpful, however. The rooms really need updating- the bathroom was filthy (paint chipping off, scuffs on the doors, dirty bathtub). It's never a good sign when I don't want to take off my shoes or sit down when I enter a hotel room! The walls are very thin- we could hear snoring from the room to our right, and tv/talking/phones ringing from the room to our left)- to the point that we had to go buy earplugs-- and I live in a city. They don't enforce "no smoking" floors- we constantly smelled strong smoke. The restaurant was mediocre, I only ate there for breakfast, and the servers were (again) unprofessional and not the least bit helpful. The drinks in the bar are very overpriced and one person in our party ordered a glass of white wine and it had gone bad. She asked how long they keep there bottles open and he said up to a week, which is ridiculous when you are paying $15 a glass for a very average wine. I got the impression that this hotel makes all their money from private parties. Every time I walked through the lobby there was a wedding or function of some kind, and on more than one occasion there were obnoxious drunk people in the lobby. One night there was a girl (a bridesmaid presumably) passed out at the bell desk, and no one seemed to mind. At the end of our stay, when I paid the bill ($1,400 for 4 nights)- I realized I would have been furious had I been paying this out of my own pocket- and no one asked me how my stay was. This hotel is in a good location, but there are many, many better options in Chicago.
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