As a Select Guest member with Omni, I was excited to try a new hotel while attending the SACC event in Washington, D.C. When we arrived, there were people everywhere in the lobby. I got in line with some of my colleagues to check-in and was told there was some sort of power failure and that they were working on bringing their system up and it would be a bit of a wait. While I was discussing this with the check-in representative, another very frustrated guest started yelling at the Manager and then at me as she thought they gave me a key. I wasn't going to get upset over the issue, as that doesn't get you anywhere, so I accepted it, provided my cell phone number for them to call me when the room was ready, and tried to find a spot to get some work done. 5 hours later, the group leader of our business team went to the front desk to explain that he had 30+ people waiting over 5 hours for a room - at that point, we were finally given room keys. My question is - were we ever going to receive the call they promised for our rooms? This situation was completely mishandled. There was not enough room for all of these people to hang out and wait - they should have opened the bar / restaurant early, they should have opened conference rooms where people could sit comfortably so we didn't have to camp out on the floor in some cases. At around 6:00pm, we came down to meet for dinner and saw they were handing out champagne and passed appetizers. Although very lovely - this would have made a LOT more sense to do while there were very angry, uncomfortable, and inconvenienced guests strewn throughout the lobby!
In the end, the room was very big with a lot of comfort to offer. The SACC was a well organized and attended event - except the main room of the event was extremely warm. The hotel should have set the room to a very low temperature with the expectation of 600+ attendees and exhibitors. Also, many of the exterior rooms we rented for the event were not conveniently located to the main room - which made for a lot of escorting and walking for us and our candidates.
The location of the hotel is superb - we had great meals just a block or two away and it's a quick cab ride from DCA. We even got to see a motorcade! (Caution - do not try and walk off the hotel grounds while they're setting up for a motorcade!)
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